| By Author | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Title | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Language |
|
Download this book: [ ASCII ] Look for this book on Amazon Tweet |
Title: The History of Pedagogy
Author: Compayré, Gabriel
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.
*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The History of Pedagogy" ***
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
Bold text is denoted by =equal signs=.
Footnote anchors are denoted by [number], and the footnotes have been
placed at the end of each chapter.
A superscript is denoted by ^x or ^{xx}, for example XVI^e or 1^{ere}.
Some minor changes to the text are noted at the end of the book.
THE
HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.
BY
GABRIEL COMPAYRÉ,
DEPUTY, DOCTOR OF LETTERS, AND PROFESSOR IN THE NORMAL SCHOOL
OF FONTENAY-AUX-ROSES.
_TRANSLATED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION,
NOTES, AND AN INDEX_,
BY
W. H. PAYNE, A.M.,
CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NASHVILLE, AND PRESIDENT OF THE
STATE NORMAL COLLEGE; LATE PROFESSOR OF THE SCIENCE AND THE
ART OF TEACHING IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN.
BOSTON:
D. C. HEATH & COMPANY.
1889.
COPYRIGHT, SEPT. 30, 1885,
BY W. H. PAYNE.
J. S. CUSHING & CO., PRINTERS, BOSTON.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PAGE
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE v-vii
INTRODUCTION ix-xxii
CHAPTER I. --Education in Antiquity 1-16
CHAPTER II. --Education among the Greeks 17-42
CHAPTER III. --Education at Rome 43-60
CHAPTER IV. --The Early Christians and the Middle Age 61-82
CHAPTER V. --The Renaissance and the Theories of Education
in the Sixteenth Century.--Erasmus,
Rabelais, and Montaigne 83-111
CHAPTER VI. --Protestantism and Primary Instruction.
--Luther and Comenius 112-137
CHAPTER VII. --The Teaching Congregations.--Jesuits and
Jansenists 138-163
CHAPTER VIII. --Fénelon 164-186
CHAPTER IX. --The Philosophers of the Seventeenth Century.
--Descartes, Malebranche, and Locke 187-211
CHAPTER X. --The Education of Women in the Seventeenth
Century.--Jacqueline Pascal and Madame
de Maintenon 212-231
CHAPTER XI. --Rollin 232-252
CHAPTER XII. --Catholicism and Primary Instruction.--La
Salle and the Brethren of the Christian
Schools 253-278
CHAPTER XIII. --Rousseau and the _Émile_ 278-310
CHAPTER XIV. --The Philosophers of the Eighteenth Century.
--Condillac, Diderot, Helvetius, and Kant 311-339
CHAPTER XV. --The Origin of Lay and National Education.
--La Chalotais and Rolland 340-361
CHAPTER XVI. --The Revolution.--Mirabeau, Talleyrand,
and Condorcet 362-389
CHAPTER XVII. --The Convention.--Lepelletier Saint-Fargeau,
Lakanal, and Daunou 390-412
CHAPTER XVIII.--Pestalozzi 413-445
CHAPTER XIX. --The Successors of Pestalozzi.--Frœbel
and the Père Girard 446-477
CHAPTER XX. --Women as Educators 478-507
CHAPTER XXI. --The Theory and Practice of Education in
the Nineteenth Century 508-534
CHAPTER XXII. --The Science of Education.--Herbert Spencer,
Alexander Bain, Channing, and Horace Mann 535-570
APPENDIX 571-575
INDEX 577-598
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE.
The two considerations that have chiefly influenced me in making
this translation are the following:--
1. Of the three phases of educational study, the practical, the
theoretical, and the historical, the last, as proved by the number
of works written on the subject, has received but very little
attention from English and American teachers; and yet, if we allow
that a teacher should first of all be a man of culture, and that
an invaluable factor in his professional education is a knowledge
of what has hitherto been done within his field of activity, there
are the best of reasons why the claims of this study should be
urged upon the teaching profession. For giving breadth of view,
judicial candor, and steadiness of purpose, nothing more helpful
can be commended to the teacher than a critical survey of the
manifold experiments and experiences in educational practice. The
acutest thinkers of all the ages have worked at the solution of the
educational problem, and the educating art has been practised under
every variety of conditions, civil, social, religious, philosophic,
and ethnic. Is it not time for us to review these experiments, as
the very best condition for advancing surely and steadily?
2. The almost complete neglect of this study among us has been due,
in great measure, to the fact that there have been no books on the
subject at all adapted to the ends to be attained. A dry, scrappy,
and incomplete narration of facts can end only in bewilderment and
in blunting the taste for this species of inquiry. The desirable
thing has been a book that is comprehensive without being tedious,
whose treatment is articulate and clear, and that is pervaded by
a critical insight at once catholic and accurate. Some years ago
I read with the keenest admiration, the _Histoire Critique des
Doctrines de l’Éducation en France depuis le Seizième Siècle_,
by Gabriel Compayré (Paris, 1879); and it seemed to me a model,
in matter and method, for a general history of education. Within
a recent period Monsieur Compayré has transformed this _Histoire
Critique_ into such a general history of education, under the title
_Histoire de la Pédagogie_. In this book all the characteristics of
the earlier work have been preserved, and it represents to my own
mind very nearly the ideal of the treatise that is needed by the
teaching profession of this country.
The reader will observe the distinction made by Monsieur Compayré
between _Pedagogy_ and _Education_. Though our nomenclature does
not sanction this distinction, and though I prefer to give to the
term _Pedagogy_ a different connotation, I have felt bound on moral
grounds to preserve Monsieur Compayré’s use of these terms wherever
the context would sanction it.
It seems mere squeamishness to object to the use of the word
_Pedagogy_ on account of historical associations. The fact that
this term is in reputable use in German, French, and Italian
educational literature, is a sufficient guaranty that we may use it
without danger. With us, the term _Pedagogics_ seems to be employed
as a synonym for _Pedagogy_. It would seem to me better to follow
continental usage, and restrict the term _Pedagogy_ to the art or
practice of education, and _Pedagogics_ to the correlative science.
I feel under special obligations to Monsieur Compayré, and to his
publisher, Monsieur Paul Delaplane, for their courteous permission
to publish this translation. I am also greatly indebted to my
friend, Mr. C. E. Lowrey, Ph.D., for material aid in important
details of my work.
W. H. PAYNE.
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN,
Jan. 4, 1886.
The issue of a second edition has permitted a careful revision of
the translation and the correction of several verbal errors. In
subsequent editions, no effort will be spared by the translator and
his publishers to make this volume worthy of the favor with which
it has been received by the educational public.
W. H. P.
AUG. 1, 1886.
INTRODUCTION.
WHAT A COMPLETE HISTORY OF EDUCATION WOULD BE.--In writing an
elementary history of pedagogy, I do not pretend to write a history
of education. Pedagogy and education, like logic and science, or
like rhetoric and eloquence, are different though analogous things.
What would a complete history of education not include? It would
embrace, in its vast developments, the entire record of the
intellectual and moral culture of mankind at all periods and in
all countries. It would be a _résumé_ of the life of humanity in
its diverse manifestations, literary and scientific, religious
and political. It would determine the causes, so numerous and
so diverse, which act upon the characters of men, and which,
modifying a common endowment, produce beings as different as are a
contemporary of Pericles and a modern European, a Frenchman of the
middle ages and a Frenchman subsequent to the Revolution.
In fact, there is not only an education, properly so called, that
which is given in schools and which proceeds from the direct action
of teachers, but there is a natural education, which we receive
without our knowledge or will, through the influence of the
social environment in which we live. There are what a philosopher
of the day has ingeniously called the _occult coadjutors_ of
education,--climate, race, manners, social condition, political
institutions, religious beliefs. If a man of the nineteenth century
is very unlike a man of the seventeenth century, it is not merely
because the first was educated in a Lycée of the University and
the other in a college of the Jesuits; it is also because in the
atmosphere in which they have been enveloped they have contracted
different habits of mind and heart; it is because they have grown
up under different laws, under a different social and political
_régime_; because they have been nurtured by a different philosophy
and a different religion. Upon that delicate and variable
composition known as the human soul, how many forces which we
do not suspect have left their imprint! How many unobserved and
latent causes are involved in our virtues and in our faults! The
conscious and determined influence of the teacher is not, perhaps,
the most potent. In conjunction with him are at work, obscurely but
effectively, innumerable agents, besides personal effort and what
is produced by the original energy of the individual.
We see what a history of education would be: a sort of philosophy
of history, to which nothing would be foreign, and which would
scrutinize in its most varied and most trifling causes, as well as
in its most profound sources, the moral life of humanity.
WHAT AN ELEMENTARY HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY SHOULD BE.--Wholly different
is the limited and modest purpose of a history of pedagogy, which
proposes merely to set forth the doctrines and the methods of
educators properly so called. In this more limited sense, education
is reduced to the premeditated action which the will of one man
exercises over other men in order to instruct them and train them.
It is the reflective auxiliary of the natural development of the
human soul. To what can be done by nature and by the blind and
fatal influences which sport with human destiny, education adds
the concurrence of art, that is, of the reason, attentive and
self-possessed, which voluntarily and consciously applies to the
training of the soul principles whose truth has been recognized,
and methods whose efficiency has been tested by experience.
Even thus limited, the history of pedagogy still presents to our
inquiry a vast field to be explored. There is scarcely a subject
that has provoked to the same degree as education the best efforts
of human thinking. Note the catalogue of educational works
published in French, which Buisson has recently prepared.[1] Though
incomplete, this list contains not less than two thousand titles;
and probably educational activity has been more fruitful, and has
been given a still greater extension in Germany than in France.
This activity is due to the fact, first of all, that educational
questions, brought into fresh notice with each generation, exercise
over the minds of men an irresistible and perennial attraction;
and also to the fact that parenthood inspires a taste for such
inquiries, and, a thing that is not always fortunate, leads to
the assumption of some competence in such matters; and finally
to the very nature of educational problems, which are not to be
solved by abstract and independent reasoning, after the fashion of
mathematical problems, but which, vitally related to the nature
and the destiny of man, change and vary with the fluctuations of
the psychological and the moral doctrines of which they are but
the consequences. To different systems of psychology correspond
different systems of education. An idealist, like Malebranche, will
not reason upon education after the manner of a sensationalist
like Locke. In the same way there is in every system of morals
the germ of a characteristic and original system of education. A
mystic, like Gerson, will not assign to education the same end as
a practical and positive writer like Herbert Spencer. Hence a very
great diversity in systems, or at least an infinite variety in the
shades of educational opinion.
Still farther, educational activity may manifest itself in
different ways, either in doctrines and theories or in methods and
practical applications. The historian of pedagogy has not merely
to make known the general conceptions which the philosophers of
education have in turn submitted to the approbation of men. If he
wishes to make his work complete, he must give a detailed account
of what has been accomplished, and make an actual study of the
educational establishments which have been founded at different
periods by those who have organized instruction.
Pedagogy is a complex affair, and there are many ways of writing
its history. One of these which has been too little considered,
and which would surely be neither the least interesting nor the
least fruitful, would consist in studying, not the great writers
on education and their doctrines, not the great teachers and their
methods, but pupils themselves. If it were possible to relate
in minute detail, supposing that history would furnish us the
necessary information on this point, the manner in which a great or
a good man has been educated; if an analysis could be made of the
different influences which have been involved in the formation of
talent or in the development of virtue in the case of remarkable
individuals; if it were possible, in a word, to reproduce through
exact and personal biographies the toil, the slow elaboration
whence have issued at different periods solidity of character,
rectitude of purpose, and minds endowed with judicial fairness; the
result would be a useful and eminently practical work, something
analogous to what a history of logic would be, in which there
should be set forth not the abstract rules and the formal laws for
the search after truth, but the successful experiments and the
brilliant discoveries which have little by little constituted the
patrimony of science. This perhaps would be the best of logics
because it is real and in action; and also the best of treatises
on pedagogy, since there might be learned from it, not general
truths, which are often of difficult application and of uncertain
utility, but practical means and living methods whose happy and
efficient applications would be seen in actual use.
We have just traced the imaginary plan of a history of pedagogy
rather than the exact outline of the series of lessons which this
book contains. However, we have approached this ideal as nearly
as we have been able, by attempting to group about the principal
philosophical and moral ideas the systems of education which they
have inspired; by endeavoring to retain whatever is essential; by
adding to the first rapid sketches studied and elaborate portraits;
by ever mingling with the expositions of doctrines and the
analysis of important works the study of practical methods and the
examination of actual institutions; and, finally, by penetrating
the thought of the great educators, to learn from them how they
became such, and by following them, as they have united practice
with theory, in the particular systems of education which they have
directed with success.[2]
DIVISION OF THE HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.--The abundance and the variety
of pedagogical questions, the great number of thinkers who have
written upon education, in a word, the complexity of the subject,
might inspire the historian of pedagogy with the idea of dividing
his work, and of distributing his studies into several series. For
example, it would be possible to write the history of education
in general by itself, and then the history of instruction, which
is but an element of education. As education itself comprises
three parts, physical education, intellectual education, and moral
education, there would be an opportunity for three series of
distinct studies on these different subjects. But these divisions
would present grave inconveniences. In general, the opinions of an
educator are not susceptible of division; there is a connection
between his manner of regarding the matter of instruction and
the solution he gives to educational questions proper. One mode
of thinking pervades his theories or his practice in the matter
of moral discipline, and his ideas on intellectual education. It
is, then, necessary to consider each of the different systems of
education as a whole.
Perhaps a better order of division would be that which, without
regard to chronological order, should distinguish all pedagogical
doctrines and applications into a certain number of schools, and
connect all educators with certain general tendencies: as the
ascetic tendency, that of the fathers of the church, for example,
and of the middle ages; the utilitarian tendency of Locke, and
of a great number of moderns; the pessimism of Port Royal, the
optimism of Fénelon; the literary school of the humanists of the
Renaissance, and the scientific school of Diderot and of Condorcet.
Such a mode of procedure would have its interest, because in the
manifestations of educational thought so apparently different it
would sharply distinguish certain uniform principles which reappear
at all periods of history; but this would be rather a philosophy of
the history of education than a simple history of pedagogy.
The best we can do, then, is to follow the chronological order
and to study in turn the educators of antiquity, those of the
middle ages, of the Renaissance, and of modern times. We shall
interrogate in succession those who have become eminent as teachers
and educators, and ask of each how he has solved for himself the
various portions of the problems of education. Besides being more
simple and more natural, this order has the advantage of showing
us the progress of education as it has gradually risen from
instinct to reflection, from nature to art, and after long periods
of groping and many halts, ascending from humble beginnings to a
complete and definite organization. This plan also exhibits to
us the beautiful spectacle of a humanity in a state of ceaseless
growth. At first, instruction comprised but few subjects, at the
same time that only a select few participated in it. Then there was
a simultaneous though gradual extension of the domain of knowledge
which must be acquired, of the moral qualities demanded by the
struggle for existence, and of the number of men who are called to
be instructed and educated,--the ideal being, as Comenius has said,
that all may learn and that everything may be taught.
UTILITY OF THE HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.--The history of pedagogy is
henceforth to form a part of the course of study for the primary
normal schools of France. It has been included in the prescribed
list of subjects for the third year, under this title: _History of
Pedagogy,--Principal educators and their doctrines; Analysis of the
most important works._[3]
Is argument necessary to justify the place which has been assigned
to this study? In the first place, the history of pedagogy
possesses great interest from the fact that it is closely connected
with the general history of thought and also with the philosophic
explication of human actions. Certainly, pedagogical doctrines are
neither fortuitous opinions nor events without significance. On the
one hand, they have their causes and their principles in moral,
religious, and political beliefs, of which they are the faithful
image; on the other, they are instrumental in the training of mind
and in the formation of manners. Back of the _Ratio Studiorum_ of
the Jesuits, back of the _Émile_ of Rousseau, there distinctly
appears a complete religion, a complete philosophy. In the
classical studies organized by the humanists of the Renaissance we
see the dawn of that literary brilliancy which distinguished the
century of Louis XIV., and so in the scientific studies preached
a hundred years ago by Diderot and by Condorcet there was a
preparation for the positive spirit of our time. The education of
the people is at once the consequence of all that it believes and
the source of all that it is destined to be.
But there are other reasons which recommend the study of educators
and the reading of their works. The history of pedagogy is a
necessary introduction to pedagogy itself. It should be studied,
not for purposes of erudition or for mere curiosity, but with a
practical purpose for the sake of finding in it the permanent
truths which are the essentials of a definite theory of education.
The desirable thing just now is not perhaps so much to find new
ideas, as properly to comprehend those which are already current;
to choose from among them, and, a choice once having been made,
to make a resolute effort to apply them to use. When we consider
with impartiality all that has been conceived or practised
previous to the nineteenth century, or when we see clearly what
our predecessors have left us to do in the way of consequences
to deduce, of incomplete or obscure ideas to generalize or to
illustrate, and especially of opposing tendencies to reconcile, we
may well inquire what they have really left us to discover.
It is profitable to study even the chimeras and the educational
errors of our predecessors. In fact, these are so many marked
experiments which contribute to the progress of our methods by
warning us of the rocks which we should shun. A thorough analysis
of the paradoxes of Rousseau, and of the absurd consequences to
which the abuse of the principle of nature leads us, is no less
instructive than meditation on the wisest precepts of Montaigne or
of Port Royal.
In truth, for him who has an exact knowledge of the educators of
past centuries, the work of constructing a system of education is
more than half done. It remains only to co-ordinate the scattered
truths which have been collected from their works by assimilating
them through personal reflection, and by making them fruitful
through psychological analysis and moral faith.
Let it be observed that as studied by the men who first conceived
and practised them, pedagogical methods present themselves to
our examination with a sharpness of outline that is surprising.
Innovators lend to whatever they invent a personal emphasis,
something life-like and occasionally extravagant; but it is exactly
this which permits us the better to comprehend their thought, and
the more completely to discover its truth or its falsity.
However, it is not alone the intellectual advantage which
recommends the history of pedagogy; it is also the moral stimulus
which will be derived from the study. For the sake of encouraging
to noble efforts the men and women who are our teachers, is it of
no moment to present to them the names of Comenius, Rollin, and
Pestalozzi as men who have attained such high excellence in their
profession? Will not the teacher who each day resumes his heavy
burden be revived and sustained? Will he not enter his class-room,
where so many difficulties and toils await him, a better and a
stronger man if his imagination teems with articulate memories of
those who, in the past, have opened for him the way, and shown him
by their example how to walk in it? By the marvellous agency of
electricity we are now able to transport material and mechanical
power, and to cause its transfer across space without regard to
distance. But by reading and by meditation we are able to do
something analogous to this in the moral world; we are able to
borrow from the ancients, across the centuries, something of the
moral energy that inspired them, and to make live again in our own
hearts some of their virtues of devotion and faith. Doubtless a
brief history of pedagogy could not, from this point of view, serve
as a substitute for the actual reading of the authors in question;
but it is a preparation for this work and inspires a taste for it.
We are warranted in saying, then, that the utility of the history
of pedagogy blends with the utility of pedagogy itself. To-day it
is no longer necessary for us to offer any proof on this point.
Pedagogy, long neglected even in our country, has regained its
standing; nay more, it has become the fashion. “France is becoming
addicted to pedagogy” was a remark recently made by one of the
men who, of our day, will have contributed most to excite and
also to direct the taste for pedagogical studies.[4] The words
_pedagogue_, _pedagogy_, have encountered dangers in the history
of our language. Littré tells us that the word _pedagogue_ “is most
often used in a bad sense.” On the other hand, we shall see, if we
consult his dictionary, that several years ago the sense of the
word _pedagogy_ was not yet fixed, since it is there defined as
“the moral education of children.” To-day, not only in language,
but in facts and in institutions, the fate of pedagogy is settled.
Of course we must neither underrate it nor attribute to it a
sovereign and omnipotent efficiency that it does not have. We might
freely say of pedagogy what Sainte-Beuve said of logic: The best is
that which does not argue in its own favor; which is not enamoured
of itself, but which modestly recognizes the limits of its power.
The best is that which we make for ourselves, not that which we
learn from books.
Even with this reserve, the teaching of pedagogy is destined to
render important services to the cause of education, and education,
let us be assured, is in the way of acquiring a fresh importance
day by day. This is due to the fact, first, that under a liberal
government, and in a republican society, it is more and more
necessary that the citizens shall be instructed and enlightened.
Liberty is a dangerous thing unless it has instruction for a
counterpoise. Moreover, we must recollect that in our day, among
those _occult coadjutors_ of which we have spoken, and which at all
times add their action to that of education proper, some have lost
their influence, while others, so far from co-operating in this
movement, oppose it and compromise it. On the one hand, religion
has seen her influence curtailed. She is no longer, as she once
was, the tutelary power under whose shadow the rising generations
peacefully matured. It is necessary that education, through the
progress of the reason and through the reflective development of
morality, should compensate for the waning influence of religion.
On the other hand, social conditions, the very progress of civil
and political liberty, the growing independence accorded the child
in the family, the multiplication of books, good and bad, all these
collateral agents of education are not always compliant and useful
aids. They would prove the accomplices of a moral decadence did
not our teachers make an effort as much more vigorous to affect
the will and the heart, as well as the mind, in order to establish
character, and thus assure the recuperation of our country.
A SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF GABRIEL COMPAYRÉ.[5]
Gabriel Compayré was born Jan. 2, 1843, at Albi, a city of Southern
France, containing about fifteen thousand inhabitants, and the
capital of the province of Tarn. His early education was received
from his father, a man of sterling character, and the author of a
book entitled, _Historical Studies Concerning the Albigenses_.
He passed from his father’s care to the _collège_ of Castres,
then to the _lycée_ of Toulouse, and finally to the _lycée
Louis-le-Grand_ at Paris. His fellow-pupils recall with pleasure
his triumphs at these institutions of learning. His brilliant
intellectual powers, his vivid imagination, his well-stored memory,
and his unwearied industry, marked him as destined to render signal
services to his race.
He entered the _École Normale Supérieure_ in 1862. His tastes led
him to philosophical studies; indeed, he had already manifested
a strong tendency to moral and intellectual science. Yet his
intensely practical nature could not long remain satisfied with
metaphysical subtleties where he found no sure foot-hold. He became
a warm advocate of experimental methods, and of the Baconian
philosophy. He set himself to a study of man as he appears in
society and in the family; to the analysis of his emotions and his
acts, and to the deduction, from these analyses, of those rules
which ought to preside over his conduct and his intellectual and
moral development.
He graduated from the normal school in 1865, and was immediately
appointed professor of philosophy at the _lycée_ of Pau. A lecture
upon Rousseau, which he delivered here, brought upon him the severe
condemnation of the ultramontane party, and involved him in a
controversy which has continued to the present time.
In 1868, having been made a fellow of the University, he was
sent to the _lycée_ of Poitiers. At this place he manifested his
sympathy for the common people by a course of lectures to workmen
on moral subjects. About this time he received honorable mention
from the Academy for an eloquent eulogy upon Rousseau, in which he
carefully portrayed the influence of Rousseau upon the government
of his country and upon methods of school instruction, giving him
full credit for the reform in both.
From this time forward Compayré’s life has been filled with labors
and with honors. In addition to his professional duties and
philosophical writings, he has made careful study of the social and
political questions of his country.
Promoted from one post of honor to another, on the 14th of July,
1880, he was appointed Chevalier of the Legion of Honor.
In 1874 he presented his theme for his doctor’s degree upon the
_Philosophy of David Hume_, a work of the highest philosophical
thought and language, which received a prize from the Academy.
Between 1874 and 1880 his lectures were largely devoted to the
subjects most closely connected with modern thought. _A Study of
Darwinism_, _The Psychology of a Child_, _Educational Principles_,
are subjects that indicate the sweep of his investigations. The
brilliancy of his style, the liberality of his opinions, and the
extent of his learning have exposed him to bitter attacks from
those who envy his powers and disbelieve his doctrines; yet his
popularity has continually increased, and the young professor has
become a great power in the party of the republic, to whose cause
he early devoted himself.
The works which he published during this period were numerous. He
translated with great care, adding valuable matter of his own:
Bain’s _Inductive and Deductive Logic_, Huxley’s _Hume, His Life
and Philosophy_, and Locke’s _Thoughts on Education_. His most
considerable work is his _History of the Doctrine of Education
in France since the Sixteenth Century_, a work of two volumes,
published in 1879, which reached its fourth edition in France
in 1883, has been translated entire into German, and from which
numerous extracts have been made for the educational journals
of England and America. If we add to these labors his work upon
the _Revue Philosophique_, and the _Dictionnaire de Pédagogie_,
we shall understand why he was called to Paris in 1881, by the
Minister of Public Instruction, to aid in founding the _École
Normale Supérieure des Institutrices, de Fontenay-aux-Roses_. He
successfully arranged the course of instruction for this school. In
the same year he assisted in the organization of a new school at
Sèvres, which prepares young teachers for the course of instruction
in the normal schools.
In 1880 he published his _Manual of Civil and Moral Instruction_,
in two courses, or parts. This book has had a remarkable career. In
less than three years more than three hundred thousand copies of
the first part, and over five hundred thousand of the second part,
were sold.
In 1882, in conjunction with a friend, M. A. Delplan, an author
of merit, he published his _Civil and Moral Lectures_. In 1883 he
published a _Course of Civil Instruction_ for normal schools.
Compayré entered political life in 1881, having been elected
deputy from the arrondissement of Lavaur in Tarn. He occupies a
distinguished position among the men of to-day; his character, his
talents, his popularity, and his devotion to the cause of civil and
intellectual freedom, give him the assurance of a place no less
important among the men of the future.
In his personal appearance Compayré combines the scholar and the
man of the world. His dark hair, parted in the middle, is combed
back from a forehead very high and very broad. His eye is bright
and piercing, and his face, clean shaven except upon the upper lip,
bears the impress of both his ingenuousness and his indomitable
perseverance.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See the _Dictionnaire de Pédagogie_, by F. Buisson, Article
_Bibliographie_.
[2] The book now offered to the public was taught before it was
written. It is the result of the lectures given for three years
past, either at the higher normal school of Fontenay-aux-Roses, or
in the normal courses for men at Sèvres and at Saint Cloud.
[3] Resolution of Aug. 3, 1881.
[4] See the Article of M. Pécaut in the _Revue Pédagogique_, No. 2,
1882.
[5] Furnished by Mr. Geo. E. Gay, Principal of the Malden High
School.
THE HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.
THE
HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.
CHAPTER I.
EDUCATION IN ANTIQUITY.
PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS; EDUCATION AMONG THE HINDOOS;
POLITICAL CASTE AND RELIGIOUS PANTHEISM; EFFECTS ON
EDUCATION; BUDDHISTIC REFORM; CONVERSATION OF BUDDHA AND
PURNA; EDUCATIONAL USAGES; EDUCATION AMONG THE ISRAELITES;
PRIMITIVE PERIOD; RELIGIOUS AND NATIONAL EDUCATION; PROGRESS
OF POPULAR INSTRUCTION; ORGANIZATION OF SCHOOLS; RESPECT FOR
TEACHERS; METHODS AND DISCIPLINE; EXCLUSIVE AND JEALOUS SPIRIT;
EDUCATION AMONG THE CHINESE; FORMALISM; LÂO-TSZE AND KHUNG-TSZE
(CONFUCIUS); EDUCATION AMONG OTHER PEOPLE OF THE EAST; THE
EGYPTIANS AND THE PERSIANS; ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.
1. PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS.--A German historian of philosophy
begins his work by asking this question: “Was Adam a philosopher?”
In the same way certain historians of pedagogy begin by learned
researches upon the education of savages. We shall not carry our
investigations so far back. Doubtless from the day when a human
family began its existence, from the day when a father and a
mother began to love their children, education had an existence.
But there is very little practical interest in studying these
obscure beginnings of pedagogy. It is a matter of erudition and
curiosity.[6] Besides the difficulty of gathering up the faint
traces of primitive education, there would be but little profit in
painfully following the slow gropings of primeval man. In truth,
the history of pedagogy dates but from the period relatively
recent, when human thought, in the matter of education, substituted
reflection for instinct, art for blind nature. So we shall hasten
to begin the study of pedagogy among the classical peoples, the
Greeks and the Romans, after having thrown a rapid glance over some
Eastern nations considered either in their birthplace and remote
origin, or in their more recent development.
2. THE PEDAGOGY OF THE HINDOOS.--It would not be worth our while to
enter into details respecting a civilization so different from our
own as that of the Hindoos. But we should not forget that we are
in part the descendants of that people, and that we belong to the
same ethnic group, and that the European languages are derived from
theirs.
3. POLITICAL CASTE AND RELIGIOUS PANTHEISM.--The spirit of caste,
from the social point of view, and pantheism, from the religious
point of view, are the characteristics of Hindoo society. The
Indian castes constituted hereditary classes where social rank and
special vocation were determined, not by free choice, but by the
accident of birth. The consequence of this was an endless routine,
with no care either for the individuality, or the personal talents,
or the inclination of children, and without the possibility of
rising by personal effort above one’s rank in life.[7] On the other
hand, religious ideas came to restrict, within the limits where it
was already imprisoned, the activity of the young Hindoo. God is
everywhere present; he manifests himself in all the phenomena of
heaven and earth, in the sun and in the stars, in the Himalayas
and in the Ganges; he penetrates and animates everything; the
things of sense are but the changing and ephemeral vestments of
the unchangeable being. “With this pantheistic conception of the
world and of life, the thought and the will of the Hindoo perished
in the mystic contemplation of the soul. To become master of one’s
inclinations; to abandon every terrestrial thought; after this
life to lose one’s identity, and to be annihilated by absorption
in the divine nature; to prepare one’s self by macerations and
expiations for complete submersion in the original principle of
all being,--this is the highest wisdom, the true happiness of the
Hindoo, the ideal of all serious education.”[8]
4. EFFECTS ON EDUCATION.--It is easy to predict what education
would become under the weight of these double chains, social and
religious. While the ideal in our modern societies is more and
more to enfranchise the individual, and to create for him personal
freedom and self-consciousness, the effort of the Hindoo Brahmins
consisted above all in crushing out all spontaneity, in abolishing
individual predilections, by preaching the doctrine of absolute
self-renunciation, of voluntary abasement, and of contempt for
life. Man was thus born doubly a slave,--by his social condition,
which predestinated him to the routine apprenticeship of his
ancestral caste, and by his mysterious dependence on the divine
being who absorbed in himself all real activity, and left to human
beings only the deceptive and frail appearance of it.
5. BUDDHIST REFORM.--The Buddhist reform, which so profoundly
affected Brahmanism at about the sixth century B.C., did not
sensibly modify, from the educational point of view, the ideas of
the Hindoos. Buddha also taught that the cause of evil resides in
the passions of men, and that in order to attain moral peace, there
is no other means to be employed than that of self-abnegation and
of the renouncement of everything selfish and personal.
6. CONVERSATION OF BUDDHA AND PURNA.--One of the traditions which
permit us the better to appreciate the original character, at once
affecting and ingenuous, of Indian thought, is the conversation of
Buddha with his disciple Purna about a journey the latter was going
to undertake to the barbarians for the purpose of teaching them the
new religion:--
“They are men,” said Buddha, “who are fiery in temper, passionate,
cruel, furious, insolent. If they openly address you in words
which are malicious and coarse, and become angry with you, what
will you think?”
“If they address me to my face in coarse and insolent terms, this
is what I shall think: they are certainly good men who openly
address me in malicious terms, but they will neither strike me with
their hands nor stone me.”
“But should they strike you with their hands and stone you, what
will you think?”
“I shall think that they are good men, gentle men, who strike me
with their hands and stone me, but do not beat me with a club nor
with a sword.”
“But if they beat you with a club and with a sword?”
“They are good men, gentle men, who beat me with a club and with a
sword, but they do not completely kill me.”
“But if they were really to kill you?”
“They are good men, gentle men, who deliver me with so little pain
from this body encumbered with defilements.”
“Very good, Purna! You may live in the country of those barbarians.
Go, Purna! Being liberated, liberate; being consoled, console;
having reached Nirvâna thus made perfect, cause others to go
there.”[9]
Whatever there is to admire in such a strange system of morals
should not blind us to the vices which resulted from its practical
consequences: such as the abuse of passive resignation, the
complete absence of the idea of right and of justice, and no active
virtues.
7. EFFECTS ON EDUCATION.--Little is known of the actual state of
educational practice among the Hindoos. It may be said, however,
that the Brahmins, the priests, had the exclusive charge of
education. Woman, in absolute subjection to man, had no share
whatever in instruction.
As to boys, it seems that in India there were always schools for
their benefit; schools which were held in the open country under
the shade of trees, or, in case of bad weather, under sheds.
Mutual instruction has been practised in India from the remotest
antiquity; it is from here, in fact, that Andrew Bell, at the
close of the eighteenth century, borrowed the idea of this mode
of instruction. Exercises in writing were performed first upon
the sand with a stick, then upon palm leaves with an iron style,
and finally upon the dry leaves of the plane-tree with ink. In
discipline there was a resort to corporal punishment; besides
the rod the teacher employed other original means of correction;
for example, he threw cold water on the offender. The teacher,
moreover, was treated with a religious respect; the child must
respect him as he would Buddha himself.
The higher studies were reserved for the priestly class, who, long
before the Christian era, successfully cultivated rhetoric and
logic, astronomy and the mathematics.
8. EDUCATION AMONG THE ISRAELITES.--“If ever a people has
demonstrated the power of education, it is the people of
Israel.”[10] In fact, what a singular spectacle is offered us by
that people, which, dispossessed of its own country for eighteen
hundred years, has been dispersed among the nations without
losing its identity, and has maintained its existence without a
country, without a government, and without a ruler, preserving
with perennial energy its habits, its manners, and its faith!
Without losing sight of the part of that extraordinary vitality of
the Jewish people, which is due to the natural endowments of the
race, its tenacity of temperament, and its wonderful activity of
intelligence, it is just to attribute another part of it to the
sound education, at once religious and national, which the ancient
Hebrews have transmitted by tradition to their descendants.
9. EDUCATION, RELIGIOUS AND NATIONAL, DURING THE PRIMITIVE
PERIOD.--The chief characteristic of the education of the Hebrews
in the earliest period of their history is that it was essentially
domestic. During the whole Biblical period there is no trace of
public schools, at least for young children. Family life is the
origin of that primitive society where the notion of the state is
almost unknown, and where God is the real king.
The child was to become the faithful servant of Jehovah. To this
end it was not needful that he should be learned. It was only
necessary that he should learn through language and the instructive
example of his parents the moral precepts and the religious beliefs
of the nation. It has been very justly said[11] that “among all
nations the direction impressed on education depends on the
idea which they form of the perfect man. Among the Romans it is
the brave soldier, inured to fatigue, and readily yielding to
discipline; among the Athenians it is the man who unites in himself
the happy harmony of moral and physical perfection; among the
Hebrews the perfect man is the pious, virtuous man, who is capable
of attaining the ideal traced by God himself in these terms: ‘Ye
shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy!’”[12]
The discipline was harsh, as is proved by many passages in the
Bible: “He that spareth his rod, hateth his son,” say the Proverbs;
“but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.”[13] “Withhold
not correction from the child, for if thou beatest him with the
rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt
deliver his soul from hell.”[14] And still more significant:
“Chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare
for his crying.”[15]
Only boys, it seems, learned to read and write. As to girls, they
were taught to spin, to weave, to prepare food for the table, to
superintend the work of the household, and also to sing and to
dance.
In a word, intellectual culture was but an incident in the
primitive education of the Hebrews; the great thing, in their eyes,
was moral and religious instruction, and education in love of
country. Fathers taught their children the nation’s history, and
the great events that had marked the destiny of the people of God.
That series of events celebrated by the great feasts which were
often renewed, and in which the children participated, served at
once to fill their hearts with gratitude to God and with love for
their country.
10. PROGRESS OF POPULAR INSTRUCTION.--It is not easy to conceive
to what extent the zeal for instruction was developed among the
ancient Jews in the years that followed the advent of Christianity.
From being domestic, as it had been up to that time, Jewish
education became public. Besides, it was no longer sufficient to
indoctrinate children with good principles and wholesome moral
habits; they must also be instructed. From the first centuries of
the Christian era, the Israelites approached our modern ideal,
with respect to making education obligatory and universal. Like
every brave nation that has been vanquished, whose energy has
survived defeat, like the Prussians after Jena, or the French after
1870, the Jews sought to defend themselves against the effects of
conquest by a great intellectual effort, and to regain their lost
ground by the development of popular instruction.
11. ORGANIZATION OF SCHOOLS.--In the year 64, the high priest,
Joshua Ben Gamala, imposed on each town, under pain of
excommunication, the obligation to support a school. If the town
is cut in two by a river, and there is no means of transit by a
safe bridge, a school must be established on each side. Even to-day
we are far from having realized, as regards the number of schools
and of teachers, this rule stated in the Talmud: If the number of
children does not exceed twenty-five, the school shall be conducted
by a single teacher; for more than twenty-five, the town shall
employ an assistant; if the number exceeds forty, there shall be
two masters.
12. RESPECT FOR TEACHERS.--In that ancient time, what an exalted
and noble conception men had of teachers, “those true guardians of
the city”! Even then, how exacting were the requirements made of
them! But, on the other hand, how they were esteemed and respected!
The Rabbins required that the schoolmaster should be married;
they mistrusted teachers who were not at the same time heads of
families. Is it possible to enforce the advantages of maturity and
experience more delicately than in this beautiful language? “He who
learns of a young master is like a man who eats green grapes, and
drinks wine fresh from the press; but he who has a master of mature
years is like a man who eats ripe and delicious grapes, and drinks
old wine.” Mildness, patience, and unselfishness were recommended
as the ruling virtues of the teacher. “If your teacher and your
father,” says the Talmud, “have need of your assistance, help your
teacher before helping your father, for the latter has given you
only the life of this world, while the former has secured for you
the life of the world to come.”[16]
13. METHOD AND DISCIPLINE.--The child entered school at the age of
six. “If a child below the age of six is brought to your school,”
says the Talmud, “you need not receive him”; and to indicate that
after that age it is proper to regain the lost time, the Talmud
adds, “After the age of six, receive the child, and _load him like
an ox_.” On the contrary, other authorities of the same period,
more judicious and far-seeing, recommend moderation in tasks, and
say that it is necessary to treat “the young according to their
strength, and the grown-up according to theirs.”
There was taught in the Jewish schools, along with reading and
writing,[17] a little of natural history, and a great deal of
geometry and astronomy. Naturally, the Bible was the first book put
in the hands of children. The master interspersed moral lessons
with the teaching of reading. He made a special effort to secure
a correct pronunciation, and multiplied his explanations in order
to make sure of being understood, repeating his comments even to
the _four-hundredth time_ if it were necessary. It seems that
the methods were suggestive and attractive, and the discipline
relatively mild. There were but few marks of the proverbial
severity of the ancient times. “Children,” says the Talmud, “should
be punished with one hand, and caressed with two.” The Christian
spirit, the spirit of him who had said “suffer the little children
to come unto me,” had affected the Jews themselves. However,
corporal punishment was tolerated to a certain extent, but, strange
to say, only for children above the age of eleven. In case of
disobedience, a pupil above that age might be deprived of food, and
even struck with a strap of shoe-leather.
14. EXCLUSIVE AND JEALOUS SPIRIT.--Some reservation must accompany
the encomiums justly due Jewish education. With respect to the
rest of the human race, the Jewish spirit was mean, narrow, and
malevolent. The Israelites of this day have retained something of
these jealous and exclusive tendencies. At the beginning of the
Christian era, the fierce and haughty patriotism of the Jews led
them to proscribe whatever was of Gentile origin, whatever had
not the sanction of the national tradition. Nothing of Greek or
Roman culture penetrated this closed world.[18] The Jewish doctors
covered with the same contempt him who raises hogs and him who
teaches his son Greek science.
15. EDUCATION AMONG THE CHINESE.--We have attempted to throw into
relief the educational practices of two Eastern nations to which
the civilization of the West is most intimately related. A few
words will suffice for the other primitive societies whose history
is too little known, and whose civilization is too remote from our
own, to make their plans of education anything more than an object
of curiosity.
China has been civilized from time immemorial, and at every period
of her long history she has preserved her national characteristics.
For more than three thousand years an absolute uniformity has
characterized this immobile people. Everything is regulated by
tradition. Education is mechanical and formal. The preoccupation of
teachers is to cause their pupils to acquire a mechanical ability,
a regular and sure routine. They care more for appearances, for
a decorous manner of conduct, than for a searching and profound
morality. Life is but a ceremonial, minutely determined and
punctually followed. There is no liberty, no glow of spontaneity.
Their art is characterized by conventional refinement and by a
prettiness that seems mean; there is nothing of the grand and
imposing. By their formalism, the Chinese educators are the Jesuits
of the East.
16. LÂO-TSZE AND KHUNG-TSZE.--Towards the sixth century B.C.
two reformers appeared in China, Lâo-tsze and Khung-tsze. The
first represents the spirit of emancipation, of progress, of the
pursuit of the ideal, of protest against routine. He failed. The
second, on the contrary, who became celebrated under the name of
Confucius, and to whom tradition ascribes more than three thousand
personal disciples, secured the triumph of his ideas of practical,
utilitarian morality, founded upon the authority of the State and
that of the family, as well as upon the interest of the individual.
A quotation from Lâo-tsze will prove that human thought, in the
sixth century B.C., had reached a high mark in China:--
“Certain bad rulers would have us believe that the heart and the
spirit of man should be left empty, but that instead his stomach
should be filled; that his bones should be strengthened rather than
the power of his will; that we should always desire to have the
people remain in a state of ignorance, for then their demands would
be few. It is difficult, they say, to govern a people that are too
wise.
“These doctrines are directly opposed to what is due to humanity.
Those in authority should come to the aid of the people by means
of oral and written instruction; so far from oppressing them and
treating them as slaves, they should do them good in every possible
way.”
In other words, it is by enlightening the people, and by an honest
devotion to their interests, that one becomes worthy to govern them.
If the Chinese have not fully profited by these wise and exalted
counsels, it appears that at least they have attempted to make
instruction general. Hue, a Chinese missionary, boldly declares
that China is the country of all countries where primary
instruction is most widely diffused. To the same effect, a German
writer affirms that in China there is not a village so miserable,
nor a hamlet so unpretending, as not to be provided with a school
of some kind.[19] In a country of tradition, like China, we
can infer what once existed from what exists to-day. But that
instruction which is so widely diffused is wholly superficial
and tends merely to an exterior culture. As Dittes says, the
educational method of the Chinese consists, not in _developing_,
but in _communicating_.[20]
17. EDUCATION AMONG THE OTHER NATIONS OF THE EAST.--Of all the
oriental nations, Egypt is the one in which intellectual culture
seems to have reached the highest point, but only among men of a
privileged class. Here, as in India, the priestly class monopolized
the learning of the day; it jealously guarded the depository of
mysterious knowledge which it communicated only to the kings. The
common people, divided into working classes, which were destined
from father to son to the same social status, learned scarcely more
than was necessary in order to practise their hereditary trades and
to be initiated into the religious beliefs.
In the more military but less theocratic nation, the Persian,
efforts were made in favor of a general education. The religious
dualism which distinguished Ormuzd, the principle of good, from
Ahriman, the principle of evil, and which promised the victory to
the former, made it the duty of each man to contribute to this
final victory by devoting himself to a life of virtue. Hence
arose noble efforts to attain physical and moral perfection. The
education of the Persians in temperance and frugality has excited
the admiration of certain Greek writers, especially Xenophon, and
there will be found in his _Cyropædia_ a thrilling picture of the
brave and noble manners of the ancient Persians.[21]
On the whole, the history of pedagogy among the people of the East
offers us but few examples to follow. That which, in different
degrees, characterizes primitive education is that it is the
privilege of certain classes; that woman is most generally excluded
from its benefits; that in respect of the common people it is
scarcely more than the question of an apprenticeship to a trade,
or of the art of war, or of a preparation for the future life;
that no appeal is made to the free energy of individuals, but that
the great masses of the people in antiquity have generally lived
under the harassing oppression of religious conceptions, of fixed
traditions, and of political despotism.
[18. ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.--Speaking generally, the education
of the primitive nations of the East had the following
characteristics:--
1. It was administered by the hieratic class. This was due to
the fact that the priests were the only men of learning, and
consequently the only men who could teach.
2. The knowledge communicated was in the main religious, ethical,
and prudential, and the final purpose of instruction was good
conduct.
3. As the matter of instruction was knowledge bearing the
sanction of authority, the learner was debarred from free
inquiry, and the general tendency was towards immobility.
4. As the knowledge of the day was embodied in language, the
process of learning consisted in the interpretation of speech,
and so involved a large and constant use of the memory; and
this literal memorizing of the principles and rules of conduct
promoted stability of character.
5. As the purpose of instruction was guidance, there was no
appearance of the conception that one main purpose of education
is discipline or culture.
6. The conception of education as a means of national
regeneration had a distinct appearance among the Jews; and among
this people we find one form of compulsion,--the obligation
placed on towns to support schools.
7. In Persia, the State appears for the first time as a distinct
agency in promoting education.
8. In China, from time immemorial, scholarship has been made
the condition for obtaining places in the civil service, and in
consequence education has been made subordinate to examinations.
9. Save to a limited extent among the Jews, woman was debarred
from the privileges of education.
10. In the main, education was administered so as to perpetuate
class distinctions. There was no appearance of the conception
that education is a universal right and a universal good.]
FOOTNOTES:
[6] A knowledge of the mental and moral condition of savages serves
the invaluable purpose of showing what education has accomplished
for the human race. There would be much less grumbling at the
tax-gatherer if men could clearly conceive the condition of
societies where no taxes are levied. To know what education has
actually done we need to know the condition of societies unaffected
by systematic education. Such a book as Lubbock’s _Origin of
Civilization_ is a helpful introduction to the history of
education. Whoever reads such a book carefully will be confronted
with this problem: How is it that intellectual inertness, amounting
almost to stupidity, is frequently the concomitant of an acute and
persistent sense-training? Besides, savage tribes are historical
illustrations of what has been produced on a large scale by
“following Nature.” (P.)
[7] There is an argument for caste in the modern fiction of a
“beautiful economy of Nature,” which plants human beings in society
as it does trees in the earth, and thus makes education consist
in the action of environment upon man and in the reaction of man
upon his environment. To support existence, man needs certain
endowments; but the force of circumstances creates these very
endowments. One man is predestined to be a Red Indian, another a
Bushman, and still another an accountant; and in each case the
function of education is to adapt the man to the place where Nature
has fixed him. This modern justification of caste is adroitly
worked out by Mr. Spencer in the first chapter of his _Education_.
(P.)
[8] Dittes, _Histoire de l’éducation et de l’instruction_,
translated by Redolfi, 1880, p. 38.
[9] Burnouf, _Introduction à l’histoire du Bouddhisme_, p. 252.
[10] Dittes, p. 49.
[11] _L’éducation et l’instruction chez les anciens Juifs_, by J.
Simon, Paris, 1879, p. 16.
[12] Levit. xix. 2.
[13] Prov. xiii. 24.
[14] Prov. xxiii. 13, 14.
[15] Prov. xix. 18.
[16] On similar grounds, Alexander declared that he owed more to
Aristotle his teacher, than to Philip his father. (P.)
[17] What were the methods followed in teaching reading and
writing? We are told by Renan in his _Vie de Jésus_ that “Jesus
doubtless learned to read and write according to the method of the
East, which consists in putting into the hands of the child a book
which he repeats in concert with his comrades till he knows it by
heart.”
[18] This statement needs qualifying. “In nearly all the families
of high rank,” says the _Dictionnaire de Pédagogie_ (1^{ere}
Partie, Article JUIFS), “the daughters spoke Greek. The Rabbins
did not look with any favor upon the study of profane philosophy;
but notwithstanding their protests, there were many devoted
readers of Plato and Aristotle. It is said that among the pupils
of the celebrated Gamaliel there were five hundred who studied the
philosophy and the literature of Greece.” (P.)
[19] For a series of interesting documents on the actual state
of education in China, consult the article CHINE, in Buisson’s
_Dictionnaire de Pédagogie_.
[20] Dittes, _op. cit._, p. 32.
[21] On a recent occasion Archdeacon Farrar referred to Persian
education as follows: “We boast of our educational ideal. Is it
nearly as high in some essentials as that even of some ancient
and heathen nations long centuries before Christ came? The
ancient Persians were worshippers of fire and of the sun; most of
their children would have been probably unable to pass the most
elementary examination in physiology, but assuredly the Persian
ideal might be worthy of our study. At the age of fourteen--the
age when we turn our children adrift from school, and do nothing
more for them--the Persians gave their young nobles the four
best masters whom they could find to teach their boys wisdom,
justice, temperance, and courage--wisdom including worship, justice
including the duty of unswerving truthfulness through life,
temperance including mastery over sensual temptations, courage
including a free mind opposed to all things coupled with guilt.”
(P.)
CHAPTER II.
EDUCATION AMONG THE GREEKS.
GREEK PEDAGOGY; ATHENIAN AND SPARTAN EDUCATION; THE SCHOOLS OF
ATHENS; SCHOOLS OF GRAMMAR; SCHOOLS OF GYMNASTICS; THE PALESTRA;
SCHOOLS OF MUSIC; THE SCHOOLS OF RHETORIC AND OF PHILOSOPHY;
SOCRATES AND THE SOCRATIC METHOD; SOCRATIC IRONY; MAIEUTICS,
OR THE ART OF GIVING BIRTH TO IDEAS; EXAMPLES OF IRONY AND OF
MAIEUTICS BORROWED FROM THE MEMORABILIA OF XENOPHON; PLATO AND
THE REPUBLIC; THE EDUCATION OF WARRIORS AND MAGISTRATES; MUSIC
AND GYMNASTICS; RELIGION AND ART IN EDUCATION; THE BEAUTIFUL
AND THE GOOD; HIGH INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION; THE LAWS; DEFINITION
OF EDUCATION; DETAILED PRECEPTS; XENOPHON; THE ECONOMICS AND
THE EDUCATION OF WOMAN; THE CYROPÆDIA; PROTESTS OF XENOPHON
AGAINST THE DEGENERATE MANNERS OF THE GREEKS; ARISTOTLE; GENERAL
CHARACTER OF HIS PLAN OF EDUCATION; PUBLIC EDUCATION; PROGRESSIVE
DEVELOPMENT OF HUMAN NATURE; PHYSICAL EDUCATION; INTELLECTUAL AND
MORAL EDUCATION; DEFECTS IN THE PEDAGOGY OF ARISTOTLE, AND IN
GREEK PEDAGOGY IN GENERAL; ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.
19. GREEK PEDAGOGY.--Upon that privileged soil of Greece, in that
brilliant Athens abounding in artists, poets, historians, and
philosophers, in that rude Sparta celebrated for its discipline
and manly virtues, education was rather the spontaneous fruit of
nature, the natural product of diverse manners, characters, and
races, than the premeditated result of a reflective movement of the
human will. Greece, however, had its pedagogy, because it had its
legislators and its philosophers, the first directing education
in its practical details, the second making theoretical inquiries
into the essential principles underlying the development of the
human soul. In respect of education, as of everything else, the
higher spiritual life of modern nations has been developed under
the influence of Grecian antiquity.[22]
20. ATHENIAN AND SPARTAN EDUCATION.--In the spectacle presented
to us by ancient Greece, the first fact that strikes us by its
contrast with the immobility and unity of the primitive societies
of the East, is a freer unfolding of the human faculties, and
consequently a diversity in tendencies and manners. Doubtless,
in the Greek republics, the individual is always subordinate to
the State. Even in Athens, little regard is paid to the essential
dignity of the human person. But the Athenian State differs
profoundly from the Spartan, and consequently the individual life
is differently understood and differently directed in these two
great cities. At Athens, while not neglecting the body, the chief
preoccupation is the training of the mind; intellectual culture
is pushed to an extreme, even to over-refinement; there is such
a taste for fine speaking that it develops an abuse of language
and reasoning which merits the disreputable name of sophistry. At
Sparta, mind is sacrificed to body; physical strength and military
skill are the qualities most desired; the sole care is the training
of athletes and soldiers. Sobriety and courage are the results
of this one-sided education, but so are ignorance and brutality.
Montaigne has thrown into relief, not without some partiality for
Sparta, these two contrasted plans of education.
“Men went to the other cities of Greece,” he says, “to find
rhetoricians, painters, and musicians, but to Lacedæmon for
legislators, magistrates, and captains; at Athens fine speaking
was taught; but here, brave acting; there, one learned to unravel
a sophistical argument and to abate the imposture of insidiously
twisted words; here, to extricate one’s self from the enticements
of pleasure and to overcome the menaces of fortune and death by
a manly courage. The Athenians busied themselves with words, but
the Spartans with things; with the former, there was a continual
activity of the tongue; with the latter, a continual activity of
the soul.”[23]
The last remark is not just. The daily exercises of the young
Spartans,--jumping, running, wrestling, playing with lances and at
quoits,--could not be regarded as intellectual occupations. On the
other hand, in learning to talk, the young Athenians learned also
to feel and to think.
21. THE SCHOOLS OF ATHENS.--The Athenian legislator, Solon, had
placed physical and intellectual training upon the same footing.
Children, he said, ought, above everything else, to learn “to swim
and to read.” It seems that the education of the body was the chief
preoccupation of the Athenian republic. While the organization of
schools for grammar and music was left to private enterprise, the
State took a part in the direction of the gymnasia. The director
of the gymnasium, or the gymnasiarch, was elected each year by the
assembly of the people. Nevertheless, Athenian education became
more and more a course in literary training, especially towards the
sixth century B.C.
The Athenian child remained in the charge of a nurse and an
attendant up to his sixth or seventh year. At the age of seven, a
pedagogue, that is, a “conductor of children,” usually a slave,
was charged with the oversight of the child. Conducted by his
pedagogue, the pupil attended by turns the school for grammar,
the _palestra_,[24] or school for gymnastics, and the school
for music. The grammarian, who sometimes gave his lessons in
the open air, in the streets and on the public squares, taught
reading, writing, and mythology. Homer was the boy’s reading-book.
Instruction in gymnastics was given in connection with instruction
in grammar. It was begun in the palestra and continued in the
gymnasium. Instruction in music succeeded the training in grammar
and gymnastics. The music-master, or _citharist_, first taught his
pupils to sing, and then to play upon the stringed instruments, the
lyre and the cithara. We know what value the Athenians attributed
to music. Plato and Aristotle agree in thinking that the rhythm
and harmony of music inspire the soul with the love of order,
with harmoniousness, regularity, and a soothing of the passions.
We must recollect, moreover, that music held a large place in the
actual life of the Greeks. The laws were promulgated in song. It
was necessary to sing in order to fulfil one’s religious duties.
It was held that the education of Themistocles had been neglected
because he had not learned music. “We must regard the Greeks,”
says Montesquieu, “as a race of athletes and fighters. Now those
exercises, so proper to make men hardy and fierce, had need of
being tempered by others which could soften the manners. Music,
which affected the soul through the organs of the body, was exactly
adapted to this purpose.”[25]
In the elementary schools of Athens, at least at the first,
the current discipline was severe. Aristophanes, bewailing the
degeneracy of his time, recalls in these terms the good order that
reigned in the olden school:[26]--
“I will relate what was the ancient education in the happy time
when I taught (it is Justice who speaks) and when modesty was the
rule. Then the boys came out of each street with bare heads and
feet, and, regardless of rain and snow, went together in the most
perfect order towards the school for music. There they were seated
quietly and modestly. They were not permitted to cross their legs,
and they learned some good songs. The master sang the song for them
slowly and with gravity. If some one took a notion to sing with
soft and studied inflections, he was severely flogged.”
22. THE SCHOOLS OF RHETORIC AND PHILOSOPHY.--Grammar, gymnastics,
and music proper, represented the elementary instruction of the
young Athenian. But this instruction was reserved for citizens
in easy circumstances. The poor, according to the intentions of
Solon, were to learn only _reading_, _swimming_, and a trade. The
privilege of instruction became still more exclusive in the case of
the schools of rhetoric and philosophy frequented by those of adult
years.
It would be beside our purpose to speak in this place of the
courses in literature, or to make known the methods of those
teachers of rhetoric who taught eloquence to all who presented
themselves for instruction, either in the public squares or in
the gymnasia. The sophists, those itinerant philosophers who went
from city to city offering courses at high rates of tuition, and
teaching the art of speaking on every subject, and of making a plea
for error and injustice just as skilfully as for justice and truth,
at the same time made illustrious and disgraceful the teaching of
eloquence.[27] The philosophers were more worthy of their task.
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were illustrious professors of
ethics. Socrates had no regular school, but he grouped about him
distinguished young men and initiated them into learning and
virtue. The _Academy_ of Plato and the _Lyceum_ of Aristotle were
great schools of philosophy, real private universities, each
directed by a single man. The teaching given in these schools has
traversed the ages, and has been preserved in imperishable books.
Moreover, those illustrious spirits of Greece have transmitted to
us either methods or general ideas which the history of pedagogy
should reverently collect, as the first serious efforts of human
reflection on the art of education.
23. SOCRATES: THE SOCRATIC METHOD.--Socrates spent his life in
teaching, and in teaching according to an original method, which
has preserved his name. He had the genius of interrogation. To
question all whom he met, either at the gymnasium or in the
streets; to question the sophists in order to convince them of
their errors and to confound their arrogance, and presumptuous
young men in order to teach them the truth of which they were
ignorant; to question great and small, statesmen and masons, now
Pericles and now a shopkeeper; to question always and everywhere
in order to compel every one to form clear ideas; such was the
constant occupation and passion of his life. When he allowed
himself to dream of the future life, he said smilingly that he
hoped to continue in the Elysian Fields the habits of the Athenian
Agora, and still to interrogate the shades of the mighty dead. With
Socrates, conversation became an art, and the dialogue a method.
He scarcely ever employed the didactic form, or that of direct
teaching. He addressed himself to his interlocutor, urged him to
set forth his ideas, harassed him with questions often somewhat
subtile, skilfully led him to recognize the truth which he himself
had in mind, or the rather permitted him to go off on a false
route in order finally to discover to him his error and to sport
with his confusion; and all this with an art of wonderful analysis,
with a subtilty of reasoning pushed almost to an extreme, and also
with a great simplicity of language, and with examples borrowed
from common life, such as we are accustomed to call intuitive
examples.
24. THE SOCRATIC IRONY.--To form an intelligible account of the
Socratic method, it is necessary to distinguish its two essential
phases. Socrates followed a double method and sought a double end.
In the first case, he wished to make war against error and to
refute false opinions. Then he resorted to what has been called
the Socratic _irony_.[28] He raised a question as one who simply
desired to be instructed. If there was the statement of an error in
the reply of the respondent, Socrates made no objection to it, but
pretended to espouse the ideas and sentiments of his interlocutor.
Then, by questions which were adroit and sometimes insidious, he
forced him to develop his opinions, and to display, so to speak,
the whole extent of his folly, and the next instant slyly brought
him face to face with the consequences, which were so absurd and
contradictory that he ended in losing confidence, in becoming
involved in his conclusions, and finally in making confession of
his errors.
25. MAIEUTICS, OR THE ART OF GIVING BIRTH TO IDEAS.--Analogous
processes constituted the other part of the Socratic method, that
which he himself called _maieutics_, or the art of giving birth to
ideas.
Socrates was convinced that the human mind in its normal condition
discovers certain truths through its own energies, provided one
knows how to lead it and stimulate it; and so he here appealed to
the spontaneity of his auditor, to his innate powers, and thus
gently led him on his way by easy transitions to the opinion which
he wished to make him admit. However, he applied this method
only to the search for truths which could either be suggested by
the intuitions of reason and common sense, or determined by a
natural induction, that is, psychological, ethical, and religious
truths.[29]
26. EXAMPLES OF IRONY AND MAIEUTICS.--We can best give an exact
idea of the Socratic method by means of examples. These examples
are to be found in the writings of the disciples of Socrates, as in
the _Dialogues_ of Plato, such as the _Gorgias_, the _Euthydemus_,
etc., and still better in the _Memorabilia_ of Xenophon, where
the thought of the master and his manner of teaching are more
faithfully reproduced than in the bold and original compositions of
Plato. While recognizing the insufficiency of these extracts, we
shall here make two quotations, in which is displayed either his
incisive, critical spirit, or his suggestive and fruitful method:
“The thirty tyrants had put many of the most distinguished citizens
to death, and had encouraged others to acts of injustice. ‘It would
surprise me,’ said Socrates one day, ‘if the keeper of a flock, who
had killed one part of it and had made the other part poor, would
not confess that he was a bad herdsman; but it would surprise me
still more if a man standing at the head of his fellow-citizens
should destroy a part of them and corrupt the rest, and were not to
blush at his conduct and confess himself a bad magistrate.’ This
remark having come to the ears of the Thirty, Critias and Charicles
sent for Socrates, showed him the law, and forbade him to hold
conversation with the young.
“Socrates inquired of them if he might be permitted to ask
questions touching what might seem obscure to him in this
prohibition. Upon their granting this permission: ‘I am prepared,’
he said, ‘to obey the laws, but that I may not violate them through
ignorance, I would have you clearly inform me whether you interdict
the art of speaking because it belongs to the number of things
which are good, or because it belongs to the number of things which
are bad. In the first case, one ought henceforth to abstain from
speaking what is good; in the second, it is clear that the effort
should be to speak what is right.’
“Thereupon Charicles became angry, and said: ‘Since you do not
understand us, we will give you something easier to comprehend:
we forbid you absolutely to hold conversation with the young.’
‘In order that it may be clearly seen,’ said Socrates, ‘whether I
depart from what is enjoined, tell me at what age a youth becomes
a man.’ ‘At the time when he is eligible to the senate, for he has
not acquired prudence till then; so do not speak to young men who
are below the age of thirty.’
“‘But if I wish to buy something of a merchant who is below the age
of thirty, may I ask him at what price he sells it?’
“‘Certainly you may ask such a question; but you are accustomed to
raise inquiries about multitudes of things which are perfectly
well known to you; it is this which is forbidden.’
“‘So I must not reply to a young man who asks me where Charicles
lives, or where Critias is.’ ‘You may reply to such questions,’
said Charicles. ‘But recollect, Socrates,’ added Critias, ‘you must
let alone the shoemakers, and smiths, and other artisans, for I
think they must already be very much worn out by being so often in
your mouth.’
“‘I must, therefore,’ said Socrates, ‘forego the illustrations I
draw from these occupations relative to justice, piety, and all the
virtues.’”[30]
In the final passage of this cutting dialogue, observe the
elevation of tone and the gravity of thought. So Socrates had
marvellous skill in allying enthusiasm with irony.
Here is an extract in which Socrates applies the maieutic art to
the establishment of a moral truth, the belief in God:
“I will mention a conversation he once had in my presence with
Aristodemus, surnamed the Little, concerning the gods. He knew
that Aristodemus neither sacrificed to the gods, nor consulted
the oracles, but ridiculed those who took part in these religious
observances. ‘Tell me, Aristodemus,’ said he, ‘are there men whose
talents you admire?’ ‘There are,’ he replied. ‘Then tell us their
names,’ said Socrates. ‘In epic poetry I especially admire Homer;
in dithyrambic, Melanippides; in tragedy, Sophocles; in statuary,
Polycletus; in painting, Zeuxis.’ ‘But what artists do you think
most worthy of admiration, those who form images destitute of
sense and movement, or those who produce animated beings, endowed
with the faculty of thinking and acting?’ ‘Those who form animated
beings, for these are the work of intelligence and not of chance.’
‘And which do you regard as the creation of intelligence, and
which the product of chance, those works whose purpose cannot be
recognized, or those whose utility is manifest?’ ‘It is reasonable
to attribute to an intelligence the works which have some useful
purpose.’”[31]
Socrates then points out to Aristodemus how admirably the different
organs of the human body are adapted to the functions of life and
to the use of man. And so proceeding from example to example, from
induction to induction, always keeping the mind of his auditor
alert by the questions he raises, and the answers that he suggests,
forcing him to do his share of the work, and giving him an equal
share in the train of reasoning, he finally brings him to the goal
which is to make him recognize the existence of God.
27. THE REPUBLIC OF PLATO.--“Would you form,” said J. J. Rousseau,
“an idea of public education? read the _Republic_ of Plato. It is
the finest treatise on education ever written.” For truth’s sake we
must discount the enthusiasm of Rousseau. The _Republic_ doubtless
contains some elements of a wise and practical scheme of education;
but, on the whole, it is but an ideal creation, a compound of
paradoxes and chimeras. In Plato’s ideal commonwealth, the
individual and the family itself are sacrificed to the State. Woman
becomes so much like man as to be subjected to the same gymnastic
exercises; she too must be a soldier as he is. Children know
neither father nor mother. From the day of their birth they are
given in charge of common nurses, veritable public functionaries.
In that common fold, “care shall be taken that no mother recognize
her offspring.” We may guess that in making this pompous eulogy
of the _Republic_, the paradoxical author of the _Émile_ hoped to
prepare the reader for giving a complaisant welcome to his own
dreams.
28. THE EDUCATION OF WARRIORS AND MAGISTRATES.--Plato, by some
unexplained recollection of the social constitution of the
Hindoos, established three castes in his ideal State,--laborers
and artisans, warriors, and magistrates. There was no education
for laborers and artisans; it was sufficient for men of this caste
to learn a trade. In politics, Plato is an aristocrat; he feels
a disdain for the people, “that robust and indocile animal.” It
should be observed, however, that the barriers which he set up
between these three social orders are not insuperable. If a child
of the inferior class gives evidence of exceptional qualities, he
must be admitted to the superior class; and so if the son of a
warrior or of a magistrate is notably incompetent and unworthy of
his rank, he must suffer forfeiture, and become artisan or laborer.
As to the education which he designs for the warriors and the
magistrates, Plato is minutely careful in regulating it. The
education of the warriors comprises two parts,--music and
gymnastics. The education of the magistrates consists of a training
in philosophy of a high grade; they are initiated into all the
sciences and into metaphysics. Plato’s statesmen must be, not
priests, as in the East, but scholars and philosophers.
29. MUSIC AND GYMNASTICS.--Although Plato attaches a high value
to gymnastics, he gives precedence to music. Before forming the
body, Plato, the idealist, would form the soul, because it is the
soul, according to him, which, by its own virtue, gives to the
body all the perfection of which it is capable. Even in physical
exercises, the purpose should be to give increased vigor to the
soul: “In the training of the body, our young men shall aim, above
everything else, at augmenting moral power.” Note this striking
picture of the man who trains only his body: “Let a man apply
himself to gymnastics, and become trained, and eat much, and wholly
neglect music and philosophy, and at first his body will become
strengthened; but if he does nothing else, and holds no converse
with the Muses, though his soul have some natural inclination to
learn, yet if it remains uncultivated by acquiring knowledge, by
inquiry, by discourse, in a word, by some department of music,
that is, by intellectual education, it will insensibly become
weak, deaf, and blind. Like a wild beast, such a man will live
in ignorance and rudeness, with neither grace nor politeness.”
However, Plato is far from despising health and physical strength.
On the contrary, it is a reproach to him that he has imposed on
the citizens of his Republic the obligation of being physically
sound, and of having excluded from it all those whose infirmities
and feeble constitution condemn them to “drag out a dying life.”
The right to live, in Plato’s city, as in the most of ancient
societies, belonged only to men of robust health. The weak, the
ailing, the wretched, all who are of infirm constitution,--Plato
does not go so far as ordering such to be killed, but, what amounts
almost to the same thing,--“they shall be exposed,” that is, left
to die. The good of the State demands that every man be sacrificed
whose health renders him unfit for civil duties. This cruel and
implacable doctrine shocks us in the case of him whom Montaigne
calls the divine Plato, and shocks us even more when we discover it
among contemporary philosophers, whom the inspirations of Christian
charity or the feeling of human fraternity should have preserved
from such rank heartlessness. Is it not Herbert Spencer who blames
modern societies for nourishing the diseased and assisting the
infirm?
30. RELIGION AND ART IN EDUCATION.--Plato had formed a high ideal
of the function of art in education, but this did not prevent
him from being severe against certain forms of art, particularly
comedy and tragedy, and poetry in general. He would have the poets
expelled from the city and conducted to the frontier, though paying
them homage with perfumes which will continue to be shed upon their
heads, and with flowers with which they will ever be crowned. He
admits no other poetry than that which reproduces the manners and
discourse of a good man, and celebrates the brave deeds of the
gods, or chants their glory. As a severe moralist and worshipper
of the divine goodness, he condemns the poets of his time, either
because they attribute to the divinity the vices and passions of
men, or because they invest the imagination with base fears as they
speak of Cocytus and the Styx, and portray a frightful hell and
gods always mad with desire to persecute the human race. Elsewhere,
in the _Laws_, Plato explains his conception of religion. He says
that the religious books placed in the hands of children should
be selected with as much care as the milk of a nurse. God is an
infinite goodness who watches over men, and he should be honored,
not by sacrifices and vain ceremonies, but by lives of justice and
virtue.
For making men moral, Plato counts more upon art than upon
religious feeling. To love letters, to hold converse with the
Muses, to cultivate music and dancing, such, in the opinion of
the noble spirits of Athens, is the natural route towards moral
perfection. In their view, moral education is above all an
education in art. The soul rises to the good through the beautiful.
“Beautiful and good” (καλὸς καὶ ἀγαθός) are two words constantly
associated in the speech of the Greeks. Even to-day we have much
to learn from reflections like these: “We ought,” says Plato, “to
seek out artists who by the power of genius can trace out the
nature of the fair and the graceful, that our young men, dwelling,
as it were, in a healthful region, may drink in good from every
quarter, whence any emanation from noble works may strike upon
their eye or their ear, like a gale wafting health from salubrious
lands, and win them imperceptibly from their earliest years into
resemblance, love, and harmony with the true beauty of reason.
“Is it not, then, on these accounts that we attach such supreme
importance to a musical education, because rhythm and harmony sink
most deeply into the recesses of the soul, bringing gracefulness in
their train, and making a man graceful if he be rightly nurtured;
but if not, the reverse? and also because he that has been duly
nurtured therein will have the keenest eye for defects, whether in
the failures of art, or in the misgrowths of nature; and feeling
a most just disdain for them, will commend beautiful objects, and
gladly receive them into his soul, and feed upon them, and grow to
be noble and good; whereas he will rightly censure and hate all
repulsive objects, even in his childhood, before he is able to be
reasoned with; and when reason comes, he will welcome her most
cordially who can recognize her by the instinct of relationship,
and because he has been thus nurtured?”[32]
31. HIGH INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION.--In the _Republic_ of Plato the
intellectual education of the warrior class remains exclusively
literary and æsthetic. In addition to this, the education of the
ruling class is to be scientific and philosophic. The future
magistrate, after having received the ordinary instruction up to
the age of twenty, is to be initiated into the abstract sciences,
mathematics, geometry, and astronomy. To this scientific
education, which is to continue for ten years, there will succeed
for five years the study of dialectics,[33] or philosophy, which
develops the highest faculty of man, the reason, and teaches him to
discover, through and beyond the fleeting appearances of the world
of sense, the eternal verities and the essence of things. But Plato
prolongs the education of his magistrates still further. After
having given them the nurture of reason and intellectual insight,
he sends them back to the cavern[34] at the age of thirty-five,
that is, calls them back to public life, and makes them pass
through all kinds of civil and military employments, until finally,
at the age of fifty, in possession of all the endowments assured
by consummate experience superadded to profound knowledge, they
are fitted to be charged with the burdens of office. In the
_Republic_ of Plato statesmen are not improvised. And yet in this
elaborate system of instruction Plato omits two subjects of great
importance. On the one hand, he entirely omits the physical and
natural sciences, because, in his mystic idealism, things of sense
are delusive and unreal images, and so did not appear to him worthy
of arresting the attention of the mind; and on the other, though
coming after Herodotus, and though a contemporary of Thucydides,
he makes no mention of history, doubtless through a contempt for
tradition and the past.
32. THE LAWS.--In the _Laws_, the work of his old age, Plato
disavows in part the chimeras of the _Republic_, and qualifies the
radicalism of that earlier work. The philosopher descends to the
earth and really condescends to the actual state of humanity. He
renounces the distinction of social castes, and his very practical
and very minute precepts are applied without distinction to
children of all classes.[35]
First note this excellent definition of the end of education: “A
good education is that which gives to the body and to the soul all
the beauty and all the perfection of which they are capable.” As
to methods, it seems that Plato hesitates between the doctrine of
effort and the doctrine of attractive toil. In fact, he says on the
one hand that education is a very skilful discipline which, _by way
of amusement_,[36] leads the mind of the child to love that which
is to make it finished. On the other hand, he protests against
the weakness of those parents who seek to spare their children
every trouble and every pain. “I am persuaded,” he says, “that the
inclination to humor the likings of children is the surest of all
ways to spoil them. We should not make too much haste in our search
after what is pleasurable, especially as we shall never be wholly
exempt from what is painful.”
Let us add this definition of a good education: “I call education
the virtue which is shown by children when the feelings of joy or
of sorrow, of love or of hate, which arise in their souls, are made
conformable to order.”
With the statement of these principles, Plato enters into details.
For children up to the age of six, he recommends the use of
swaddling-clothes. The habit of rocking, the natural plays which
children find out for themselves, the separation of the sexes;
swimming, the bow, and the javelin, for boys; wrestling for giving
bodily vigor, and dancing, for graceful movement; reading and
writing reserved till the tenth year and learned for three years.
It would require too much time to follow the philosopher to the
end. In the rules he proposes, he makes a near approach to the
practices followed by the Athenians of his day. The _Republic_
was a work of pure imagination. The _Laws_ are scarcely more than
a commentary on the actual state of practice. But here we still
find what was nearest the soul of Plato, the constant search for a
higher morality.
33. XENOPHON.--As an educator, Xenophon obeyed two different
influences. His master, Socrates, was his good genius. That
graceful and charming book, the _Economics_, was written under the
benign and tempered inspiration of the great Athenian sage. But
Xenophon also had his evil genius,--the immoderate enthusiasm which
he felt for Sparta, her institutions and her laws. The first book
of the _Cyropædia_, which relates the rules of Persian education,
is an unfortunate imitation of the laws of Lycurgus.
34. THE ECONOMICS, AND THE EDUCATION OF WOMAN.--All should read the
_Economics_, that charming sketch of the education of woman. We
may say of this little work what Renan has said of the writings of
Plutarch on the same subject: “Where shall we find a more charming
ideal of family life? What good nature! What sweetness of manners!
What chaste and lovable simplicity!” Before her marriage, the
Athenian maiden has learned only to spin wool, to be discreet, and
to ask no questions,--virtues purely negative. Xenophon assigns
to her husband the duty of training her mind and of teaching her
the positive duties of family life,--order, economy, kindness to
slaves, and tender care of children. As a matter of fact, the
Athenian woman was still held in a position of inferiority. Shut up
in her own apartments, it was an exception that she learned to read
and write; it was very rare that she was instructed in the arts and
sciences. The idea of human dignity and of the value of the human
person had not yet appeared. Man had value only in proportion to
the services which he could render the State, or commonwealth, and
woman formed no part of the commonwealth. Xenophon has the merit
of rising above the prejudices of his time, and of approaching the
ideal of the modern family, in calling woman to participate more
intimately in the affairs of the house and in the occupations of
the husband.[37]
35. THE CYROPÆDIA.--The _Cyropædia_ is not worthy of the same
commendation. Under the pretext of describing the organization of
the Persian State, Xenophon here traces, after his manner, the
plan of an education absolutely uniform and exclusively military.
There is no domestic education, no individual liberty, no interest
in letters and arts. When the period of infancy is over, the young
Persian is made subject to military duty, and must not leave the
encampment, even at night. The state is but a camp, and human
existence a perpetual military parade. Montaigne praises Xenophon
for having said that the Persians taught their children virtue “as
other nations do letters.” But it is difficult to form an estimate
of the methods which were followed in these schools of justice and
temperance, and we may be allowed to suspect the efficiency of the
means proposed by Xenophon; for example, that which consisted in
transforming the petty quarrels of the scholars into regular trials
which were followed by sentences, acquittals, or convictions. The
author of the _Cyropædia_ is on surer ground when, recollecting
his own studies, he recommends the study of history to those who
would become just. He teaches temperance by practice rather than by
precept; his pupils have only bread for their food, only cresses
for seasoning, and only water for their drink.
Whatever may be the faults and the fancies of the _Cyropædia_, we
must recollect, as a partial excuse for them, that the purpose
of the writer in tracing this picture of a simple, frugal, and
courageous life, was to induce a reaction against the excesses of
the fashionable and formal life of the Athenians. As Rousseau, in
the middle of the eighteenth century, protested against the license
and the artificial manners of his time by advising an imaginary
return to nature, so Xenophon, a contemporary of the sophists,
held forth the sturdy virtues of the Persians in opposition to the
degenerate manners of the Greeks and the refinements of an advanced
civilization.
36. ARISTOTLE: GENERAL CHARACTER OF HIS PLAN OF EDUCATION.--By
his vast attainments, by his encyclopædic knowledge, by the
experimental nature of his researches, and by the positive and
practical tendencies of his genius, Aristotle was enabled to
excel Plato in clearness of insight into pedagogical questions.
He had another advantage over Plato in having known and enjoyed
the delights of family life, and in having loved and trained his
own children, of whom he said, “parents love their children as a
part of themselves.” Let us add, finally, that he was a practical
teacher, since he was the preceptor of Alexander from 343 to 340
B.C. Such opportunities, superadded to the force of the most mighty
genius the world has ever seen, give promise of a competent and
clear-sighted educator. Unfortunately, we have lost the treatise,
_On Education_ (περὶ παιδείας), which on the authority of Diogenes
Laërtius, Aristotle is said to have composed; and to form some
conception of his ideas on education, we have at our disposal only
some imperfect sketches, some portions, and those in an imperfect
state, of his treatises on ethics and politics.[38]
Whoever labors to give stability to the family, and to tighten its
bond of union, labors also for the promotion of education. Even in
this respect, education is under great obligations to Aristotle. In
him the communism of Plato finds an able critic. That feeling of
affection which we of to-day would call charity or fraternity, he
declared to be the guaranty and the foundation of social life. Now,
communism weakens this feeling by diluting it, just as a little
honey dropped into a large quantity of water thereby loses all its
sweetness. “There are two things which materially contribute to the
rise of interest and attachment in the hearts of men,--property
and the feeling of affection.” It was thus in the name of good
sense, and in opposition to the distempered fancies of Plato, that
Aristotle vindicated the rights of the family and the individual.
37. PUBLIC EDUCATION.--But Aristotle does not go so far as his
premises would seem to lead him, and relinquish to parents the
care of educating their children. In accordance with the general
tendencies of antiquity, he declares himself the partisan of an
education that is public and common. He commends the Spartans for
having ordained that “education should be the same for all.” “As
there is one end in view in every city,” he says, “it is evident
that education ought to be one and the same in all, and that this
should be a common care, and not of each individual.... It is
the duty of the legislator to regulate this interest for all the
citizens.” There must, therefore, be the intervention of the State,
not from the day of birth, as Plato would have it, for the nursing
of infants, but only at the age of seven, for instructing and
training them in the habits of virtue.
What, then, should be the training of the child, and upon what
subjects would Aristotle direct his studies?
38. THE PROGRESSIVE DEVELOPMENT OF HUMAN NATURE.--An essential and
incontrovertible distinction is taken by the Greek philosopher
as his starting-point. There are, he says, three moments, three
stages, in human development: first, there is the physical life of
the body; then, instinct and sensibility, or the irrational part
of the soul; and finally, the intelligence, or the reason. From
this, Aristotle concludes that the course of discipline and study
should be graduated according to these three degrees of life. “The
first care should necessarily be given to the body rather than to
the mind; and then to that part of the spiritual nature which is
the seat of the desires.” But he adds this important observation,
which is a refutation of Rousseau in advance: “In the care which
we give to the sensibilities, we must not leave out of account the
intelligence; and in our care of the body, we must not forget the
soul.”
39. PHYSICAL EDUCATION.--The son of a physician of the Macedonian
court, and well versed in the natural sciences, Aristotle is very
happy in his treatment of physical education. It begins before the
child is born, even before it has been conceived. Consequently he
enjoins a legal regulation of marriages, interdicts unions that
are too early or too late, indicates the climatic conditions most
favorable for marriage, and gives mothers wise counsels on matters
of hygiene, recommending them to nurse their own children, and
prescribing cold baths. Such, in outline, is a plan which a modern
hygienist would not disavow.
40. INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL EDUCATION.--It was the opinion of
Aristotle that intellectual education should not begin before the
age of five. But, in accordance with the principle stated above,
this period of waiting should not be the occasion of loss to the
intelligence of the child; even his play should be a preparation
for the work to which he will apply himself at a later period. On
the other hand, Aristotle strongly insists on the necessity of
shielding the child from all pernicious influences, such as those
which come from association with slaves, or from immoral plays.
In accord with all his contemporaries, Aristotle includes grammar,
gymnastics, and music, among the elements of instruction. To these
he adds drawing. But he is chiefly preoccupied with music, by
reason of the moral influence which he attributes to it. He shared
the prepossession which caused the Greeks to say, that to relax or
to reform the manners of a people, it suffices to add a string to
the lyre or to take one from it.[39]
Aristotle was strongly preoccupied with moral education. Like
Plato, he insists on the greatest care in forming the moral habits
of early life. In his different writings on ethics he has discussed
different human virtues in a spirit at once wise, practical, and
liberal. No one has better sung the praises of justice, of which
he says, “Neither the evening nor the morning star inspires as much
respect as justice.”
It would do Aristotle injustice to seek for a complete expression
of his thoughts on education in the incomplete and curtailed
statements of theory which are found in his _Politics_. In
connection with these, we should recall the admirable instruction
which he himself gave in the Lyceum, and which embraced almost
all the sciences in its vast programme. He excluded from it only
the sciences and the arts which have a mechanical and utilitarian
character. Enslaved on this point to the prejudices of antiquity,
he regarded as servile and unworthy of a free man whatever has a
direct bearing on the practical and material utilities of life. He
recommended to his hearers only studies of the intellectual type,
those whose sole purpose is to elevate the mind and to fill it with
noble thoughts.[40]
41. FAULTS IN THE PEDAGOGY OF ARISTOTLE, AND IN GREEK PEDAGOGY IN
GENERAL.--It must be said in conclusion, that whatever admiration
we may feel for the pedagogy of Aristotle, it was wrong, like that
of all the Greek writers, in being but an aristocratic system of
education. The education of which Plato and Aristotle dreamed was
restricted to a small minority, and was even made possible only
because the majority was excluded from it. The slaves, charged with
the duty of providing for the sustenance of their superiors, and
of creating for them the leisure claimed by Aristotle, had no more
participation in education than in liberty or in property. In the
century of Pericles, at the most glorious period of the Athenian
republic, let us not forget that there were at Athens nearly four
hundred thousand slaves to do the bidding of twenty thousand free
citizens. To indulge in an easy admiration for Greek pedagogy, we
must detach it from its setting, and consider it in itself, apart
from the narrow plan on which the Greek states were constructed,
and apart from that social _régime_ which assured the education of
some, only by perpetuating the oppression of the many.
[42. ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.--1. A leading conception in Greek
education is that of symmetry, or harmony; the ideal man,
in Plato’s phrase, must be “harmoniously constituted”; all
opposing tendencies must be reconciled; and while the physical,
the intellectual, and the moral must each be made the subject
of systematic training, there must be no disproportionate
development in either direction.
2. The preoccupation of the Greek teacher was discipline or
culture, rather than the communication of useful knowledge; and
the final aim was a life of contemplation, rather than a life of
action; ethical rather than practical; “good conduct” rather than
mastery over what is material.
3. Physical training received great emphasis, not as an end in
itself, but as a means towards mental and spiritual health; and
knowledge was valued chiefly as the means for attaining moral
excellence.
4. The staple of instruction was _wisdom_, _i.e._, ethical and
prudential knowledge, which was the basis of right action; and
teaching, especially according to the Socratic conception of it,
consisted in causing the pupil’s mind to react on the materials
supplied by his own mind. Socrates, says Lewes, “believed that
in each man lay the germs of wisdom. He believed that no science
could be _taught_; only _drawn out_.”
5. The great teaching instrument was dialectic, _i.e._,
discussion, resolution, or analysis. Its use assumed that
the subject-matter of instruction was already in the pupil’s
possession, and that the highest office of the teacher was to
liberate the thought which had been formed by the active energies
of the pupil’s own mind. This is the maieutic art of Socrates.
6. The mode of mental activity which was chiefly brought into
requisition was the reason; in a secondary degree the imagination
and the emotions; and in a still lower degree, the memory.
7. The large place assigned to music by Plato and Aristotle shows
that the culture of the emotions was an important element in
Greek education. Æsthetic training was not only an end in itself,
but was regarded as the basis of moral and religious culture.
8. In the writings of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, we see the
first attempt to formulate a body of educational doctrine; we
have the germs of a science of education based on psychology,
ethics, and politics.
9. In the _Republic_, we see the theory of compulsion in both its
phases: the State must provide an education suitable for State
needs; and the young must accept this education because the State
has ordained it. For the first time in the history of thought,
the State appears distinctly and avowedly as an educator.
10. Practically, education was administered on the basis of
caste; though in the construction of his ideal State, Plato made
it possible for talent, industry, and worth, to find their proper
level.]
FOOTNOTES:
[22] Upon this subject consult the excellent study of Alexander
Martin, entitled _Les Doctrines Pédagogiques des Grecs_. Paris,
1881.
[23] Montaigne, _Essais_, I. I. chap. XXIV.
[24] The _palestra_ was the school of gymnastics for children; the
_gymnasium_ was set apart for adults and grown men.
[25] Montesquieu, _Esprit des lois_, I. IV. chap. VIII.
[26] Aristophanes, _Clouds_.
[27] The reputation of the sophists has been considerably raised by
Mr. Grote (_History of Greece_, vol. VIII.). For an entertaining
account of a sophist of a later age, see Pliny’s _Letters_,
Melmoth’s translation, Book II., Letter III. See also Blackie’s
_Four Phases of Morals_, and Ferrier’s _Greek Philosophy_. (P.)
[28] The primitive meaning of the Greek word εἰρωνεία, irony,
is interrogation. Socrates gave a jeering, ironical turn to his
questions, and in consequence this word lost its primary meaning,
and took the one which we give it at this time.
[29] The Socratic method for the discovery of truth can be employed
only in those cases where the pupil has the crude materials of
the new knowledge actually in store. Psychology, logic, ethics,
mathematics, and perhaps grammar and rhetoric, fall within the
sphere of the Socratic method; but to apply this method of
instruction to geography, history, geology, and, in general,
to subjects where the material is inaccessible, is palpably
absurd. The Socratic dialogue, in its negative phase, is aimed
at presumption, arrogance, and pretentious ignorance; but it is
sometimes misused to badger and bewilder an honest and docile
pupil. (P.)
[30] _Memorabilia_, I. II.
[31] _Memorabilia_, I. IV.
[32] _Republic_, 401, 402. I have quoted from the version of
Vaughan and Davies. (P.)
[33] Dialectic, as used in the _Republic_, is neither philosophy
nor logic. I doubt whether it can be considered a subject of
instruction at all. It is rather a method or an exercise, the
purpose of which is to subject received opinions, formulated
knowledge, current beliefs, etc., to a sifting or analysis for the
purpose of distinguishing the real from the apparent, the true from
the false. The Socratic dialogues are examples of the dialectic
method. Dialectic might be defined as the _method of thought
proper_ or the _discursive reason in act_. (P.)
[34] See the allegory of the cavern, _Republic_, Book VII. ‘In
Plato’s scheme of education, knowing is to precede doing,’ thus
following Socrates (_Memorabilia_, IV. chap. II.) and Bias (Γνῶθι
καὶ τότε πράττε), and anticipating Bacon (“studies perfect nature,
and are perfected by experience”). (P.)
[35] See especially Book VII. of the _Laws_.
[36] Compare also this quotation: “A free mind ought to learn
nothing as a slave. The lesson that is made to enter the mind
by force, will not remain there. Then use no violence towards
children; the rather, cause them to learn while playing.”
[37] See particularly Chaps. VII. and VIII.
[38] See especially the _Politics_, Books IV., V.
[39] It seems impossible to comprehend the almost sovereign power
which the Greeks ascribed to music, unless we conceive that the
Greek was endowed with peculiar and extreme sensitiveness. Perhaps
there is special significance in the story of Orpheus and his lyre.
(P.)
[40] I think it may be doubted whether the disfavor shown by Plato
and Aristotle to practical studies was merely a mean prejudice.
Preoccupied as they were with the disciplinary value of studies,
they may have seen that the culture aim and the utilitarian aim are
in some sort antagonistic. (P.)
CHAPTER III.
EDUCATION AT ROME.
TWO PERIODS IN ROMAN EDUCATION; EDUCATION OF THE PRIMITIVE
ROMANS; PHYSICAL AND MILITARY EDUCATION; ROME AT SCHOOL IN
GREECE; WHY THE ROMANS HAD NO GREAT EDUCATORS; VARRO; CICERO;
QUINTILIAN; THE INSTITUTES OF ORATORY; GENERAL PLAN OF EDUCATION;
THE CHILD’S FIRST EDUCATION; READING AND WRITING; PUBLIC
EDUCATION; THE DUTIES OF TEACHERS; GRAMMAR AND RHETORIC; THE
SIMULTANEOUS STUDY OF THE SCIENCES; SCHOOLS FOR PHILOSOPHY;
SENECA; PLUTARCH; THE LIVES OF ILLUSTRIOUS MEN; THE TREATISE ON
THE TRAINING OF CHILDREN; A CHARMING PICTURE OF FAMILY LIFE;
THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN; THE FUNCTION OF POETRY IN EDUCATION;
THE TEACHING OF MORALS; MARCUS AURELIUS AND PERSONAL EDUCATION;
CONCLUSION; ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.
43. TWO PERIODS IN ROMAN EDUCATION.--In Greece, as we have seen,
there were two essentially different systems of education in
use: at Sparta, a one-sided education, wholly military, with no
regard for intellectual culture; at Athens, a complete education,
which brought into happy harmony the training of the body and the
development of the mind, and by means of which, as Thucydides
observed, “men philosophized without becoming effeminate.”
Rome, in the long course of her history, followed these two
systems in succession. Under the Republic, down to the conquest of
Greece, preference was given to education after the Spartan type;
while under the emperors, Athenian education was dominant, with a
very marked tendency to give the first place to an education in
literature and oratory.
44. THE EDUCATION OF THE EARLY ROMANS.--The first schools were not
opened at Rome till towards the end of the third century B.C. Till
then, the Romans had no teachers save their parents and nature.
Education was almost exclusively physical and moral, or rather,
military and religious. On the one hand, there were the gymnastic
exercises on the Campus Martius, and on the other, the recitation
of the Salian hymns, a sort of catechism containing the names of
the gods and goddesses. Besides this, there was the study of the
Twelve Tables, that is, of the Roman Law. Men the most robust, the
most courageous, the best disciplined, and the most patriotic that
ever lived, were the fruit of this natural education. Rome was the
great school of the civic and military virtues. The Romans did
not imitate the Athenians in a disinterested pursuit of a perfect
physical and intellectual development. Rome worked for practical
ends; she was guided only by considerations of utility; she had no
regard for ideals; her purpose was simply the education of soldiers
and citizens who should be obedient and devoted. She did not know
man in the abstract; she knew only the Roman citizen.
These high qualities of the early Romans were marred by a sort of
brutal insensibility and a contempt for the graces of intellect and
heart; and leaving out of account the circumstances of environment
and race, their practical virtues may be ascribed to three or four
principal causes. First among these was a firm family discipline.
The authority of the father was absolute, and answering to this
excessive power, there was blind obedience. Another cause was the
position of the mother in the family. At Rome, woman was held in
higher esteem than at Athens. She became almost the equal of man.
She was the guardian of the family circle and the teacher of her
children. The very name _matron_ inspires respect. Coriolanus, who
took up arms against his country, could not withstand the tears
of his mother Veturia. The noble Cornelia was the teacher of her
sons, the Gracchi, whom she was accustomed to call “her fairest
jewels.” Besides, the influence of religion was made to supplement
the active efforts of the family. The Roman lived surrounded by
deities. When a child was weaned, tradition would have it that one
goddess taught him to eat, and another to drink. Later on, four
goddesses guided his first steps and held his two hands. All these
superstitions imposed regularity and exactness on the most ordinary
acts of daily life. Men breathed, as it were, a divine atmosphere.
Finally, the young Roman learned to read in the laws of the Twelve
Tables, that is, in the civil code of his country. He was thus
accustomed from infancy to consider the law as something natural,
inviolable, and sacred.
45. ROME AT SCHOOL IN GREECE.--The primitive state of manners
did not last. Under Greek influence, Roman simplicity suffered a
change, and, as Horace says, Greece, in being conquered, conquered
in turn her rude victor. The taste for letters and arts was
introduced at Rome towards the close of the third century B.C.,
and transformed the austere and rude education of the primitive
era. The Romans, in their turn, acquired a liking for fine phrases
and subtile dialectics. Schools were opened, and the rhetoricians
and philosophers took up the business of education. Parents no
longer charged themselves with the instruction of their children.
Following the fashion at Athens, they entrusted them to slaves,
without troubling themselves about the faults or even the vices of
these common _pedagogues_.
“For if any of their servants,” says Plutarch, “be better than
the rest, they dispose some of them to follow husbandry, some to
navigation, some to merchandise, some to be stewards in their
houses, and some, lastly, to put out their money to use for them.
But if they find any slave that is a drunkard or a glutton, and
unfit for any other business, to him they assign the government of
their children; whereas, a good pedagogue ought to be such a one in
his disposition as Phœnix, tutor to Achilles, was.”[41]
46. WHY ROME HAD NO GREAT EDUCATORS.--In the age of Augustus, when
Latin literature was in all its glory, we are astonished not to
find, as in the century of Pericles, some great thinker like Plato
or Aristotle, who presents general views on education, and makes
himself famous by a remarkable work on pedagogy. This is due to
the fact that the Romans never formed a taste for disinterested
science and speculative inquiry. They reached distinction only in
the practical sciences; in the law, for example, in which they
excelled. Now pedagogy, while in one sense a practical science,
nevertheless reposes upon philosophical principles, upon a
knowledge of human nature, and upon a theoretical conception of
human destiny,--questions which had no living interest for the
Roman mind, and which even Cicero has noticed only in passing,
in the course of his translation of Plato, made with his usual
magnificence of literary style.
It is to be noted, moreover, that the Romans seem never to have
considered education as a national undertaking, as an affair of the
State. The Law of the Twelve Tables is silent upon the education of
children. Up to the time of Quintilian there were at Rome no public
schools, no professional teachers. In the age of Augustus each
teacher had his own method. “Our ancestors,” says Cicero, “did not
wish that children should be educated by fixed rules, determined by
the laws, publicly promulgated and made uniform for all.”[42] And
he does not seem to disapprove of this neglect, even while noting
the fact that Polybius saw in this an important defect in Roman
institutions.
47. CICERO.--In all Cicero’s works we find scarcely a line relative
to education. And yet the great orator exclaims: “What better,
what greater service can we of to-day render the Republic than to
instruct and train the young?”[43] But he was content with writing
fine discourses on philosophy for his country, abounding more in
eloquence than in originality.
48. VARRO.--A less celebrated writer, Varro, seems to have had some
pedagogic instinct. He wrote real educational works on grammar,
rhetoric, history, and geometry. Most of these have been lost; but
if we may trust his contemporaries, they were instrumental in the
education of several generations.
49. QUINTILIAN (35-95 A.D.).--After the age of Augustus, education
became more and more an affair of oratory. The chief effort
in the way of education was a preparation for a career in the
Forum. But from these vulgar rhetoricians, occupied with the
exterior artifices of style, these “traffickers in words,” as
Saint Augustine called them, we must distinguish a rhetorician
of a higher order, who does not separate rhetoric from a general
culture of the intelligence. This is Quintilian, the author of the
_Institutes of Oratory_.
Appointed at the age of twenty-six to a chair of eloquence, the
first that was established by the Roman state, and called at a
later period by the Emperor Domitian to direct the education of
his grand-nephews, Quintilian was practically acquainted with both
public and private instruction.
50. THE INSTITUTES OF ORATORY.--This work, under the form of a
treatise on rhetoric, is in parts a real treatise on education.
The author, in fact, begins the training of the future orator from
the cradle; he gives counsel to its nurse, and “not blushing to
descend to petty details,” he follows step by step the education of
his pupil. Let us add, that in the noble ideal which he conceives,
eloquence never being considered apart from wisdom, Quintilian was
led by his very subject to treat of moral education.
51. HIS GENERAL PLAN OF EDUCATION.--The first book entire is
devoted to education in general, and its teachings might be applied
indifferently to all children, whether destined or not to the
practice of oratory.
“Has a son been born to you? From the first conceive the highest
hopes of him.” Thus Quintilian begins. He thinks that we cannot
have too high an opinion of human nature, nor propose for it too
high a purpose. Minds that rebel against all instruction are
unnatural. Most often it is the training which is at fault; it is
not nature that is to blame.
52. THE EARLY EDUCATION OF THE CHILD.--The child’s nurses should be
virtuous and prudent. Quintilian does not demand that they shall be
learned, as the stoic Chrysippus would have them; but he requires
that their language shall be irreproachable. The first impressions
of the child are very durable: “New vases preserve the taste of the
first liquor that is put into them; and wool, once colored, never
regains its primitive whiteness.”
By an illusion analogous to that of the literary men of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, who would have the little
French boy first learn Latin, Quintilian teaches his pupil Greek
before making him study his native tongue.
Studies, moreover, should begin betimes: “Turn to account the
child’s first years, especially as the elements of learning demand
only memory, and the memory of children is very tenacious.”
We seem to be listening to a modern teacher when Quintilian
recommends the avoidance of whatever might ruffle the spirits
of the child. “Let study be to him a play; ask him questions;
commend him when he does well; and sometimes let him enjoy the
consciousness of his little gains in wisdom.”
53. READING AND WRITING.--The passage relative to reading deserves
to be quoted in full. It is wrong, says Quintilian, to teach
children the names of the letters, and their respective places in
the alphabet, before they know their shapes. He recommends the use
of letters in ivory, which children take pleasure in handling,
seeing, and naming.
As to writing, Quintilian recommends, for the purpose of
strengthening the child’s hand, and of preventing it from making
false movements, that he should practise on wooden tablets on
which the letters have been traced by cutting.[44] Later on, the
copies shall contain, “not senseless maxims, but moral truths.”
The Roman teacher did not counsel haste in any case. “We can
scarcely believe,” he says, “how progress in reading is retarded by
attempting to go too fast.”
54. PUBLIC EDUCATION.--Quintilian has made an unsurpassed plea for
public education and its advantages, which Rollin has reproduced
almost entire.[45] From this we shall quote only the following
passage, which proves how far the contemporaries of Quintilian
had already departed from the manly habits of the early ages; and
the truth which is herein expressed will always be applicable to
parents who are inclined to be over-indulgent: “Would that we
ourselves did not corrupt the morals of our children! We enervate
their very infancy with luxuries. That delicacy of education,
which we call fondness, weakens all the powers, both of body and
mind.... We form the palate of our children before we form their
pronunciation. They grow up in sedan chairs; if they touch the
ground, they hang by the hands of attendants supporting them on
each side. We are delighted if they utter anything immodest.
Expressions which would hot be tolerated even from effeminate
youths, we hear from them with a smile and a kiss. Need we be
astonished at this behavior? We ourselves have taught them.”[46]
55. DUTIES OF TEACHERS.--There was at Rome, in the first century
of the Christian era, a high conception of the duties of a
teacher: “His first care should be to ascertain with all possible
thoroughness the mind and the character of the child.” Judicious
reflections on the memory, on the faculty of imitation, and on the
dangers of precocious mental development, are proofs of the fine
psychological discernment of Quintilian. His insight is no less
accurate when he sketches the rules for moral discipline. “Fear,”
he says, “restrains some and unmans others.... For my part, I
prefer a pupil who is sensitive to praise, whom glory animates, and
from whom defeat draws tears.”
Quintilian expresses himself decidedly against the use of the rod,
“although custom authorizes it,” he says, “and Chrysippus does not
disapprove of it.”
56. GRAMMAR AND RHETORIC.--Like his contemporaries, Quintilian
distinguishes studies into two grades,--Grammar and Rhetoric. “As
soon as the child is able to read and write, he must be placed
in the hands of the grammarian.” Grammar was divided into two
parts,--the art of speaking correctly and the explication of
the poets. Exercises in composition, development lessons called
_Chriæ_, and narratives, accompanied the theoretical study of the
rules of grammar.[47] It is to be observed that Quintilian gives
a high place to etymological studies, and that he attaches great
importance to reading aloud. “That the child may read well, let
him have a good understanding of what he reads.... When he reads
the poets, let him shun affected modulations. It is with reference
to this manner of reading that Cæsar, still a young man, made this
excellent observation: ‘If you are singing, you sing poorly; if you
are reading, why do you sing?’”
57. THE SIMULTANEOUS STUDY OF THE SCIENCES.--Quintilian is very far
from confining his pupil within the narrow circle of grammatical
study. Persuaded that the child is capable of learning several
things at the same time, he would have him taught geometry, music,
and philosophy simultaneously:--
“Must he learn grammar alone, and then geometry, and in the
meanwhile forget what he first learned? As well advise a farmer
not to cultivate, at the same time, his fields, his vines, his
olive trees, and his orchards, and not to give his thought
simultaneously to his meadows, his cattle, his gardens, and his
bees.”[48]
Of course Quintilian considers the different studies which he
sets before his pupil only as the instruments for an education in
oratory. Philosophy, which comprises dialectics or logic, physics
or the science of nature, and lastly morals, furnish the orator
with ideas, and teach him the art of distributing them into a
consecutive line of argument. And so geometry, a near relative of
dialectics, disciplines the mind, and teaches it to distinguish
the true from the false. Lastly, music is an excellent preparation
for eloquence; it cultivates the sense of harmony and a taste for
number and measure.
58. THE SCHOOLS OF PHILOSOPHY.--By the side of the schools of
rhetoric, in which the art of speech was cultivated, imperial
Rome saw flourish in great numbers schools of philosophy, whose
purpose was the formation of morals. It was through no lack of
moral sermonizing that there was a degeneration in the virtues of
the Romans. All the schools of Greece, especially the Stoics and
the Epicureans, and also the schools of Pythagoras, of Socrates,
of Plato, and of Aristotle, had their representatives at Rome; but
their obscure names have scarcely survived.
59. SENECA.--Among these philosophers and these moralists of the
first century of the Christian era, Seneca has the distinction
of standing in the front rank. It is true that he was not the
founder of a school, but by his numerous writings he succeeded
in maintaining among his contemporaries at least some vestiges
of the ancient virtues. His _Letters to Lucilius_, letters
abounding in real intellectual and moral insight, also contain
some pedagogical precepts. Seneca attempts to direct school
instruction to practical ends, in following out the thought of this
famous precept: “We should learn, not for the sake of the school,
but for the purposes of life” (_Non scholæ, sed vitæ discimus_).
Moreover, he criticises confused and ill-directed reading that does
not enrich the understanding, and concludes by recommending the
profound study of a single book (_timeo hominem unius libri_). In
another letter he remarks that the best means for giving clearness
to one’s own ideas is to communicate them to others; the best way
of being taught is to teach (_docendo discimus_). Let us quote
this other maxim so often repeated: “The end is attained sooner
by example than by precept” (_longum iter per præcepta, breve per
exempla_).
60. PLUTARCH (50-138 A.D.).--In the last period of Roman
civilization two names deserve to arrest the attention of the
educator,--Plutarch and Marcus Aurelius. Although he was born in
Bœotia, and wrote in Greek, Plutarch belongs to the Roman world.
He lived at Rome at several different times, and there opened a
school in the reign of Domitian, where he lectured on philosophy,
literature, and history. Numerous works have transmitted to us
the substance of that instruction which had such an extraordinary
success.
61. THE LIVES OF ILLUSTRIOUS MEN.--Translated in the fifteenth
century by Amyot, the _Parallel Lives_ of Plutarch were for our
fathers a true code of morals founded on history. How many of our
great men, or how many of our men of worth, have drawn from this
book, at least in part, the material which has nurtured their
virtues! L’Hôpital and d’Aubigné enriched their lives from this
source. Henry IV. said of this book: “It has been to me as my
conscience, and has whispered in my ear many virtuous suggestions
and excellent maxims for my own conduct and for the management of
my affairs.”[49]
62. THE ESSAY ON THE TRAINING OF CHILDREN.--The celebrated essay
entitled _Of the Training of Children_,[50] is the first treatise,
especially devoted to education, that antiquity has bequeathed to
us. Its authenticity has been called in question by German critics;
but this is of little moment, since these critics are the first to
recognize the fact that the author of this essay, whoever he might
have been, was intimately acquainted with Plutarch, and has given
us a sufficiently exact summary of the ideas which are more fully
developed in others of his works.[51]
We shall not give an analysis of this work, which, however, abounds
in interesting reflections on the primary period of education. We
shall simply note the fundamental thought of the essay, its salient
and original characteristic, which is its warm appreciation of the
family. In society, as Plutarch conceives it, the State no longer
exercises absolute sovereignty. Upon the ruins of the antique
commonwealth Plutarch builds the family. It is to the family
that he addresses himself in order to assure the education of
children.[52] On this point he is not in accord with Quintilian.
What he recommends is an education that is domestic and individual.
He scarcely admits the need of public schools save for the higher
instruction. At a certain age a young man, already trained by the
watchful care of a preceptor under the supervision of his parents,
shall go abroad to hear the lectures of the moralists and the
philosophers, and to read the poets.
63. THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN.--One of the consequences of the
exalted function which Plutarch ascribes to the family is that
by this single act he raises the material and moral condition of
woman. In his essay entitled _Conjugal Precepts_, which recalls
the _Economics_ of Xenophon, he restores to the wife her place in
the household. He associates her with the husband in the material
support of the family, as well as in the education of the children.
The mother is to nurse her offspring. “Providence,” he naively
says, “hath also wisely ordered that women should have two breasts,
that so, if any of them should happen to bear twins, they might
have two several springs of nourishment ready for them.”[53] The
mother shall also take part in the instruction of her children, and
so she must herself be educated. Plutarch proposes for her the
highest studies, such as mathematics and philosophy. But he counts
much more upon her natural qualities, than upon the science that
she may acquire. “With women,” he says, “tenderness of heart is
enhanced by a pleasing countenance, by sweetness of speech, by an
affectionate grace, and by a high degree of sensitiveness.”
64. THE FUNCTION OF POETRY IN EDUCATION.--In the essay entitled
_How a Young Man Ought to Hear Poems_, Plutarch has given his
opinion as to the extent to which poetry should be made an element
in education. More just than Plato, he does not condemn the reading
of the poets. He simply demands that this reading should be done
with discretion, by choosing those who, in their compositions,
mingle moral inspiration with poetic inspiration. “Lycurgus,”
he says, “did not act like a man of sound reason in the course
which he took to reform his people that were much inclined to
drunkenness, by traveling up and down to destroy all the vines in
the country; whereas he should have ordered that every vine should
have a well of water near it, that (as Plato saith) the drunken
deity might be reduced to temperance by a sober one.”[54]
65. THE TEACHING OF MORALS.--Plutarch is above all else a moralist.
If he adds nothing in the way of theory to the lofty doctrines of
the Greek philosophers from whom he catches his inspiration, at
least he enters more profoundly into the study of practical methods
which insure the efficacy of fine precepts and exalted doctrines.
“That contemplation which is dissociated from practice,” he says,
“is of no utility.” He would have young men come from lectures
on morals, not only better instructed, but more virtuous. Of
what consequence are beautiful maxims unless they are embodied
in action? The young man, then, shall early accustom himself to
self-government, to reflection upon his own conduct, and to taking
counsel of his own reason. Moreover, Plutarch gives him a director
of conscience, a philosopher, whom he will go to consult in his
doubts, and to whom he will entrust the keeping of his soul. But
that which is of most consequence in his eyes is personal effort,
reflection always on the alert, and that inward effort which causes
our soul to assimilate the moral lessons which we have received,
and which causes them to enter into the very structure and fibre of
our personality.
“As it would be with a man who, going to his neighbor’s to borrow
fire, and finding there a great and bright fire, should sit down
to warm himself and forget to go home; so is it with the one who
comes to another to learn, if he does not think himself obliged
to kindle his own fire within, and influence his own mind, but
continues sitting by his master as if he were enchanted, delighted
by hearing.”[55]
So are those who are not striving to have a personal morality,
but who, incapable of self-direction, are always in need of the
tutorship of another.
The great preoccupation of Plutarch--and by this trait he has a
legitimate place among the great educators of the world--was to
awaken, to excite, the interior forces of the conscience, and to
stimulate the intelligence to a high state of activity. When he
wrote this famous maxim, “The soul is not a vase to be filled, but
is rather a hearth which is to be made to glow,”[56] he was not
thinking alone of moral education, but also of a false intellectual
education which, instead of training the mind, is content with
accumulating in the memory a mass of indigested materials.[57]
66. MARCUS AURELIUS.--The wisest of the Roman emperors, the author
of the book entitled _To Myself_, better known as _Meditations_,
Marcus Aurelius deserves mention in the history of pedagogy. He is
perhaps the most perfect representative of Stoic morality, which is
itself the highest expression of ancient morality. He is the most
finished type of what can be effected in the way of soul-culture
by the influence of home-training and the personal effort of the
conscience. His teacher of rhetoric was the celebrated Fronto,
of whose character we may judge from this one characteristic: “I
toiled hard yesterday,” he wrote to his pupil; “I composed a few
figures of speech, with which I am pleased.” On the other hand,
Marcus Aurelius found examples for imitation in his own family. “My
uncle,” he says reverently, “taught me patience.... From my father
I inherited modesty.... To my mother I owe my feelings of piety.”
Notwithstanding the modesty that led him to attribute to others
the whole of his moral worth, it is especially to himself, to a
persistent effort of his own will, and to a ceaseless examination
of his own conscience, that he is indebted for becoming the most
virtuous of men, and the wisest and purest, next to Socrates, of
the moralists of antiquity. His _Meditations_ show us in action
that self-education which in our time has suggested such beautiful
reflections to Channing.
67. CONCLUSION.--Finally, it must be admitted that Roman literature
is poor in material for educational study. Some passages, scattered
here and there in the classical authors, nevertheless prove that
they were not absolutely strangers to pedagogical questions.
Thus Horace professed independence of mind; he declares that he is
not obliged to swear by the “words of any master.”[58] On the other
hand, Juvenal defined the ideal purpose of life and of education
when he said that the desirable thing above all others is “a sound
mind in a sound body.”[59] Finally, Pliny the Younger, in three
words, _multum, non multa_, “much, not many things,” fixes one
essential point in educational method, and recommends the thorough
study of one single subject in preference to a superficial study
which extends over too many subjects.
While by their taste, their accuracy of thought, and the perfection
of their style, the Latin writers are worthy of being placed by
the side of the Greeks as proficients in education of the literary
type, they at the same time deserve to be regarded as reputable
guides in moral education. At Rome, as at Athens, that which formed
the basis of instruction was the search after virtue. That which
preoccupied Cicero as well as Plato, Seneca as well as Aristotle,
was not so much the extension of knowledge and the development of
instruction as the progress of manners and the moral perfection of
man.
[68. ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.--1. In contrast with Greek education,
the chief characteristic of which was intellectual discipline
or culture, Roman education may be called _practical_. Greece
and Rome have thus furnished the world with two distinct types
of education, and their modern representatives are seen in our
classical and scientific courses respectively.
2. The disinclination of the Roman mind to speculative inquiry,
was a bar to the production of any contributions to the theory of
education.
3. In the _Institutes_ of Quintilian we see the first attempt to
expound the art of teaching; and in the _Morals_ of Plutarch we
have the first formal treatise on the education of children.
4. In the later period of Roman education, we see a higher
appreciation of woman, and a nobler conception of the family life.
5. In common with all the systems of education thus far studied,
Roman education is essentially literary, ethical, and prudential,
as distinguished from an education in science. The conception of
the money value of knowledge had not yet appeared.]
FOOTNOTES:
[41] Plutarch, _Morals_, vol. I. p. 9.
[42] Cicero, _De Republica_, IV. 115.
[43] Cicero, _De Divinatione_, II. 2.
[44] In principle, this is the same as the system of writing
commended by Locke: “Get a plate graved with the Characters of
such a Hand as you like best ... let several sheets of good
Writing-paper be printed off with red Ink, which he has nothing to
do but go over with a good Pen fill’d with black Ink, which will
quickly bring his Hand to the Formation of those Characters, being
first shewed where to begin, and how to form every Letter.” (_On
Education_, § 160.) (P.)
[45] “Quintilian has treated this question with great breadth and
eloquence.” (_Traité des Études_, Liv. IV. Art. 2.)
[46] Quintilian, _Institutes of Oratory_, Watson’s Translation,
Book I. chap. II. 6, 7.
[47] _Institutes_, Book I. chap. IX.
[48] _Institutes_, Book I. chap. XII.
[49] Equally great has been Plutarch’s influence on English thought
and life. Sir Thomas North’s translation of Amyot’s version
appeared in 1579, and furnished Shakespeare with the materials
for his _Coriolanus_, _Julius Cæsar_, and _Antony and Cleopatra_.
Milton, Wordsworth, and Browning are also debtors to the _Parallel
Lives_. (P.)
[50] “Comment il faut nourrir les enfants,” in the translation by
Amyot. “Of the Training of Children,” in Goodwin’s edition of the
_Morals_ (Vol. I.).
[51] The references that follow are to Plutarch’s _Morals_. The
first translation into English was by Philemon Holland, in 1603.
The American edition in five volumes (Boston, 1871) is worthy of
all commendation. The references I make are to this edition. (P.)
[52] Of course Plutarch, like all the writers of antiquity, writes
only in behalf of free-born children in good circumstances. “He
abandons,” as he himself admits, “the education of the poor and the
lowly.”
Plutarch seems to aim at what appears to him to be _practicable_.
That he was liberal in his opinions must be evident, I think, from
this extract: “It is my desire that all children whatsoever may
partake of the benefits of education alike; but if yet any persons,
by reason of the narrowness of their estates, cannot make use of my
precepts, let them not blame me that give them, but Fortune, which
disableth them from making the advantage by them they otherwise
might. Though even poor men must use their utmost endeavor to
give their children the best education; or, if they can not, they
must bestow upon them the best that their abilities will reach.”
(_Morals_, vol. I. pp. 19, 20.) (P.)
[53] _Of the Training of Children_, § 6.
[54] _Morals_, vol. II. p. 44.
[55] _Morals_, I. p. 463. This language directly follows the
quotation given in the note (1) at the close of this paragraph. (P.)
[56] The exact reading is as follows: “For the mind requires not
like an earthen vessel to be filled up; convenient fuel and aliment
only will influence it with a desire of knowledge and ardent love
of truth.” (_Morals_, I. p. 463.) This makes the author’s meaning
more apparent. (P.)
[57] This does not mean that Plutarch sets a low value on memory,
for he says: “Above all things, we must exercise the memory of
children, for it is the treasury of knowledge.”
[58] “_Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri_.”
[59] “_Orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano_.” (Sat. x.
356.)
CHAPTER IV.
THE EARLY CHRISTIANS AND THE MIDDLE AGE.
THE NEW SPIRIT OF CHRISTIANITY; THE POVERTY OF THE EARLY
CHRISTIAN CENTURIES IN RESPECT OF EDUCATION; THE FATHERS OF
THE CHURCH; SAINT JEROME AND THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS; PHYSICAL
ASCETICISM; INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL ASCETICISM; PERMANENT TRUTHS;
INTELLECTUAL FEEBLENESS OF THE MIDDLE AGE; CAUSES OF THE
IGNORANCE OF THE MIDDLE AGE; THE THREE RENASCENCES; CHARLEMAGNE;
ALCUIN; THE SUCCESSORS OF CHARLEMAGNE; SCHOLASTICISM; ABELARD;
THE SEVEN LIBERAL ARTS; METHODS AND DISCIPLINE; THE UNIVERSITIES;
GERSON; VITTORINO DA FELTRE; OTHER TEACHERS AT THE CLOSE OF THE
MIDDLE AGE; RECAPITULATION; ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.
69. THE NEW SPIRIT OF CHRISTIANITY.--By its dogmas, by the
conception of the equality of all human creatures, by its spirit of
charity, Christianity introduced new elements into the conscience,
and seemed called to give a powerful impetus to the moral education
of men. The doctrine of Christ was at first a reaction of free
will and of personal dignity against the despotism of the State.
“A full half of man henceforth escaped the action of the State.
Christianity taught that man no longer belonged to society except
in part; that he was under allegiance to it by his body and his
material interests; that being subject to a tyrant, he must
submit; that as a citizen of a republic, he ought to give his
life for it; but that in respect of his soul, he was free, and
owed allegiance only to God.”[60] Henceforth it was not simply a
question of training citizens for the service of the State; but
the conception of a disinterested development of the human person
made its appearance in the world. On the other hand, in proclaiming
that all men had the same destiny, and that they were all equal in
the sight of God, Christianity raised the poor and the disinherited
from their condition of misery, and promised them all the same
instruction. To the idea of liberty was added that of equality; and
equal justice for all, and participation in the same rights, were
contained in germ in the doctrine of Christianity.
70. POVERTY OF THE FIRST CHRISTIAN CENTURIES IN RESPECT OF
EDUCATION.--Nevertheless, the germs contained in the doctrines of
the new religion did not bear fruit at once. It is easy to analyze
the causes which led to the poverty of educational thought during
the first centuries of the Christian era.
In the first place, the Christian instruction was addressed to
barbarous peoples who could not at once rise to a high intellectual
and moral culture. According to the celebrated comparison of
Jouffroy, the invasion of the barbarians into the midst of ancient
society was like an armful of green wood thrown upon a blazing
fire; at first there could issue from it only a mass of smoke.
Moreover, we must take into account the fact that the early
Christians, in order to establish their faith, had to struggle
against difficulties which were ever being renewed. The
first centuries were a period of struggle, of conquest, and
of organization, which left but little opportunity for the
disinterested study of education. In their contests with the
ancient world, the early Christians came to include in a common
hatred classical literature and pagan religion. Could they receive
with sympathy the literary and scientific inheritance of a society
whose morals they repudiated, and whose beliefs they were bent on
destroying?
On the other hand, the social condition of the men who first
attached themselves to the new religion turned them aside from the
studies which are a preparation for real life. Obliged to conceal
themselves, to betake themselves to the desert, true Pariahs of
the pagan world, they lived a life of contemplation; they were
naturally led to conceive an ascetic and monastic existence as the
ideal of education.
Moreover, by its mystical tendencies, Christianity at the first
could not be a good school for a practical and humane system of
education. The Christian was detached from the commonwealth of man,
only to enter into the commonwealth of God. He must break with a
corrupt and perverse world. By privations, and by the renunciation
of every pleasure, he must react against the immorality of
Græco-Roman society. Man must aspire to imitate God; and God
is absolute holiness, the very negation of all the conditions
of earthly life,--supreme perfection. The very disproportion
between such an ideal and human weakness as an actual fact must
have betrayed the early Christians into leading a mystical life
which was but a preparation for death. And the consequence of
these doctrines was to make of the Church the exclusive mistress
of education and instruction. Individual initiative, if called
into play, on the one hand, by the fundamental doctrines of
Christianity, was stifled, on the other, under the domination of
the Church.
71. THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH.--Of the celebrated doctors who,
by their erudition and eloquence, if not by their taste, made
illustrious the beginning of Christianity, some were jealous
mystics and sectaries, in whose eyes philosophical curiosity was a
sin, and the love of letters a heresy; and others were Christians
of a conciliatory temperament, who, in a certain measure, allied
religious faith and literary culture.
Tertullian rejected all pagan education. He saw in classical
culture only a robbery from God; a road to the false and arrogant
wisdom of the ancient philosophers. Even Saint Augustine, who in
his youth could not read the fourth book of the Æneid without
shedding tears, and who had been devotedly fond of ancient poetry
and eloquence, renounced, after his conversion, his literary tastes
as well as the mad passions of his early manhood. It was by his
influence that the Council of Carthage forbade the bishops to read
the pagan authors.
This was not the course of Saint Basil, who demands, on the
contrary, that the young Christian shall be conversant with the
orators, poets, and historians of antiquity; who thinks that the
poems of Homer inspire a love for virtue; and who desires, finally,
that full use should be made of the treasures of ancient wisdom in
the training of the young.[61] Nor was this the thought of Saint
Jerome, who said he would be none the less a Ciceronian in becoming
a Christian.
72. SAINT JEROME AND THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS.--The letters of Saint
Jerome on the education of girls form the most valuable educational
document of the first centuries of Christianity.[62] They have
excited high admiration. Erasmus knew them by heart, and Saint
Theresa read selections from them every day. It is impossible,
to-day, while admiring certain parts of them, not to condemn the
general spirit which pervades them,--a narrow spirit, distrustful
of the world, which pushes the religious sentiment even to
mysticism, and disdain for human affairs to asceticism.
73. PHYSICAL ASCETICISM.--It is no longer the question of giving
power to the body, and thus of making of it the robust instrument
of a cultured spirit, as the Greeks would have it. The body is
an enemy that must be subdued by fasting, by abstinence, and by
mortifications of the flesh.
“Do not allow Paula to eat in public, that is, do not let her take
part in family entertainments, for fear that she may desire the
meats that may be served there. Let her learn not to use wine, for
it is the source of all impurity. Let her food be vegetables, and
only rarely of fish; and let her eat so as always to be hungry.”
Contempt for the body is carried so far that cleanliness is almost
interdicted.
“For myself, I entirely forbid a young girl to bathe.”
It is true that, alarmed at the consequences of such austerity,
Saint Jerome, by way of exception, permits children the use of the
bath, of wine, and of meat, but only “when necessity requires it,
and lest the feet may fail them before having walked.”
74. INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL ASCETICISM.--For the mind, as well as
for the body, we may say of Saint Jerome what Nicole wrote to a
nun of his time: “You feed your pupils on bread and water.” The
Bible is the only book recommended, and this is little; but it is
the Bible entire, which is too much. _The Song of Songs_, with
its sensual imagery, would be strange reading for a young girl.
The arts, like letters, find no favor with the mysticism of Saint
Jerome.
“Never let Paula listen to musical instruments; let her even be
ignorant of the uses served by the flute and the harp.”
As for the flute, which the Greek philosophers also did not like,
let it be so; but what shall we say of this condemnation of the
harp, the instrument of David and the angels, and of religious
music itself! How far we are, in common with Saint Jerome, from
that complete life, from that harmonious development of all the
faculties, which modern educators, Herbert Spencer, for example,
present to us with reason as the ideal of education! Saint Jerome
goes so far as to proscribe walking:--
“Do not let Paula be found in the ways of the world (emphatic
paraphrase for _streets_), in the gatherings and in the company of
her kindred; let her be found only in retirement.”
The ideal of Saint Jerome is a monastic and cloistered life,
even in the world. But that which is graver still, that which is
the fatal law of mysticism, is that Saint Jerome, after having
proscribed letters, arts, and necessary and legitimate pleasures,
even brings his condemnation to bear on the most honorable
sentiments of the heart. The heart is human also, and everything
human is evil and full of danger:
“Do not allow Paula to feel more affection for one of her
companions than for others; do not allow her to speak with such
a one in an undertone.” And as he held in suspicion even the
affections of the family, the Doctor of the Church concludes thus:--
“Let her be educated in a cloister, where she will not know
the world, where she will live as an angel, having a body but
not knowing it, and where, in a word, you will be spared the
care of watching over her.... If you will send us Paula, I will
charge myself with being her master and nurse; I will give her
my tenderest care; my old age will not prevent me from untying
her tongue, and I shall be more renowned than the philosopher
Aristotle, since I shall instruct, not a mortal and perishable
king, but an immortal spouse of the Heavenly King.”
75. PERMANENT TRUTHS.--The pious exaggerations of Saint Jerome only
throw into sharper relief the justice and the excellence of some
of his practical suggestions,--upon the teaching of reading, for
example, or upon the necessity of emulation:--
“Put into the hands of Paula letters in wood or in ivory, and teach
her the names of them. She will thus learn while playing. But it
will not suffice to have her merely memorize the names of the
letters, and call them in succession as they stand in the alphabet.
You should often mix them, putting the last first, and the first in
the middle.
“Induce her to construct words by offering her a prize, or by
giving her, as a reward, what ordinarily pleases children of her
age.... Let her have companions, so that the commendation she may
receive may excite in her the feeling of emulation. Do not chide
her for the difficulty she may have in learning. On the contrary,
encourage her by commendation, and proceed in such a way that she
shall be equally sensible to the pleasure of having done well, and
to the pain of not having been successful.... Especially take care
that she do not conceive a dislike for study that might follow her
into a more advanced age.”[63]
76. INTELLECTUAL FEEBLENESS OF THE MIDDLE AGE.--If the early
doctors of the Church occasionally expressed some sympathy for
profane letters, it is because, in their youth, before having
received baptism, they had themselves attended the pagan schools.
But these schools once closed, Christianity did not open others,
and, after the fourth century, a profound night enveloped humanity.
The labor of the Greeks and the Romans was as though it never had
been. The past no longer existed. Humanity began anew. In the fifth
century, Apollinaris Sidonius declares that “the young no longer
study, that teachers no longer have pupils, and that learning
languishes and dies.” Later, Lupus of Ferrières, the favorite
of Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald, writes that the study
of letters had almost ceased. In the early part of the eleventh
century, the Bishop of Laon, Adalberic, asserts that “there is more
than one bishop who cannot count the letters of the alphabet on his
fingers.” In 1291, of all the monks in the convent of Saint Gall,
there was not one who could read and write. It was so difficult
to find notaries public, that acts had to be passed verbally. The
barons took pride in their ignorance. Even after the efforts of
the twelfth century, instruction remained a luxury for the common
people; it was the privilege of the ecclesiastics, and even they
did not carry it very far. The Benedictines confess that the
mathematics were studied only for the purpose of calculating the
date of Easter.
77. CAUSES OF THE IGNORANCE OF THE MIDDLE AGE.--What were the
permanent causes of that situation which lasted for ten centuries?
The Catholic Church has sometimes been held responsible for this.
Doubtless the Christian doctors did not always profess a very
warm sympathy for intellectual culture. Saint Augustine had said:
“It is the ignorant who gain possession of heaven (_indocti cœlum
rapiunt_).” Saint Gregory the Great, a pope of the sixth century,
declared that he would blush to have the holy word conform to
the rules of grammar. Too many Christians, in a word, confounded
ignorance with holiness. Doubtless, towards the seventh century,
the darkness still hung thick over the Christian Church. Barbarians
invaded the Episcopate, and carried with them their rude manners.
Doubtless, also, during the feudal period the priest often became
soldier, and remained ignorant. It would, however, be unjust to
bring a constructive charge against the Church of the Middle Age,
and to represent it as systematically hostile to instruction.
Directly to the contrary, it is the clergy who, in the midst of the
general barbarism, preserved some vestiges of the ancient culture.
The only schools of that period are the episcopal and claustral
schools, the first annexed to the bishops’ palaces, the second
to the monasteries. The religious orders voluntarily associated
manual labor with mental labor. As far back as 530, Saint Benedict
founded the convent of Monte Cassino, and drew up statutes which
made reading and intellectual labor a part of the daily life of the
monks.
In 1179, the third Lateran Council promulgated the following
decree:--
“The Church of God, being obliged like a good and tender mother to
provide for the bodily and spiritual wants of the poor, desirous
to procure for poor children the opportunity for learning to read,
and for making advancement in study, orders that each cathedral
shall have a teacher charged with the gratuitous instruction of
the clergy of that church, and also of the indigent scholars,
and that he be assigned a benefice, which, sufficient for his
subsistence, may thus open the door of the school to the studious
youth. A tutor[64] shall be installed in the other churches and in
the monasteries where formerly there were funds set apart for this
purpose.”
It is not, then, to the Church that we must ascribe the general
intellectual torpor of the Middle Age. Other causes explain
that long slumber of the human mind. The first is the social
condition of the people. Security and leisure, the indispensable
conditions for study, were completely lacking to people always at
war, overwhelmed in succession by the barbarians, the Normans,
the English, and by the endless struggles of feudal times. The
gentlemen of the time aspired only to ride, to hunt, and to figure
in tournaments and feats of arms. Physical education was above
all else befitting men whose favorite vocation, both by habit and
necessity, was war. On the other hand, the enslaved people did
not suspect the utility of instruction. In order to comprehend
the need of study, that great liberator, one must already have
tasted liberty. In a society where the need of instruction had not
yet been felt, who could have taken the initiative in the work of
instructing the people?
Let us add that the Middle Age presented still other conditions
unfavorable for the propagation of instruction, in particular, the
lack of national languages, those necessary vehicles of education.
The vernacular languages are the instruments of intellectual
emancipation. Among a people where a dead language is supreme, a
language of the learned, accessible only to the select few, the
lower classes necessarily remain buried in ignorance. Moreover,
Latin books themselves were rare. Lupus of Ferrières was obliged
to write to Rome, and to address himself to the Pope in person, in
order to procure for his use a work of Cicero’s. Without books,
without schools, without any of the indispensable implements of
intellectual labor, what could be done for the mental life? It took
refuge in certain monasteries; erudition flourished only in narrow
circles, with a privileged few, and the rest of the nation remained
buried in an obscure night.
78. THE THREE RENASCENCES.--It has been truly said that there
were three Renascences: the first, which owed its beginning to
Charlemagne, and whose brilliancy did not last; the second, that of
the twelfth century, the issue of which was Scholasticism; and the
third, the great Renaissance of the sixteenth century, which still
lasts, and which the French Revolution has completed.
79. CHARLEMAGNE.--Charlemagne undoubtedly formed the purpose of
diffusing instruction about him. He ardently sought it for himself,
drilled himself in writing, and learned Latin and Greek, rhetoric
and astronomy. He would have communicated to all who were about
him the same ardor for study. “Ah! that I had twelve clerics,” he
exclaimed, “as perfectly instructed as were Jerome and Augustine!”
It was naturally upon the clergy that he counted, to make of them
the instruments of his plans; but, as one of his capitularies of
788 shows, there was need that the clergy themselves should be
reminded of the need of instruction: “We have thought it useful
that, in the bishops’ residences, and in the monasteries, care be
taken not only to live according to the rules of our holy religion,
but, in addition, to teach the knowledge of letters to those who
are capable of learning them by the aid of our Lord. Although
it avails more to practise the law than to know it, it must be
known before it can be practised. Several monasteries having
sent us manuscripts, we have observed that, in the most of them,
the sentiments were good, but the language bad. We exhort you,
then, not only not to neglect the study of letters, but to devote
yourselves to them with all your power.”
On the other hand, the nobles did not make any great effort to
justify their social rank by the degree of their knowledge.
One day, as Charlemagne entered a school, displeased with the
indolence and the ignorance of the young barons who attended it,
he addressed them in these severe terms: “Do you count upon your
birth, and do you feel a pride in it? Take notice that you shall
have neither government nor bishoprics, if you are not better
instructed than others.”
80. ALCUIN (735-804).--Charlemagne was seconded in his efforts by
Alcuin of England, of whom it might be said, that he was the first
minister of public instruction in France. It is he who founded
the Palatine school, a sort of imperial and itinerant academy
which followed the court on its travels. It was a model school,
where Alcuin had for his pupils the four sons and two daughters of
Charlemagne, and Charlemagne himself, always eager to be instructed.
Alcuin’s method was not without originality, but it is a great
mistake to say that it resembles the method of Socrates. Alcuin
doubtless proceeds by interrogation; but here it is the pupil who
interrogates, and the teacher who responds.
“What is speech? asks Pepin, the eldest son of Charlemagne. It is
the interpreter of the soul, replies Alcuin. What is life? It is an
enjoyment for some, but for the wretched it is a sorrow, a waiting
for death. What is sleep? The image of death. What is writing? It
is the guardian of history. What is the body? The tenement of the
soul. What is day? A summons to labor.”[65]
All this is either commonplace or artificial. The sententious
replies of Alcuin may be fine maxims, fit for embellishing the
memory; but in this procedure of the mere scholar, affected by the
over-refinements of his time, there is nothing which can call into
activity the intelligence of the pupil.
Nevertheless the name of Alcuin marks an era in the history of
education. His was the first attempt to form an alliance between
classical literature and Christian inspiration,--to create a
“Christian Athens,” according to the emphatic phrase of Alcuin
himself.
81. THE SUCCESSORS OF CHARLEMAGNE.--It had been the ambition of
Charlemagne to reign over a civilized society, rather than over a
barbarous people. Convinced that the only basis of political unity
is a unity of ideas and of morals, he thought to find the basis of
that moral unity in religion, and religion itself he purposed to
establish upon a more widely diffused system of instruction. But
these ideas were too advanced for the time, and their execution
too difficult for the circumstances then existing. A new decadence
followed the era of Charlemagne. The clergy did not respond to the
hopes which the great emperor had placed on them. As far back as
817, the Council of Aix-la-Chapelle decided that henceforth no more
day-pupils should be received into the conventual schools, for the
reason that too large a number of pupils would make impossible the
maintenance of the monastic discipline. No one of Charlemagne’s
successors seems to have taken up the thought of the great emperor;
no one of them was preoccupied with the problems of education. It
is upon despotic authority, and not upon the intellectual progress
of their subjects, that those unintelligent rulers wished to found
their power. Under Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald there were
constructed more castles than schools.
The kings of France were far from imitating the Anglo-Saxon king,
Alfred the Great (849-901), to whom tradition ascribes these two
sayings: “The English ought always to be free, as free as their own
thoughts”; “Free-born sons should know how to read and write.”
82. SCHOLASTICISM.--It was not till the twelfth century that the
human mind was awakened. That was the age of Scholasticism, the
essential character of which was the study of reasoning, and the
practice of dialectics, or syllogistic reasoning. The syllogism,
which reaches necessary conclusions from given premises, was the
natural instrument of an age of faith, when men wished simply to
demonstrate immutable dogmas, without ever making an innovation
on established beliefs. It has often been observed that the art
of reasoning is the science of a people still in the early stage
of its progress; we might almost say of a barbarous people. A
subtile dialectic is in perfect keeping with manners still rude,
and with a limited state of knowledge. It is only an intellectual
machine. It was not then a question of original thinking. All
that was necessary was simply to reason upon conceptions already
acquired, and the sacred depository of these was kept in charge
by Theology. Consequently, there was no independent science.
Philosophy, according to the language of the times, was but the
humble servant of Theology. The dialectics of the doctors of the
Middle Age was but a subtile commentary on the sacred books and on
the doctrines of Aristotle.[66] It seems, says Locke, to see the
inertness of the Middle Age, that God was pleased to make of man a
two-footed animal, while leaving to Aristotle the task of making
him a thinking being. From his point of view, an able educator of
the seventeenth century, the Abbé Fleury, pronounces this severe
judgment on the scholastic method:--
“This way of philosophizing on words and thoughts, without
examining the things themselves, was certainly an easy way of
getting along without a knowledge of facts, which can be acquired
only by reading” (Fleury should have added _and by observation_);
“and it was an easy way of dazzling the ignorant laics by peculiar
terms and vain subtilties.”
But Scholasticism had its hour of glory, its erudite doctors, its
eloquent professors, chief among whom was Abelard.
83. ABELARD (1079-1142).--A genuine professor of higher
instruction, Abelard, by the prestige of his eloquence, gathered
around him at Paris thousands of students. Human speech, the
living words of the teacher, had then an authority, an importance,
which it has lost in part since books, everywhere distributed,
have, to a certain extent, superseded oral instruction. At a time
when printing did not exist, when manuscript copies were rare,
a teacher who combined knowledge with the gift of speech was a
phenomenon of incomparable interest, and students flocked from all
parts of Europe to take advantage of his lectures. Abelard is the
most brilliant representative of the scholastic pedagogy, with an
original and personal tendency towards the emancipation of the
mind. “It is ridiculous,” he said, “to preach to others what we can
neither make them understand, nor understand ourselves.” With more
boldness than Saint Anselm, he applied dialectics to theology, and
attempted to reason out the grounds of his faith.
84. THE SEVEN LIBERAL ARTS.--The seven liberal arts constituted
what may be called the secondary instruction of the Middle Age,
such as was given in the claustral or conventual schools, and
later, in the universities. The liberal arts were distributed into
two courses of study, known as the _trivium_ and the _quadrivium_.
The _trivium_ comprised grammar (Latin grammar, of course),
dialectics, or logic, and rhetoric; and the _quadrivium_, music,
arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. It is important to note the
fact that this programme contains only abstract and _formal_
studies,--no real and concrete studies. The sciences which teach us
to know man and the world, such as history, ethics, the physical
and natural sciences, were omitted and unknown, save perhaps in a
few convents of the Benedictines. Nothing which can truly educate
man, and develop his faculties as a whole, enlists the attention
of the Middle Age. From a course of study thus limited there might
come skillful reasoners and men formidable in argument, but never
fully developed men.[67]
85. METHODS AND DISCIPLINE.--The methods employed in the
ecclesiastical schools of the Middle Age were in accord with the
spirit of the times, when men were not concerned about liberty and
intellectual freedom; and when they thought more about the teaching
of dogmas than about the training of the intelligence. The teachers
recited or read their lectures, and the pupils learned by heart.
The discipline was harsh. Corrupt human nature was distrusted. In
1363, pupils were forbidden the use of benches and chairs, on the
pretext that such high seats were an encouragement to pride. For
securing obedience, corporal chastisements were used and abused.
The rod is in fashion in the fifteenth as it was in the fourteenth
century.
“There is no other difference,” says an historian, “except that
the rods in the fifteenth century are twice as long as those in
the fourteenth.”[68] Let us note, however, the protest of Saint
Anselm, a protest that pointed out the evil rather than cured it.
“Day and night,” said an abbot to Saint Anselm, “we do not cease
to chastise the children confided to our care, and they grow worse
and worse.” Anselm replied, “Indeed! You do not cease to chastise
them! And when they are grown up, what will they become? Idiotic
and stupid. A fine education that, which makes brutes of men! ...
If you were to plant a tree in your garden, and were to enclose it
on all sides so that it could not extend its branches, what would
you find when, at the end of several years, you set it free from
its bands? A tree whose branches would be bent and crooked; and
would it not be your fault, in having so unreasonably confined it?”
86. THE UNIVERSITIES.--Save claustral and cathedral schools, to
which must be added some parish schools, the earliest example
of our village schools, the sole educational establishment of
the Middle Age was what is called the _University_. Towards the
thirteenth and fourteenth century we see multiplying in the
great cities of Europe those centres of study, those collections
of students which recall from afar the schools of Plato and
Aristotle. Of such establishments were the university which opened
at Paris for the teaching of theology and philosophy (1200);
the universities of Naples (1224), of Prague (1345), of Vienna
(1365), of Heidelberg (1386), etc.[69] Without being completely
affranchised from sacerdotal control, these universities were a
first expansion of free science. As far back as the ninth century,
the Arabs had given an example to the rest of Europe by founding at
Salamanca, at Cordova, and in other cities of Spain, schools where
all the sciences were cultivated.
87. GERSON (1363-1429).--With the gentle Gerson, the supposed
author of the _Imitation_, it seems that the dreary dialectics
disappear to let the heart speak and make way for feeling. The
Chancellor of the University of Paris is distinguished from the
men of his time by his love for the people. He wrote in the common
tongue little elementary treatises for the use and within the
comprehension of the _plain people_. His Latin work, entitled _De
parvulis ad Christum trahendis_ (“Little children whom we must
lead to Christ”), gives evidence of a large spirit of sweetness
and goodness. It abounds in subtile and delicate observations.
For example, Gerson demands of teachers patience and tenderness:
“Little children,” he says, “are more easily managed by caresses
than by fear.” For these frail creatures he dreads the contagion
of example. “No living being is more in danger than the child
of allowing himself to be corrupted by another child.” In his
eyes, the little child is a delicate plant that must be carefully
protected against every evil influence, and, in particular, against
pernicious literature, such as the _Roman de la Rose_. Gerson
condemns corporal punishment, and requires that teachers shall have
for their pupils the affection of a father:--
“Above all else, let the teacher make an effort to be a father to
his pupils. Let him never be angry with them. Let him always be
simple in his instruction, and relate to his pupils that which is
wholesome and agreeable.” Tender-hearted and exalted spirit, Gerson
is a precursor of Fenelon.[70]
88. VITTORINO DA FELTRE (1379-1446).--It is a pleasure to place
beside Gerson one of his Italian contemporaries, the celebrated
Vittorino da Feltre, a professor in the University of Padua. It
was as preceptor to the sons of the Prince of Gonzagas, and as
founder of an educational establishment at Venice, that Vittorino
found occasion to show his aptitude for educational work. With
him, education again became what it was in Greece,--the harmonious
development of mind and body. Gymnastic exercises, such as
swimming, riding, fencing, restored to honor; attention to the
exterior qualities of fine bearing; an interesting and agreeable
method of instruction; a constant effort to discover the character
and aptitudes of children; a conscientious preparation for each
lesson; assiduous watchfulness over the work of pupils; such are
the principal features of the pedagogy of Vittorino da Feltre, a
system of teaching evidently in advance of his time, and one which
deserves a longer study.
89. OTHER TEACHERS AT THE CLOSE OF THE MIDDLE AGE.--Were we writing
a work of erudition, there would be other thinkers to point out
in the last years of the Middle Age, in that uncertain and, so to
speak, twilight period which serves as a transition from the night
of the Middle Age to the full day of the Renaissance. Among others,
let us notice the Chevalier de la Tour-Landry and Æneas Sylvius
Piccolomini.
The Chevalier de la Tour-Landry, in the work which he wrote for the
education of his daughters (1372), scarcely rises above the spirit
of his time. Woman, as he thinks, is made to pray and to go to
church. The model which he sets before his daughters is a countess,
who “each day wished to hear three masses.” He recommends fasting
three times a week in order “the better to subdue the flesh,” and
to prevent it “from diverting itself too much.” There is neither
responsibility nor proper dignity for the wife, who owes obedience
to her husband, her lord, and “should do his will, whether wrong
or right; if wrong, she is absolved from blame, as the blame falls
on her lord.”
Æneas Sylvius, the future Pope Pius II., in his tract on _The
Education of Children_ (1451), is already a man of the Renaissance,
since he recommends with enthusiasm the reading and study of most
of the classical authors. However, he traces a programme of studies
relatively liberal. By the side of the humanities he places the
sciences of geometry and arithmetic, “which are necessary,” he
says, “for training the mind and assuring rapidity of conceptions”;
and also history and geography. He had himself composed historical
narratives accompanied by maps. The distrusts of an overstrained
devotion were no longer felt by a teacher who wrote, “There is
nothing in the world more precious or more beautiful than an
enlightened intelligence.”
90. RECAPITULATION.--It is thus that the Middle Age in drawing to a
close came nearer and nearer, in the way of continuous progress, to
the decisive emancipation which the Renaissance and the Reformation
were soon to perpetuate. But the Middle Age, in itself, whatever
effort may be put forth at this day to rehabilitate it, and to
discover in it the golden age of modern societies, remains an
ill-starred epoch. A few virtues, negative for the most part,
virtues of obedience and consecration, cannot atone for the real
faults of those rude and barbarous centuries. A higher education
reserved to ecclesiastics and men of noble rank; an instruction
which consisted in verbal legerdemain, which developed only the
mechanism of reasoning, and made of the intelligence a prisoner
of the formal syllogism; agreeably to the barbarism of primitive
times, a fantastic pedantry which lost itself in superficial
discussions and in verbal distinctions; popular education almost
null, and restricted to the teaching of the catechism in Latin;
finally, a Church, absolute and sovereign, which determined for
all, great and small, the limits of thought, of belief, and of
action; such was, from our own point of view, the condition of
the Middle Age. It was time for the coming of the Renaissance to
affranchise the human mind, to excite and to reveal to itself the
unconscious need of instruction, and by the fruitful alliance of
the Christian spirit and profane letters, to prepare for the coming
of modern education.
[91. ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.--1. The fundamental characteristic of
Middle Age education was the domination of religious conceptions.
The training was for the life to come, rather than for this life;
it was almost exclusively religious and moral; was based on
authority; and included the whole human race.
2. This alliance of church and school, while giving an exclusive
aim to education, also gave it a spirit of intense seriousness
and earnestness. The survivals of this historical alliance are
church and parish schools, and a disposition of the modern Church
to dispute the right of the State to educate.
3. The supreme importance attached to the Scriptures made
education literary; made instruction dogmatic and arbitrary;
exalted words over things; inculcated a taste for abstract and
formal reasoning; made learning a process of memorizing; and
stifled the spirit of free inquiry.
4. The inclusion of the whole world in one Christian
Commonwealth, led to the intellectual enfranchisement of woman
and to the rise of primary education proper.
5. The general tendency was towards harshness in discipline,
coarseness in habits and manners, and a contempt for the
amenities of life.
6. Scholasticism erred by exaggeration; but its general effect
was to develop the power of deductive reasoning, to teach the use
of language as the instrument of thought, and to make apparent
the need of nice discriminations in the use of words.
7. The great intellectual lesson taught is the extreme difficulty
of attaining compass, symmetry, and moderation.]
FOOTNOTES:
[60] Fustel de Coulanges, _La Cité antique_, p. 476.
[61] See the Homily of Saint Basil _On the Utility which the young
can derive from the reading of profane authors_.
[62] _Letter to Læta on the education of her daughter Paula_ (403).
_Letter to Gaudentius on the education of the little Pacatula._ The
letter to Gaudentius is far inferior to the other by reason of the
perpetual digressions into which the author permits himself to be
drawn.
[63] For writing, Saint Jerome, like Quintilian, recommends that
children first practise on tablets of wood on which letters have
been engraved.
[64] _Écolâtre._ The history of this word, as given by Littré, is
instructive. “There was no cathedral church (sixteenth century) in
which a sum was not appropriated for the salary of one who taught
the ordinary subjects, and another for one who had leisure for
teaching Theology. The first was called _escolastre_ (_écolâtre_),
the second _theologal_.” Pasquier. (P.)
[65] For other examples, see the _Life of Alcuin_, by Lorenz; and
for Middle Age education in general, consult _Christian Schools and
Scholars_, by Augusta Theodosia Drane. (P.)
[66] The following quotation illustrates this servile dependence on
authority:
“At the time when the discovery of spots on the sun first began to
circulate, a student called the attention of his old professor to
the rumor, and received the following reply: ‘There can be no spots
on the sun, for I have read Aristotle twice from beginning to end,
and he says the sun is incorruptible. Clean your lenses, and if
the spots are not in the telescope, they must be in your eyes!’”
Naville, _La Logique de l’Hypothèse_. (P.)
[67] This is no exception to the rule that the education of an age
is the exponent of its real or supposed needs. (P.)
[68] Monteil, _Histoire des Français des divers états_.
[69] Cambridge (1109), Oxford (1140).
[70] In the _Traité de la visite des diocèses_, in 1400, he
directed the bishops to inquire whether each parish had a school,
and, in case there were none, to establish one.
CHAPTER V.
THE RENAISSANCE AND THE THEORIES OF EDUCATION IN THE SIXTEENTH
CENTURY.
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EDUCATION OF THE SIXTEENTH
CENTURY; CAUSES OF THE RENAISSANCE IN EDUCATION; THE THEORY AND
THE PRACTICE OF EDUCATION IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY; ERASMUS
(1467-1536); EDUCATION OF ERASMUS; THE JEROMITES; PEDAGOGICAL
WORKS OF ERASMUS; JUVENILE ETIQUETTE; EARLY EDUCATION; THE
INSTRUCTION OF WOMEN; RABELAIS (1483-1553); CRITICISM OF THE
OLD EDUCATION; GARGANTUA AND EUDEMON; THE NEW EDUCATION;
PHYSICAL EDUCATION; INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION; THE PHYSICAL AND
NATURAL SCIENCES; OBJECT LESSONS; ATTRACTIVE METHODS; RELIGIOUS
EDUCATION; MORAL EDUCATION; MONTAIGNE (1533-1592) AND RABELAIS;
THE PERSONAL EDUCATION OF MONTAIGNE; EDUCATION SHOULD BE
GENERAL; THE PURPOSE OF INSTRUCTION; EDUCATION OF THE JUDGMENT;
EDUCATIONAL METHODS; STUDIES RECOMMENDED; MONTAIGNE’S ERRORS;
INCOMPLETENESS OF HIS VIEWS ON THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN; ANALYTICAL
SUMMARY.
92. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EDUCATION OF THE SIXTEENTH
CENTURY.--Modern education begins with the Renaissance. The
educational methods that we then begin to discern will doubtless
not be developed and perfected till a later period; the new
doctrines will pass into practice only gradually, and with the
general progress of the times. But from the sixteenth century
education is in possession of its essential principles. The
education of the Middle Age, over-rigid and repressive, which
condemned the body to a régime too severe, and the mind to a
discipline too narrow, is to be succeeded, at least in theory,
by an education broader and more liberal; which will give due
attention to hygiene and physical exercises; which will enfranchise
the intelligence, hitherto the prisoner of the syllogism; which
will call into play the moral forces, instead of repressing them;
which will substitute real studies for the verbal subtilties of
dialectics; which will give the preference to things over words;
which, finally, instead of developing but a single faculty,
the reason, and instead of reducing man to a sort of dialectic
automaton, will seek to develop the whole man, mind and body, taste
and knowledge, heart and will.
93. CAUSES OF THE RENAISSANCE IN EDUCATION.--The men of the
sixteenth century having renewed with classical antiquity an
intercourse that had been too long interrupted, it was natural that
they should propose to the young the study of the Greeks and the
Romans. What is called secondary instruction really dates from the
sixteenth century. The crude works of the Middle Age are succeeded
by the elegant compositions of Athens and Rome, henceforth made
accessible to all through the art of printing; and, with the
reading of the ancient authors, there reappear through the fruitful
effect of imitation, their qualities of correctness in thought,
of literary taste, and of elegance in form. In France, as in
Italy, the national tongues, moulded, and, as it were, consecrated
by writers of genius, become the instruments of an intellectual
propaganda. Artistic taste, revived by the rich products of a race
of incomparable artists, gives an extension to the horizon of life,
and creates a new class of emotions. Finally, the Protestant Reform
develops individual thought and free inquiry, and at the same time,
by its success, it imposes still greater efforts on the Catholic
Church.
This is not saying that everything is faultless in the educational
efforts of the sixteenth century. First, as is natural for
innovators, the thought of the teachers of this period is marked
by enthusiasm rather than by precision. They are more zealous in
pointing out the end to be attained, than exact in determining
the means to be employed. Besides, some of them are content to
emancipate the mind, but forget to give it proper direction.
Finally, others make a wrong use of the ancients; they are too
much preoccupied with the form and the purity of language;
they fall into _Ciceromania_, and it is not their fault if a
new superstition, that of rhetoric, does not succeed the old
superstition, that of the syllogism.
94. THE THEORY AND THE PRACTICE OF EDUCATION IN THE SIXTEENTH
CENTURY.--In the history of education in the sixteenth century, we
must, moreover, carefully distinguish the theory from the practice.
The theory of education is already boldly put forward, and is in
advance of its age; while the practice is still dragging itself
painfully along on the beaten road, notwithstanding some successful
attempts at improvement.
The theory we must look for in the works of Erasmus, Rabelais,
and Montaigne, of whom it may be said, that before pretending
to surpass them, even at this day, we should rather attempt to
overtake them, and to equal them in the most of their pedagogical
precepts.
The practice is, first, the development of the study of the
humanities, particularly in the early colleges of the Jesuits, and,
before the Jesuits, in certain Protestant colleges, particularly
in the college at Strasburg, so brilliantly administered by the
celebrated Sturm (1507-1589). Then it is the revival of higher
instruction, denoted particularly by the foundation of the College
of France (1530), and by the brilliant lectures of Ramus. Finally,
it is the progress, we might almost say the birth, of primary
instruction, through the efforts of the Protestant reformers, and
especially of Luther.
Nevertheless, the educational thought of the sixteenth century is
in advance of educational practice; theories greatly anticipate
applications, and constitute almost all that is deserving of
special note.
95. ERASMUS (1467-1536).--By his numerous writings, translations,
grammars, dictionaries, and original works, Erasmus diffused about
him his own passionate fondness for classical literature, and
communicated this taste to his contemporaries. Without having a
direct influence on education, since he scarcely taught himself,
he encouraged the study of the ancients by his example, and by his
active propagandism. The scholar who said, “When I have money, I
will first buy Greek books and then clothes,” deserves to be placed
in the first rank among the creators of secondary instruction.
96. THE EDUCATION OF ERASMUS: THE JEROMITES.--Erasmus was educated
by the monks, as Voltaire was by the Jesuits, a circumstance
that has cost these liberal thinkers none of their independent
disposition, and none of their satirical spirit. At the age of
twelve, Erasmus entered the college of Deventer, in Holland. This
college was conducted by the Jeromites, or _Brethren of the Common
Life_. Founded in 1340 by Gerard Groot, the association of the
Jeromites undertook, among other occupations, the instruction of
children. Very mystical, and very ascetic at first, the disciples
of Gerard Groot restricted themselves to teaching the Bible, to
reading, and writing. They proscribed, as useless to piety, letters
and the sciences. But in the fifteenth century, under the influence
of John of Wessel and Rudolph Agricola, the Jeromites became
transformed; they were the precursors of the Renaissance, and the
promoters of the alliance between profane letters and Christianity.
“We may read Ovid once,” said John of Wessel, “but we ought to
read Virgil, Horace, and Terence, with more attention.” Horace and
Terence were precisely the favorite authors of Erasmus, who learned
them by heart at Deventer. Agricola, of whom Erasmus speaks only
with enthusiasm, was also the zealous propagator of the great works
of antiquity, and, at the same time, the severe critic of the state
of educational practice of the time when the school was too much
like a prison.
“If there is anything which has a contradictory name,” he said, “it
is the school. The Greeks called it σχολὴ, which means _leisure_,
_recreation_; and the Latins, _ludus_, that is, _play_. But there
is nothing farther removed from recreation and play. Aristophanes
called it φροντιστήριον, that is, _place of care_, _of torment_,
and this is surely the designation which best befits it.”
Erasmus then had for his first teachers enlightened men, who,
notwithstanding their monastic condition, both knew and loved
antiquity. But, as a matter of fact, Erasmus was his own teacher.
By personal effort he put himself at the school of the ancients.
He was all his life a student. Now he was a foundation scholar at
the college of Montaigu, in Paris, and now preceptor to gentlemen
of wealth. He was always in pursuit of learning, going over the
whole of Europe, that he might find in each cultivated city new
opportunities for self-instruction.
97. PEDAGOGICAL WORKS OF ERASMUS.--Most of the works written by
Erasmus relate to instruction. Some of them are fairly to be
classed as text-books, elementary treatises on practical education,
as, for example, his books _On the Manner of writing Letters_,
_Upon Rules of Etiquette for the Young_, etc. We may also notice
his _Adages_, a vast repertory of proverbs and maxims borrowed from
antiquity; his _Colloquies_, a collection of dialogues for the use
of the young, though the author here treats of many things which a
pupil should never hear spoken of. Another category should include
works of a more theoretical character, in which Erasmus sets forth
his ideas on education. In the essay _On the Order of Study_
(_de Ratione Studii_), he seeks out the rules for instruction in
literature, for the study of grammar, for the cultivation of the
memory, and for the explication of the Greek and Latin authors.
Another treatise, entitled _Of the First Liberal Education of
Children_ (_De pueris statim ac liberaliter instituendis_), is
still more important, and covers the whole field of education.
Erasmus here studies the character of the child, the question of
knowing whether the first years of child-life can be turned to good
account, and the measures that are to be taken with early life. He
also recommends methods that are attractive, and heartily condemns
the barbarous discipline which reigned in the schools of his time.
98. JUVENILE ETIQUETTE.--Erasmus is one of the first educators
who comprehended the importance of politeness. In an age still
uncouth, where the manners of even the cultivated classes tolerated
usages that the most ignorant rustic of to-day would scorn, it was
good to call the attention to outward appearances and the duties
of politeness. Erasmus knew perfectly well that politeness has a
moral side, that it is not a matter of pure convention, but that it
proceeds from the inner disposition of a well-ordered soul. So he
assigns it an important place in education:
“The duty of instructing the young,” he says, “includes several
elements, the first and also the chief of which is, that the
tender mind of the child should be instructed in piety; the second,
that he love and learn the liberal arts; the third, that he be
taught tact in the conduct of social life; and the fourth, that
from his earliest age he accustom himself to good behavior, based
on moral principles.”
We need not be astonished, however, to find that the civility of
Erasmus is still imperfect, now too free, now too exacting, and
always ingenuous. “It is a religious duty,” he says, “to salute him
who sneezes.” “Morally speaking, it is not a proper thing to throw
the head back while drinking, after the manner of storks, in order
to drain the last drop from the glass.” “If one let bread fall on
the ground, he should kiss it after having picked it up.” On the
other hand, Erasmus seems to allow that the nose may be wiped with
the fingers, but he forbids the use of the cap or the sleeve for
this purpose. He requires that the face shall be bathed with pure
water in the morning; “but,” he adds, “to repeat this afterwards is
nonsense.”
99. EARLY EDUCATION.--Like Quintilian, by whom he is often
inspired, Erasmus does not scorn to enter the primary school, and
to shape the first exercises for intellectual culture. Upon many
points, the thought of the sixteenth century scholar is but an
echo of the _Institutes of Oratory_, or of the educational essays
of Plutarch. Some of his maxims deserve to be reproduced: “We
learn with great willingness from those whom we love;” “Parents
themselves cannot properly bring up their children if they make
themselves only to be feared;” “There are children who would be
killed sooner than made better by blows: by mildness and kind
admonitions, one may make of them whatever he will;” “Children
will learn to speak their native tongue without any weariness, by
usage and practice;” “Drill in reading and writing is a little bit
tiresome, and the teacher will ingeniously palliate the tedium
by the artifice of an attractive method;” “The ancients moulded
toothsome dainties into the forms of the letters, and thus, as
it were, made children swallow the alphabet;” “In the matter of
grammatical rules, instruction should at the first be limited to
the most simple;” “As the body in infant years is nourished by
little portions distributed at intervals, so should the mind of the
child be nurtured by items of knowledge adapted to its weakness,
and distributed little by little.”
From out these quotations there appears a method of instruction
that is kindly, lovable, and full of tenderness for the young.
Erasmus claims for them the nourishing care and caresses of the
mother, the familiarity and goodness of the father, cleanliness,
and even elegance in the school, and finally, the mildness and
indulgence of the teacher.
100. THE INSTRUCTION OF WOMEN.--The scholars of the Renaissance did
not exclude women from all participation in the literary treasures
that a recovered antiquity had disclosed to themselves. Erasmus
admits them to an equal share.
In the _Colloquy of the Abbé and the Educated Woman_, Magdala
claims for herself the right to learn Latin, “so that she may
hold converse each day with so many authors who are so eloquent,
so instructive, so wise, and such good counsellors.” In the book
called _Christian Marriage_, Erasmus banters young ladies who learn
only to make a bow, to hold the hands crossed, to bite their lips
when they laugh, to eat and drink as little as possible at table,
after having taken ample portions in private. More ambitious for
the wife, Erasmus recommends her to pursue the studies which will
assist her in educating her own children, and in taking part in the
intellectual life of her husband.
Vives, a contemporary of Erasmus (1492-1540), a Spanish teacher,
expressed analogous ideas in his books on the education of women,
in which he recommends young women to read Plato and Seneca.
To sum up, the pedagogy of Erasmus is not without value; but
with him, education ran the risk of remaining exclusively Greek
and Latin. A humanist above everything else, he granted but very
small place to the sciences, and to history, which it sufficed to
skim over, as he said; and, what reveals his inmost nature, he
recommended the study of the physical sciences for this reason in
particular, that the writer will find in the knowledge of nature an
abundant source of metaphors, images, and comparisons.
101. RABELAIS (1483-1553).--Wholly different is the spirit of
Rabelais, who, under a fanciful and original form, has sketched a
complete system of education. Some pages of marked gravity in the
midst of the epic vagabondage of his burlesque work, give him the
right to appear in the first rank among those who have reformed the
art of training and developing the human soul.[71]
The pedagogy of Rabelais is the first appearance of what may be
called _realism_ in instruction, in distinction from the scholastic
_formalism_. The author of _Gargantua_ turns the mind of the young
man towards objects truly worthy of occupying his attention. He
catches a glimpse of the future reserved to scientific education,
and to the study of nature. He invites the mind, not to the labored
subtilties and complicated tricks which scholasticism had brought
into fashion, but to manly efforts, and to a wide unfolding of
human nature.
102. CRITICISM OF THE OLD EDUCATION: GARGANTUA AND EUDEMON.--In
the manners of the sixteenth century, the keen satire of Rabelais
found many opportunities for disporting itself; and his book may be
regarded as a collection of pamphlets. But there is nothing that he
has pursued with more sarcasms than the education of his day.
At the outset, Gargantua is educated according to the scholastic
methods. He works for twenty years with all his might, and learns
so perfectly the books that he studies that he can recite them by
heart, backwards and forwards, “and yet his father discovered that
all this profited him nothing; and what is worse, that it made him
a madcap, a ninny, dreamy, and infatuated.”
To that unintelligent and artificial training which surcharges the
memory, which holds the pupil for long years over insipid books,
which robs the mind of all independent activity, which dulls rather
than sharpens the intelligence,--to all this Rabelais opposes a
natural education, which appeals to experience and to facts, which
trains the young man, not only for the discussions of the schools,
but for real life, and for intercourse with the world, and which,
finally, enriches the intelligence and adorns the memory without
stifling the native graces and the free activities of the spirit.
Eudemon, who, in Rabelais’ romance, represents the pupil trained by
the new methods, knows how to think with accuracy and speak with
facility; his bearing is without boldness, but with confidence.
When introduced to Gargantua, he turns towards him, “cap in hand,
with open countenance, ruddy lips, steady eyes, and with modesty
becoming a youth”; he salutes him elegantly and graciously. To all
the pleasant things which Eudemon says to him, Gargantua finds
nothing to say in reply: “His countenance appeared as though he had
taken to crying immoderately; he hid his face in his cap, and not
a single word could be drawn from him.”
In these two pupils, so different in manner, Rabelais has
personified two contrasted methods of education: that which,
by mechanical exercises of memory, enfeebles and dulls the
intelligence; and that which, with larger grants of liberty,
develops keen intelligences, and frank and open characters.
103. THE NEW EDUCATION.--Let us now notice with some detail how
Rabelais conceives this new education.[72] After having thrown into
sharp relief the faults contracted by Gargantua in the school of
his first teachers, he entrusts him to a preceptor, Ponocrates, who
is charged with correcting his faults, and with re-moulding him; he
is to employ his own principles in the government of his pupil.
Ponocrates proceeds slowly at first; he considers that “nature does
not endure sudden changes without great violence.” He studies and
observes his pupil; he wishes to judge of his natural disposition.
Then he sets himself to work; he undertakes a general recasting of
the character and spirit of Gargantua, while directing, at the same
time, his physical, intellectual, and moral education.
104. PHYSICAL EDUCATION.--Hygiene and gymnastics, cleanliness which
protects the body, and exercise which strengthens it,--these two
essential parts of physical education receive equal attention from
Rabelais. Erasmus thought it was nonsense (“_ne rime à rien_”)
to wash more than once a day. Gargantua, on the contrary, after
eating, bathes his hands and his eyes in fresh water. Rabelais
does not forget that he has been a physician; he omits no detail
relative to the care of the body, even the most repugnant. He is
far from believing, with the mystics of the Middle Age, that it is
permissible to lodge knowledge in a sordid body, and that a foul
or neglected exterior is not unbefitting virtuous souls. The first
preceptors of Gargantua said that it sufficed to comb one’s hair
“with the four fingers and the thumb; and that whoever combed,
washed, and cleansed himself otherwise, was losing his time in this
world.” With Ponocrates, Gargantua reforms his habits, and tries to
resemble Eudemon, “whose hair was so neatly combed, who was so well
dressed, of such fine appearance, and was so modest in his bearing,
that he much more resembled a little angel than a man.”
Rabelais attaches equal importance to gymnastics, to walking, and
to active life in the open air. He does not allow Gargantua to grow
pale over his books, and to protract his study into the night.
After the morning’s lessons, he takes him out to play. Tennis and
ball follow the application to books: “He exercises his body just
as vigorously as he had before exercised his mind.” And so, after
the study of the afternoon till the supper hour, Gargantua devotes
his time to physical exercises. Riding, wrestling, swimming,
every species of physical recreation, gymnastics under all its
forms,--there is nothing which Gargantua does not do to give
agility to his limbs and to strengthen his muscles. Here, as in
other places, Rabelais stretches a point, and purposely resorts
to exaggeration in order to make his thought better comprehended.
It would require days of several times twenty-four hours, in
order that a real man could find the time to do all that the
author of Gargantua requires of his giant. In contrast with the
long asceticism of the Middle Age, he proposes a real revelry of
gymnastics for the colossal body of his hero. We will not forget
that here, as in all the other parts of Rabelais’ work, fiction
is ever mingled with fact. Rabelais wrote for giants, and it is
natural that he should demand gigantesque efforts of them. In order
to comprehend the exact thought of the author, it is necessary to
reduce his fantastic exaggerations to human proportions.
105. INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION.--For the mind, as for the body,
Rabelais requires prodigies of activity. Gargantua rises at four
in the morning, and the greater part of the long day is filled
with study. For the indolent contemplations of the Middle Age,
Rabelais substitutes an incessant effort and an intense activity of
the mind. Gargantua first studies the ancient languages, and the
first place is given to Greek, which Rabelais rescues from the long
discredit into which it had fallen in the Middle Age, as is proved
by the vulgar adage, “_Græcum est, non legitur_.”
“Now, all disciplines are restored, and the languages
reinstated,--Greek (without which it is a shame for a person to
call himself learned), Hebrew, Chaldean, Latin. There are very
elegant and correct editions in use, which have been invented in
my age by divine inspiration, as, on the other hand, artillery was
invented by diabolic suggestion. The whole world is full of wise
men, of learned teachers, and of very large libraries, and it is my
opinion that neither in the time of Plato nor in that of Cicero,
nor in that of Papinian, were there such opportunities for study as
we see to-day.”
Like all his contemporaries, Rabelais is an enthusiast in classical
learning; but he is distinguished from them by a very decided
taste for the sciences, and in particular for the natural sciences.
106. THE PHYSICAL AND NATURAL SCIENCES.--The Middle Age had
completely neglected the study of nature. The art of observing was
ignored by those subtile dialecticians, who would know nothing of
the physical world except through the theories of Aristotle or the
dogmas of the sacred books; who attached no value to the study of
the material universe, the transient and despised abode of immortal
souls; and who, moreover, flattered themselves that they could
discover at the end of their syllogisms all that was necessary to
know about it. Rabelais is certainly the first, in point of time,
of that grand school of educators who place the sciences in the
first rank among the studies worthy of human thought.
The scholar of the Middle Age knew nothing of the world. Gargantua
requires of his son that he shall know it under all its aspects:
“As to the knowledge of the facts of nature,” he writes to
Pantagruel, “I would have you devote yourself to them with great
care, so that there shall be neither sea, river, nor fountain,
whose fish you do not know. All the birds of the air, all the
trees, shrubs, and fruits of the forests, all the grasses of the
earth, all the metals concealed in the depths of the abysses, the
precious stones of the entire East and South,--none of these should
be unknown to you. By frequent dissections, acquire a knowledge of
the other world, which is man. In a word, I point out a new world
of knowledge.”
Nothing is omitted, it is observed, from what constitutes the
science of the universe or the knowledge of man.
It is further to be noticed, that Rabelais wishes his pupil not
only to know, but to love and experience nature. He recommends
his pupils to go and read the _Georgics_ of Virgil in the midst
of meadows and woods. The precursor of Rousseau on this point as
upon some others, he thinks there is a gain in spiritual health by
refreshing the imagination and giving repose to the spirit, through
the contemplation of the beauties of nature.
Ponocrates, in order to afford Gargantua distraction from his
extreme attention to study, recommended once each month some very
clear and serene day, on which they set out at an early hour from
the city, and went to Chantilly, or Boulogne, or Montrouge, or Pont
Charenton, or Vannes, or Saint Cloud. And there they passed the
whole day in playing, singing, dancing, frolicking in some fine
meadow, hunting for sparrows, collecting pebbles, fishing for frogs
and crabs.[73]
107. OBJECT LESSONS.--In the scheme of studies planned by Rabelais,
the mind of the pupil is always on the alert, even at table. There,
instruction takes place while talking. The conversation bears
upon the food, upon the objects which attract the attention of
Gargantua, upon the nature and properties of water, wine, bread,
and salt. Every sensible object becomes material for questions
and explanations. Gargantua often takes walks across fields,
and he studies botany in the open country, “passing through
meadows or other grassy places, observing trees and plants,
comparing them with ancient books where they are described, ...
and taking handfuls of them home.” There are but few didactic
lessons; intuitive instruction, given in the presence of the
objects themselves, such is the method of Rabelais. It is in the
same spirit that he sends his pupil to visit the stores of the
silversmiths, the founderies, the alchemists’ laboratories, and
shops of all kinds,--real scientific excursions, such as are in
vogue to-day. Rabelais would form a complete man, skilled in art
and industry, and also capable, like the _Émile_ of Rousseau, of
devoting himself to manual labor. When the weather is rainy, and
walking impracticable, Gargantua employs his time in splitting and
sawing wood, and in threshing grain in the barn.
108. ATTRACTIVE METHODS.--By a reaction against the irksome
routine of the Middle Age, Rabelais would have his pupil study
while playing, and even learn mathematics “through recreation
and amusement.” It is in handling playing-cards that Gargantua
is taught thousands of “new inventions which relate to the
science of numbers.” The same course is followed in geometry and
astronomy. The accomplishments are not neglected, especially
fencing. Gargantua is an enormous man, who is to be developed in
all directions. The fine arts, music, painting, and sculpture,
are not strangers to him. The hero of Rabelais represents, not so
much an individual man, as a collective being who personifies the
whole of society, with all the variety of its new aspirations, and
with all the intensity of its multiplied needs. While the Middle
Age, through a narrow spirit, left in inaction certain natural
tendencies, Rabelais calls them all into life, without choice, it
is true, and without discrimination, with the whole ardor of an
emancipated imagination.
109. RELIGIOUS EDUCATION.--In respect of religion as of everything
else, Rabelais is the adversary of an education wholly exterior
and of pure form. He ridicules his Gargantua, who, before his
intellectual conversion, when he was still at the school of “his
preceptors, the sophists,” goes to church, after a hearty dinner,
to hear twenty-six or thirty masses. What he substitutes for this
exterior devotion, for this abuse of superficial practices, is a
real feeling of piety, and the direct reading of the sacred texts:
“It is while Gargantua was being dressed that there was read to him
a page of Divine Scripture.”[74] Still more, it is the intimate
and personal adoration “of the great psalmodist of the universe,”
excited by the study of the works of God. Gargantua and his master,
Ponocrates, have scarcely risen when they observe the state of the
heavens, and admire the celestial vault. In the evening they devote
themselves to the same contemplation. After his meals, as before
going to sleep, Gargantua offers prayers to God, to adore Him, to
confirm his faith, to glorify Him for His boundless goodness, to
thank Him for all the time past, and to recommend himself to Him
for the time to come. The religious feeling of Rabelais proceeds
at the same time, both from the sentiment which provoked the
Protestant Reformation, of which he came near being an adherent,
and from tendencies still more modern,--those, for example, which
animate the deistic philosophy of Rousseau.
110. MORAL EDUCATION.--Those who know Rabelais only by reputation,
or through some of his innumerable drolleries, will perhaps be
astonished that the jovial author can be counted a teacher of
morals. It is impossible, however, to misunderstand the sincere and
lofty inspiration of such passages as this:
“Because, according to the wise Solomon, wisdom does not enter into
a malevolent soul, and knowledge without conscience is but the
ruin of the soul; it becomes you to serve, to love, and to fear
God, and to place on Him all your thoughts, all your hopes....
Be suspicious of the errors of the world. Apply not your heart
to vanity, for this life is transitory; but the word of God
endures forever. Be useful to all your neighbors, and love them as
yourself. Revere your teachers, flee the company of men whom you
would not resemble; and the grace which God has given you receive
not in vain. And when you think you have all the knowledge that can
be acquired by this means, return to me, so that I may see you, and
give you my benediction before I die.”[75]
111. MONTAIGNE (1533-1592) AND RABELAIS.--Between Erasmus, the
learned humanist, exclusively devoted to belles-lettres, and
Rabelais, the bold innovator, who extends as far as possible the
limits of the intelligence, and who causes the entire encyclopædia
of human knowledge to enter the brain of his pupil at the risk
of splitting it open, Montaigne occupies an intermediate place,
with his circumspect and conservative tendencies, with his
discreet and moderate pedagogy, the enemy of all excesses. It
seemed that Rabelais would develop all the faculties equally, and
place all studies, letters, and sciences upon the same footing.
Montaigne demands a choice. Between the different faculties he
attempts particularly to train the judgment; among the different
knowledges, he recommends by preference those which form sound
and sensible minds. Rabelais overdrives mind and body. He dreams
of an extravagant course of instruction where every science shall
be studied exhaustively.[76] Montaigne simply demands that “one
taste the upper crust of the sciences”; that one skim over them
without going into them deeply, “in French fashion.” In his view,
a well-made head is worth more than a head well filled. It is not
so much to accumulate, to amass, knowledge, as to assimilate as
much of it as a prudent intelligence can digest without fatigue.
In a word, while Rabelais sits down, so to speak, at the banquet
of knowledge with an avidity which recalls the gluttony of the
Pantagruelian repasts, Montaigne is a delicate connoisseur, who
would only satisfy with discretion a regulated appetite.
112. THE PERSONAL EDUCATION OF MONTAIGNE.--One often becomes
teacher through recollection of his personal education. This is
what happened to Montaigne. His pedagogy is at once an imitation of
the methods which a father full of solicitude had himself applied
to him, and a protest against the defects and the vices of the
college of Guienne, which he entered at the age of six years. The
home education of Montaigne affords the interesting spectacle of a
child who develops freely. My spirit, he himself says, was trained
with all gentleness and freedom, without severity or constraint.
His father, skilful in his tender care, had him awakened each
morning at the sound of musical instruments, so as to spare him
those brusque alarms that are bad preparations for toil. In a word,
he applied to him that tempered discipline, at once indulgent
and firm, equally removed from complacency and harshness, which
Montaigne has christened with the name of _severe mildness_.
Another characteristic of Montaigne’s education is, that he learned
Latin as one learns his native tongue. His father had surrounded
him with domestics and teachers who conversed with him only in
Latin. The result of this was, that at the age of six he was so
proficient in the language of Cicero, that the best Latinists
of the time feared to address him (_craignissent à l’accoster_).
On the other hand, he knew no more of French than he did of
Arabic.[77] It is evident that Montaigne’s father had taken a false
route, but at least Montaigne derived a just conception from this
experience, namely, that the methods ordinarily pursued in the
study of the dead languages are too slow and too mechanical; that
an abuse is made of rules, and that sufficient attention is not
given to practice: “No doubt but _Greek_ and _Latin_ are very great
ornaments, and of very great use, but we buy them too dear.”[78]
At the college of Guienne, where he passed seven years, Montaigne
learned to detest corporal chastisements and the hard discipline
of the scholars of his day: “ ... Instead of tempting and alluring
children to letters by apt and gentle ways, our pedants do in
truth present nothing before them but rods and ferules, horror and
cruelty. Away with this violence! away with this compulsion! than
which, I certainly believe, nothing more dulls and degenerates a
well-descended nature.... The strict government of most of our
colleges has evermore displeased me.... ’Tis the true house of
correction of imprisoned youth.... Do but come in when they are
about their lesson, and you shall hear nothing but the outcries
of boys under execution, with the thundering noise of their
_Pedagogues_, drunk with fury, to make up the consort. A pretty
way this! to tempt these tender and timorous souls to love their
book, with a furious countenance, and a rod in hand. A cursed and
pernicious way of proceeding.... How much more decent would it be
to see their classes strewed with green leaves and fine flowers,
than with bloody stumps of birch and willows? Were it left to my
ordering, I should paint the school with the pictures of Joy and
Gladness, Flora and the Graces ... that where their profit is, they
might have their pleasure too.”[79]
113. IMPORTANCE OF A GENERAL RATHER THAN A SPECIAL EDUCATION.--If
Montaigne, in different chapters of his essays,[80] has given
passing attention to pedagogical questions, it is not only through
a recollection of his own years of apprenticeship, but also because
of his judgment as a philosopher, that “the greatest and most
important task of human understanding is in those matters which
concern the nurture and instruction of children.”
For him, education is the art of forming men, and not specialists.
This he explains in his original manner under the form of an
anecdote:
“Going to Orleans one day, I met in that plain this side Clery, two
pedants who were going towards Bordeaux, about fifty paces distant
from one another. Still further back of them, I saw a troop of
horse, and at their head a gentleman who was the late Count de la
Rochefoucault. One of my company inquired of the foremost of these
dominies, who that gentleman was who was following him. He had not
observed the train that was following after, and thought that the
question related to his companion; and so he replied pleasantly,
‘He is not a gentleman, but a grammarian, and I am a logician.’
Now, as we are here concerned in the training, not of a grammarian,
or of a logician, but of a complete gentleman, we will let those
who will abuse their leisure; but we have business of another
nature.”[81]
It is true that Montaigne says gentleman, and not simply man; but
in reality his thought is the same as that of Rousseau and of all
those who require a general education of the human soul.
114. THE PURPOSE OF INSTRUCTION.--From what has now been said, it
is easy to comprehend that, in the opinion of Montaigne, letters
and other studies are but the means or instrument, and not the
aim and end of instruction. The author of the _Essays_ does not
yield to the literary craze, which, in the sixteenth century,
took certain scholars captive, and made the ideal of education to
consist of a knowledge of the ancient languages. It is of little
consequence to him that a pupil has learned to write in Latin;
what he does require, is that he become better and more prudent,
and have a sounder judgment. “If his soul be not put into better
rhythm, if the judgment be not better settled, I would rather have
him spend his time at tennis.”[82]
115. EDUCATION OF THE JUDGMENT.--Montaigne has expressed his
dominant thought on education in a hundred different ways. He is
preoccupied with the training of the judgment, and on this point we
might quote whole pages:
“ ... According to the fashion in which we are instructed, it is
not singular that neither scholars nor masters become more able,
although they become more wise. In fact, our parents devote their
care and expense to furnishing our heads with knowledge; but to
judgment and virtue no additions are made. Say of a passer-by to
people, ‘O what a learned man!’ and of another, ‘O what a good
man goes there!’ and they will not fail to turn their eyes and
attention towards the former. There should be a third to cry, ‘O
the blockheads!’ Men are quick to inquire, ‘Does he know Greek or
Latin? Does he write in verse or in prose?’ But whether he has
become better or more prudent, which is the principal thing, this
receives not the least notice; whereas we ought to inquire who is
the better learned, rather than who is the more learned?”
“We labor only at filling the memory, and leave the understanding
and the conscience void. Just as birds sometimes go in quest of
grain, and bring it in their bills without tasting it themselves,
to make of it mouthfuls for their young; so our pedants go
rummaging in books for knowledge, only to hold it at their tongues’
end, and then distribute it to their pupils.”[83]
116. STUDIES RECOMMENDED.--The practical and utilitarian mind of
Montaigne dictates to him his programme of studies. With him it
is not a question of plunging into the depths of the sciences;
disinterested studies are not his affair. If Rabelais proposed to
develop the speculative faculties, Montaigne, on the contrary, is
preoccupied with the practical faculties, and he makes everything
subordinate to morals. For example, he would have history learned,
not for the sake of knowing the facts, but of appreciating them. It
is not so necessary to imprint in the memory of the child “the date
of the fall of Carthage as the character of Hannibal and Scipio,
nor so much where Marcellus died as why it was unworthy of his duty
that he died there.”[84]
And so in philosophy, it is not the general knowledge of man and
nature that Montaigne esteems and recommends; but only those parts
that have a direct bearing on morals and active life.
“It is a pity that matters should be at such a pass as they are
in our time, that philosophy, even with people of understanding,
should be looked upon as a vain and fanciful name, a thing of no
use and no value, either for opinion or for action. I think that
it is the love of quibbling that has caused things to take this
turn.... Philosophy is that which teaches us to live.”[85]
117. EDUCATIONAL METHODS.--An education purely bookish is not to
Montaigne’s taste. He counts less upon books than upon experience
and mingling with men; upon the observation of things, and upon the
natural suggestions of the mind:
“For learning to judge well and speak well, whatever presents
itself to our eyes serves as a sufficient book. The knavery of
a page, the blunder of a servant, a table witticism,--all such
things are so many new things to think about. And for this purpose
conversation with men is wonderfully helpful, and so is a visit to
foreign lands ... to bring back the customs of those nations, and
their manners, and to whet and sharpen our wits by rubbing them
upon those of others.”
“ ... The lesson will be given, sometimes by conversation,
sometimes by book.... Let the child examine every man’s talent,
a peasant, a mason, a passer-by. Put into his head an honest
curiosity in everything. Let him observe whatever is curious in
his surroundings,--a fine house, a delicate fountain, an eminent
man, the scene of an ancient battle, the routes of Cæsar, or of
Charlemagne....”[85]
Things should precede words. On this point Montaigne anticipates
Comenius, Rousseau, and all modern educators.
“Let our pupil be provided with things; words will follow only too
fast.”[86]
“The world is given to babbling; I hardly ever saw a man who did
not rather prate too much, than speak too little. Yet the half
of our life goes in that way; we are kept four or five years in
learning words....”[87]
“This is not saying that it is not a fine and good thing to speak
well; but not so good as it is made out to be. I am vexed that our
life is so much occupied with all this.”
118. HOW WE SHOULD READ.--Montaigne has keenly criticised the abuse
of books: “I would not have this boy of ours imprisoned, and made a
slave to his book.... I would not have his spirit cow’d and subdu’d
by applying him to the rack, and tormenting him, as some do,
fourteen or fifteen hours a day, and so make a pack-horse of him.
Neither should I think it good, when, by a solitary and melancholic
complexion, he is discovered to be much addicted to his book, to
nourish that humor in him, for that renders them unfit for civil
conversation, and diverts them from better employments.”[88]
But while he advises against excess in reading, he has admirably
defined the manner in which we ought to read. Above all, he says,
let us assimilate and appropriate what we read. Let the work of
the reader resemble that of bees, that, on this side and on that,
tap the flowers for their sweet juices, and make them into honey,
which is no longer thyme nor marjoram. In other terms, we should
read with reflection, and with a critical spirit, while mastering
the thoughts of the author by our personal judgment, without ever
becoming slaves to them.
119. MONTAIGNE’S ERRORS.--Montaigne’s greatest fault, it must
be confessed, is that he is somewhat heartless. Somewhat of an
egoist and Epicurean, he celebrates only the easy virtues that
are attained “by shady routes through green meadows and fragrant
flowers.” Has he himself ever performed painful duties that demand
effort? To love children, he waits till they are amiable; while
they are small, he disdains them, and keeps them at a distance from
him:
“I cannot entertain that passion of dandling and caressing an
infant, scarcely born, having as yet neither motion of soul nor
shape of body distinguishable, by which they can render themselves
amiable; and have not suffered them to be nursed near me....”[89]
“Never take, and, still less, never give, to the women of your
household the care of the feeding of your children!”
Montaigne joined precept to example. He somewhere says unfeelingly:
“My children all died while at nurse.”[90] He goes so far as to
say that a man of letters ought to prefer his writings to his
children: “The births of our intelligence are the children the most
truly our own.”[91]
120. INCOMPLETENESS OF HIS VIEWS ON THE EDUCATION OF
WOMEN.--Another mental defect in Montaigne is, that, by reason of
his moderation and conservatism, he remains a little narrow. High
conceptions of human destiny are not to be expected of him; his
manner of conceiving of it is mean and commonplace. This lack of
intellectual breadth is especially manifest in his reflections on
the education of women. Montaigne is of that number, who, through
false gallantry, would keep woman in a state of ignorance on the
pretext that instruction would mar her natural charms. In their
case, he would prohibit even the study of rhetoric, because, he
says, that would “conceal her charms under borrowed charms.” Women
should be content with the advantages which their sex assures to
them. With the knowledge which they naturally have, “they command
with the switch, and rule both the regents and the schools.”
However, he afterwards thinks better of it; but in his concessions
there is more of contempt than in his prohibitions: “If, however,
it displeases them to make us any concessions whatever, and they
are determined, through curiosity, to know something of books,
poetry is an amusement befitting their needs; for it is a wanton,
crafty art, disguised, all for pleasure, all for show, just as they
are.”[92]
The following passage may also be quoted:--
“When I see them tampering with rhetoric, law, logic, and the like,
so improper and unnecessary for their business, I begin to suspect
that the men who inspire them with such things do it that they may
govern them upon that account.”[93]
It is impossible to express a greater contempt for women. Montaigne
goes so far as to deny her positive qualities of heart. He chances
to say, with reference to Mlle. de Gournay, his adopted daughter:
“The perfection of the most saintly affection has been attained
when it does not exhibit the least trace of sex.”
To conclude: notwithstanding some grave defects, the pedagogy of
Montaigne is a pedagogy of good sense, and certain parts of it
will always deserve to be admired. The Jansenists, and Locke,
and Rousseau, in different degrees, draw their inspiration from
Montaigne. In his own age, it is true, his ideas were accepted by
scarcely any one save his disciple Charron, who, in his book of
_Wisdom_,[94] has done scarcely more than to arrange in order the
thoughts that are scattered through the _Essays_. But if he had
no influence upon his own age, Montaigne has at least remained,
after three centuries, a sure guide in the matter of intellectual
education.
[121. ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.--1. The dominant characteristic of
education during the Renaissance period is the reaction which it
exhibits against certain errors in Middle Age education.
2. A second characteristic is a disposition to conciliate or
harmonize principles and methods whose fault is exaggeration.
3. Against instruction based almost wholly on authority, there is
a reaction in favor of free inquiry.
4. Opposed to an education of the professional or technical type,
there is proposed an education of the general or liberal type.
5. From being almost exclusively ethical and religious, education
tends to become secular.
6. Didactic, formal instruction out of books, dealing in
second-hand knowledge, is succeeded by informal, intuitive
instruction from natural objects, dealing in knowledge at first
hand.
7. The conception that education is a process of manufacture
begins to give place to the conception that it is a process of
growth.
8. Teaching whose purpose was information is succeeded by
teaching whose purpose is formation, discipline, or training.
9. A discipline that was harsh and cruel is succeeded by a
discipline comparatively mild and humane; and manners that were
rude and coarse, are followed by a finer code of civility.]
FOOTNOTES:
[71] See especially the following chapters: Book I. chaps. XIV.,
XV., XXI., XXII., XXIV.; Book II. chaps. V., VI., VII., VIII.
[72] The contrast between the general system of education that
culminated with the Reformation, and the system that had its rise
at the same period, is so marked that there is an historical
propriety in calling the first the old education, and the second,
or later, the new education. Recollecting the tendency of the
human mind to pass from one extreme to an opposite extreme, we may
suspect that the final state of educational thought and practice
will represent a mean between these two contrasted systems: it is
inconceivable that the old was wholly wrong, or that the new is
wholly right. (P.)
[73] Book I. chap. XXIV.
[74] Rabelais recommends the study of Hebrew, so that the sacred
books may be known in their original form. In some place he says:
“I love much more to hear the Gospel than to hear the life of Saint
Margaret or some other cant.”
[75] Book II. chap. VIII.
[76] This pansophic scheme of Rabelais has been revived in later
times by Bentham, in his _Chrestomathia_, and still later by
Spencer, in his _Education_. It seems to have been forgotten that
the division of labor affects education in much the same way as it
affects all other departments of human activity: that there is no
more need of having as a personal possession all the knowledge we
need for guidance, than for owning all the agencies we need for
locomotion or communication. (P.)
[77] “I was above six years of age before I understood either
_French_ or _Perigordian_ any more than Arabic, and without art,
book, grammar, or precept, whipping, or the experience of a tear,
had by that time learned to speak as pure _Latin_ as my master
himself.” _Essays_, Book I. chap. XXV. In this chapter I have
several times quoted from Cotton’s translation. (London: 1711.) (P.)
[78] Book I. chap. XXV.
[79] Book I. chap. XXV.
[80] See particularly Chap. XXIV. of Book I., _Of Pedantry_; Chap.
XXV. Book I., _Of the Education of Children_; Chap. VIII. Book II.,
_Of the Affection of Fathers to their Children_.
[81] Book I. chap. XXV.
[82] Book I. chap. XXIV.
[83] Book I. chap. XXIV.
[84] Book I. chap. XXV.
[85] Book I. chap. XXV.
[86] Has not this extravagant preference for things, as
distinguished from words, become a new superstition in educational
theory? Considering the misuse made of words by Scholasticism, it
was time for Montaigne to summon the attention outwards to sensible
realities; but it is more than doubtful whether there is any valid
ground for the absolute rule of modern pedagogy, “first the idea,
then the term.” In actual experience, there is no invariable
sequence. The really important thing is, that _terms be made
significant_. (P.)
[87] Book I. chap. XXV.
[88] Book I. chap. XXV.
[89] Book II. chap. VIII.
[90] I am not sure that this remark does not do Montaigne
injustice, especially when we consider the connection in which the
original remark is made: “I am of opinion that what is not to be
done by reason, prudence, and address, is never to be effected by
force. I myself was brought up after that manner; and they tell me
that, in all my first age, I never felt the rod but twice, and then
very easily. I have practised the same method with my children,
who all of them dy’d at nurse; but Leonora, my only daughter,
is arrived to the age of six years and upwards without other
correction for her childish faults than words only, and those very
gentle.” Book II. chap. VIII. (P.)
[91] Book III. chap. XIII.
[92] Book III. chap. III.
[93] Book III. chap. III.
[94] See particularly Chap. XIV. of Book III.
CHAPTER VI.
PROTESTANTISM AND PRIMARY INSTRUCTION. LUTHER AND COMENIUS.
ORIGIN OF PRIMARY INSTRUCTION; SPIRIT OF THE PROTESTANT REFORM;
CALVIN, MELANCTHON, ZWINGLI; LUTHER (1483-1546); APPEAL ADDRESSED
TO THE MAGISTRATES AND LEGISLATORS OF GERMANY; DOUBLE UTILITY
OF INSTRUCTION; NECESSITY OF A SYSTEM OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION;
CRITICISM OF THE SCHOOLS OF THE PERIOD; ORGANIZATION OF NEW
SCHOOLS; PROGRAMME OF STUDIES; PROGRESS IN METHODS; THE STATES
GENERAL OF ORLEANS (1560); RATICH (1571-1635); COMENIUS
(1592-1671); HIS CHARACTER; BACONIAN INSPIRATION; LIFE OF
COMENIUS; HIS PRINCIPAL WORKS; DIVISION OF INSTRUCTION INTO FOUR
GRADES; ELEMENTARY INITIATION INTO ALL THE STUDIES; THE PEOPLE’S
SCHOOL; SITE OF THE SCHOOL; INTUITIONS OF SENSE; SIMPLIFICATION
OF GRAMMATICAL STUDIES; PEDAGOGICAL PRINCIPLES OF COMENIUS;
ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.
122. ORIGIN OF PRIMARY INSTRUCTION.--With La Salle and the
foundation of the Institute of the Brethren of the Christian
Schools, the historian of education recognizes the Catholic origin
of primary instruction; in the decrees and laws of the French
Revolution, its lay and philosophical origin; but it is to the
Protestant Reformers,--to Luther in the sixteenth century, and to
Comenius in the seventeenth--that must be ascribed the honor of
having first organized schools for the people. In its origin, the
primary school is the child of Protestantism, and its cradle was
the Reformation.
123. SPIRIT OF THE PROTESTANT REFORM.--The development of primary
instruction was the logical consequence of the fundamental
principles of the Protestant Reform. As Michel Bréal has said:
“In making man responsible for his own faith, and in placing the
source of that faith in the Holy Scriptures, the Reform contracted
the obligation to put each one in a condition to save himself by
the reading and the understanding of the Bible.... The necessity
of explaining the Catechism, and making comments on it, was for
teachers an obligation to learn how to expound a thought, and to
decompose it into its elements. The study of the mother tongue
and of singing, was associated with the reading of the Bible
(translated into German by Luther) and with religious services.”
The Reform, then, contained, in germ, a complete revolution in
education; it enlisted the interests of religion in the service
of instruction, and associated knowledge with faith. This is the
reason that, for three centuries, the Protestant nations have led
humanity in the matter of primary instruction.
124. CALVIN (1509-1564), MELANCTHON (1497-1560), ZWINGLI
(1484-1532).--However, all the Protestant Reformers were far from
exhibiting the same zeal in behalf of primary instruction. Calvin,
absorbed in religious struggles and polemics, was not occupied
with the organization of schools till towards the close of his
life, and even the college that he founded at Geneva, in 1559, was
scarcely more than a school for the study of Latin. Melancthon, who
has been called “the preceptor of Germany,” worked more for high
schools than for schools for the people. He was above all else a
professor of Belles-Lettres; and it was with chagrin that he saw
his courses in the University of Wittenberg deserted by students
when he lectured on the _Olynthiacs_ of Demosthenes. Before Calvin
and Melancthon, the Swiss reformer Zwingli had shown his great
interest in primary teaching, in his little book “upon the manner
of instructing and bringing up boys in a Christian way” (1524). In
this he recommended natural history, arithmetic, and also exercises
in fencing, in order to furnish the country with timely defenders.
125. LUTHER (1483-1546).--The German reformer Luther is, of all his
co-religionists, the one who has served the cause of elementary
instruction with the most ardor. He not only addressed a pressing
appeal to the ruling classes in behalf of founding schools for
the people, but, by his influence, methods of instruction were
improved, and the educational spirit was renewed in accordance
with the principles of Protestantism. “Spontaneity,” it has been
said, not without some exaggeration, “free thought, and free
inquiry, are the basis of Protestantism; where it has reigned,
there have disappeared the method of repeating and of learning by
heart without reflection, mechanism, subjection to authority, the
paralysis of the intelligence oppressed by dogmatic instruction,
and science put in tutelage by the beliefs of the Church.”[95]
126. APPEAL ADDRESSED TO THE MAGISTRATES AND LEGISLATORS OF
GERMANY.--In 1524, Luther, in a special document addressed to
the public authorities of Germany, forcibly expressed himself
against the neglect into which the interests of instruction had
fallen. This appeal has this characteristic, that the great
reformer, while assuming that the Church is the mother of the
school, seems especially to count on the secular arm, upon the
power of the people, to serve his purposes in the cause of
universal instruction. “Each city,” he said, “is subjected to great
expense every year for the construction of roads, for fortifying
its ramparts, and for buying arms and equipping soldiers. Why
should it not spend an equal sum for the support of one or two
school-masters? The prosperity of a city does not depend solely on
its natural riches, on the solidity of its walls, on the elegance
of its mansions, and on the abundance of arms in its arsenals;
but the safety and strength of a city reside above all in a
good education, which furnishes it with instructed, reasonable,
honorable, and well-trained citizens.”[96]
127. DOUBLE UTILITY OF INSTRUCTION.--A remarkable fact about Luther
is, that as a preacher of instruction, he does not speak merely
from the religious point of view. After having recommended schools
as institutions auxiliary to the Church, he makes a resolute
argument from the human point of view. “Were there neither soul,
heaven, nor hell,” he says, “it would still be necessary to have
schools for the sake of affairs here below, as the history of
the Greeks and the Romans plainly teaches. The world has need of
educated men and women, to the end that the men may govern the
country properly, and that the women may properly bring up their
children, care for their domestics, and direct the affairs of their
households.”
128. NECESSITY OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION.--The objection will perhaps
be made, says Luther, that for the education of children the home
is sufficient, and that the school is useless: “To this I reply:
We clearly see how the boys and girls are educated who remain at
home.” He then shows that they are ignorant and “stupid,” incapable
of taking part in conversation, of giving good advice, and without
any experience of life; while, if they had been educated in the
schools, by teachers who could give instruction in the languages,
in the arts, and in history, they might in a little time gather
up within themselves, as in a mirror, the experience of whatever
has happened since the beginning of the world; and from this
experience, he adds, they would derive the wisdom they need for
self-direction and for giving wise counsel to others.
129. CRITICISM OF THE SCHOOLS OF THE PERIOD.--But since there must
be public schools, can we not be content with those which already
exist? Luther replies by proving that parents neglect to send their
children to them, and by denouncing the uselessness of the results
obtained by those who attend them. “We find people,” he says, “who
serve God in strange ways. They fast and wear coarse clothing, but
they pass blindly by the true divine service of the home,--they do
not know how to bring up their children.... Believe me, it is much
more necessary to give attention to your children and to provide
for their education than to purchase indulgencies, to visit foreign
churches, or to make solemn vows.... All people, especially the
Jews, oblige their children to go to school more than Christians
do. This is why the state of Christianity is so low, for all its
force and power are in the rising generation; and if these are
neglected, there will be Christian churches like a garden that has
been neglected in the spring-time.... Every day children are born
and are growing up, and, unfortunately, no one cares for the poor
young people, no one thinks to train them; they are allowed to go
as they will. Was it not lamentable to see a lad study in twenty
years and more only just enough bad Latin to enable him to become a
priest, and to go to mass? And he who attained to this was counted
a very happy being! Right happy the mother who bore such a child!
And he has remained all his life a poor unlettered man. Everywhere
we have seen such teachers and masters, who knew nothing themselves
and could teach nothing that was good and useful; they did not even
know how to learn and to teach. Has anything else been learned up
to this time in the high schools and in the convents except to
become asses and blockheads? ...”
130. ORGANIZATION OF THE NEW SCHOOLS.--So Luther resolves on the
organization of new schools. The cost of their maintenance he makes
a charge on the public treasury; he demonstrates to parents the
moral obligation to have their children instructed in them; to
the duty of conscience he adds civil obligation; and, finally, he
gives his thought to the means of recruiting the teaching service.
“Since the greatest evil in every place is the lack of teachers, we
must not wait till they come forward of themselves; we must take
the trouble to educate them and prepare them.” To this end Luther
keeps the best of the pupils, boys and girls, for a longer time in
school; gives them special instructors, and opens libraries for
their use. In his thought he never distinguishes women teachers
from men teachers; he wants schools for girls as well as for boys.
Only, not to burden parents and divert children from their daily
labor, he requires but little time for school duties. “You ask:
Is it possible to get along without our children, and bring them
up like gentlemen? Is it not necessary that they work at home? I
reply: I by no means approve of those schools where a child was
accustomed to pass twenty or thirty years in studying Donatus or
Alexander[97] without learning anything. Another world has dawned,
in which things go differently. My opinion is that we must send the
boys to school one or two hours a day, and have them learn a trade
at home for the rest of the time. It is desirable that these two
occupations march side by side. As it now is, children certainly
spend twice as much time in playing ball, running the streets, and
playing truant. And so the girls can equally well devote nearly the
same time to school, without neglecting their home duties; they
lose more time than this in over-sleeping and in dancing more than
is meet.”
131. PROGRAMME OF STUDIES.--Luther gives the first place to the
teaching of religion: “Is it not reasonable that every Christian
should know the Gospel at the age of nine or ten?”
Then come the languages, not, as might be hoped, the mother tongue,
but the learned languages, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Luther had
not yet been sufficiently rid of the old spirit to comprehend that
the language of the people ought to be the basis of universal
instruction. He left to Comenius the glory of making the final
separation of the primary school from the Latin school. But yet,
Luther gave excellent advice for the study of languages, which must
be learned, he said, less in the abstract rules of grammar than in
their concrete reality.
Luther recommends the mathematics, and also the study of nature;
but he has a partiality for history and historians, who are, he
says, “the best people and the best teachers,” on the condition
that they do not tamper with the truth, and that “they do not make
obscure the work of God.”
Of the liberal arts of the Middle Age, Luther does not make much
account. He rightly says of dialectics, that it is no equivalent
for real knowledge, and that it is simply “an instrument by which
we render to ourselves an account of what we know.”
Physical exercises are not forgotten in Luther’s pedagogical
regulations. But he attaches an especial importance to singing.
“Unless a schoolmaster know how to sing, I think him of no
account.” “Music,” he says again, “is a half discipline which makes
men more indulgent and more mild.”
132. PROGRESS IN METHODS.--At the same time that he extends the
programme of studies, Luther introduces a new spirit into methods.
He wishes more liberty and more joy in the school.
“Solomon,” he says, “is a truly royal schoolmaster. He does not,
like the monks, forbid the young to go into the world and be
happy. Even as Anselm said: ‘A young man turned aside from the
world is like a young tree made to grow in a vase.’ The monks have
imprisoned young men like birds in their cage. It is dangerous to
isolate the young. It is necessary, on the contrary, to allow young
people to hear, see, and learn all sorts of things, while all the
time observing the restraints and the rules of honor. Enjoyment
and recreation are as necessary for children as food and drink.
The schools till now were veritable prisons and hells, and the
schoolmaster a tyrant.... A child intimidated by bad treatment is
irresolute in all he does. He who has trembled before his parents
will tremble all his life at the sound of a leaf which rustles in
the wind.”
These quotations will suffice to make appreciated the large and
liberal spirit of Luther, and the range of his thought as an
educator. No one has more extolled the office of the teacher, of
which he said, when comparing it to preaching, it is the work of
all others the noblest, the most useful, and the best; “and yet,”
he added, “I do not know which of these two professions is the
better.”
Do not let ourselves imagine, however, that Luther at once
exercised a decisive influence on the current education of his day.
A few schools were founded, called writing schools; but the Thirty
Years’ War, and other events, interrupted the movement of which
Luther has the honor of having been the originator.
133. THE STATES GENERAL OF ORLEANS (1560).--While in Germany, under
the impulse of Luther, primary schools began to be established,
France remained in the background. Let us note, however, the
desires expressed by the States General of Orleans, in 1560:--
“May it please the king,” it was said in the memorial of the
nobility, “to levy a contribution upon the church revenues for the
reasonable support of teachers and men of learning in every city
and village, for the instruction of the needy youth of the country;
and let all parents be required, under penalty of a fine, to send
their children to school, and let them be constrained to observe
this law by the lords and the ordinary magistrates.”
It was demanded, in addition, that public lectures be given on
the Sacred Scriptures in _intelligible language_, that is, in the
mother tongue. But these demands, so earnest and democratic, of the
Protestant nobility of sixteenth century France, were not regarded.
With the fall of Protestantism, the cause of primary instruction in
France was doomed to a long eclipse. The nobles of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries did not think of petitioning again for
the education of the people, and Diderot could truthfully say of
them: “The nobility complain of the farm laborers who know how to
read. Perhaps the chief grievance of the nobility reduces itself
to this: that a peasant who knows how to read is more difficult to
oppress than another.”
134. RATICH (1571-1635).--In the first half of the seventeenth
century, Ratich, a German, and Comenius, a Slave, were, with very
different degrees of merit, the heirs of the educational thought of
Luther.
With something of the charlatan and the demagogue, Ratich devoted
his life to propagating a novel art of teaching, which he called
_didactics_, and to which he attributed marvels. He pretended, by
his _method of languages_, to teach Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, in
six months. But nevertheless, out of many strange performances and
lofty promises, there issue some thoughts of practical value. The
first merit of Ratich was to give the mother tongue, the German
language, the precedence over the ancient languages. An English
educational writer, Mr. R. H. Quick, in his _Essays on Educational
Reformers_ (1874), has thus summed up the essential principles of
the pedagogy of Ratich: 1. Everything should be taught in its own
time and order, and according to the natural method, in passing
from the more easy to the more difficult. 2. Only one thing should
be learned at a time. “We do not cook at the same time in one
pot, soup, meat, fish, milk, and vegetables.” 3. The same thing
should be repeated several times. 4. By means of these frequent
repetitions, the pupil will have nothing to learn by heart. 5.
All school-books should be written on the same plan. 6. The thing
as a whole should be made known before the thing in its details,
and the sequence should be from the general to the special. 7.
In every case we should proceed by induction and experiment.
Ratich especially means by this that we must make an end of mere
authority, and of the testimony of the ancients, and must appeal to
individual reason. 8. Finally, everything should be learned without
coercion. Coercion and the rod are contrary to nature, and disgust
the young with study. The human understanding learns with pleasure
all that it ought to retain. It does not seem that Ratich knew how
to draw from these principles, which, by the way, are not true save
under certain corrections, all the happy results that are contained
in them. He left to Comenius the glory of applying the new spirit
to actual practice.
135. COMENIUS (1592-1671).--For a long time unknown and
unappreciated, Comenius has finally received from our
contemporaries the admiration that is due him. Michelet speaks of
him with enthusiasm as “that rare genius, that gentle, fertile,
universal scholar”;[98] and he calls him the first evangelist
of modern pedagogy, Pestalozzi being the second. It is easy to
justify this appreciation. The character of Comenius equals his
intelligence. Through a thousand obstacles he devoted his long
life to the work of popular instruction. With a generous ardor he
consecrated himself to infancy. He wrote twenty works and taught
in twenty cities. Moreover, he was the first to form a definite
conception of what the elementary studies should be. He determined,
nearly three hundred years ago, with an exactness that leaves
nothing to be desired, the division of the different grades of
instruction. He exactly defined some of the essential laws of the
art of teaching. He applied to pedagogy, with remarkable insight,
the principles of modern logic. Finally, as Michelet has said,
he was the Galileo, we would rather say, the Bacon, of modern
education.
136. BACONIAN INSPIRATION.--The special aims of pedagogy are
essentially related to the general aims of science. All progress
in science has its corresponding effects on education. When an
innovator has modified the laws for the discovery of truth, other
innovators appear, who modify, in their turn, the rules for
instruction. To a new logic almost necessarily corresponds a new
pedagogy.
Now Bacon, at the opening of the seventeenth century, had opened
unknown routes to scientific investigation. For the abstract
processes of thought, for the barren comparison of propositions
and words, in which the whole art of the syllogism consisted, the
author of the _Novum Organum_ had substituted the concrete study
of reality, the living and fruitful observation of nature. The
mechanism of deductive reasoning was replaced by the slow and
patient interpretation of facts. It no longer answered to analyze
with docile spirit principles that were assumed, right or wrong, as
absolute truths; nor to become expert in handling the syllogism,
which, like a mill running dry, often produced but little flour.
It was now necessary to open the eyes to the contemplation of the
universe, and by sense intuition, by observation, by experiment,
and by induction, to penetrate its secrets, and determine its laws.
It was necessary to ascend, step by step, from the knowledge of the
simplest things to the discovery of the most general laws; and,
finally, to demand of nature herself to reveal all that the human
intelligence, in its solitary meditations, is powerless to discover.
Looking at this subject more closely, this revolution in science,
so important from the point of view of speculative inquiry, and
destined to change the aspect of the sciences, also contained in
itself a revolution in education. For this purpose, all that was
needed was to apply to the development of the intelligence and
to the communication of knowledge the rules proposed by Bacon for
the investigation of truth. The laws of scientific induction might
become the laws for the education of the soul. No more setting
out with abstract principles, imposed by authority; but facts
intuitively apprehended, gathered by observation and verified by
experiment; the order of nature faithfully followed; a cautious
progression from the simplest and most elementary ideas to the most
difficult and most complex truths; the knowledge of things instead
of an analysis of words,--such was to be the character of the new
system of instruction. In other terms, it was possible to make
the child follow, in order to lead him to know and to comprehend
the capitalized truths that constitute the basis of elementary
instruction, the same method that Bacon recommended to scholars for
the discovery of unknown truths.[99]
It is this conversion, or, as we might say, this translation, of
the maxims of the Baconian logic into pedagogical rules, that
Comenius attempted, and this is why he has been called “the father
of the intuitive method.” He was nourished, intellectually, by the
reading of Bacon, whom he resembles, not only in his ideas, but
also in his figurative and often allegorical language. Even the
title of one of his books, _Didactica Magna_, recalls the title of
Bacon’s _Instauratio Magna_.
137. THE LIFE OF COMENIUS.--To know Comenius and the part he played
in the seventeenth century, to appreciate this grand educational
character, it would be necessary to begin by relating his life; his
misfortunes; his journeys to England, where Parliament invoked his
aid; to Sweden, where the Chancellor Oxenstiern employed him to
write manuals of instruction; especially his relentless industry,
his courage through exile, and the long persecutions he suffered as
a member of the sect of dissenters, the Moravian Brethren; and the
schools he founded at Fulneck, in Bohemia, at Lissa and at Patak,
in Poland. But it would require too much of our space to follow in
its incidents and catastrophes that troubled life, which, in its
sudden trials, as in the firmness that supported them, recalls the
life of Pestalozzi.[100]
138. HIS PRINCIPAL WORKS.--Comenius wrote a large number of books
in Latin, in German, and in Czech; but of these only a few are
worthy to engage the attention of the educator. In his other works
he allows himself to go off on philosophic excursions, and to
indulge in mystic reveries, led by his ardor to find what he called
_pansophia_, wisdom or universal knowledge. In this wilderness
of publications destined to oblivion, we shall notice only three
works, which contain the general principles of the pedagogy of
Comenius, and the applications which he has made of his method:--
1. The _Didactica Magna_, the _Great Didactics_ (written in Czech
at about 1630, and rewritten in Latin at about 1640). In this
work Comenius sets forth his principles, his general theories
on education, and also his peculiar views on the practical
organization of schools. It is to be regretted that a French
translation has not yet popularized this important book, that would
be worthy a place beside the _Thoughts_ of Locke and the _Émile_ of
Rousseau.[101]
2. The _Janua linguarum reserata_, the _Gate of Tongues Unlocked_
(1631). In the thought of the author, this was a new method of
learning the languages. Comenius, led astray on this point by his
religious prejudices, wished to banish the Latin authors from
the schools, “for the purpose,” he said, “of reforming studies
in the true spirit of Christianity.” Consequently, in order to
replace the classical authors, which he repudiated for this further
reason, that the reading of them is too difficult, and to make
a child study them “is to wish to push out into the vast ocean
a tiny bark that should be allowed only to sport on a little
lake,” he had formed the idea of composing a collection of phrases
distributed into a hundred chapters. These phrases, to the number
of a thousand, at first very simple, and of a single member, then
longer and more complicated, were formed of two thousand words,
chosen from among the most common and the most useful. Moreover,
the hundred chapters of the Janua taught the child, in succession
and in a methodical order, all the things in the universe,--the
elements, the metals, the stars, the animals, the organs of the
body, the arts and trades, etc., etc. In other terms, the
_Janua linguarum_ is a nomenclature of ideas and words designed to
fix the attention of the child upon everything he ought to know
of the world. Divested of the Latin text that accompanies it, the
_Janua_ is a first reading-book, very defective doubtless, but it
gives proof of a determined effort to adapt to the intelligence of
the child the knowledge that he ought to acquire.
3. The _Orbis sensualium pictus_, the _Illustrated World of
Sensible Objects_, the most popular of the author’s works (1658).
It is the _Janua linguarum_ accompanied with pictures, in lieu
of real objects, representing to the child the things that he
hears spoken of, as fast as he learns their names. The _Orbis
pictus_, the first practical application of the intuitive method,
had an extraordinary success, and has served as a model for the
innumerable illustrated books which for three centuries have
invaded the schools.
[Illustration: Geometria.
Die Erdmesskunst.
(Facsimile of illustration in the _Orbis Pictus_ of Comenius.)]
[Illustration: (Facsimile of page of text of the _Orbis Pictus_.)]
139. THE FOUR GRADES OF INSTRUCTION.--We must not require a man of
the seventeenth century to abjure Latin studies. Comenius prizes
them highly; but at least he is wise enough to put them in their
place, and does not confound them, as Luther did, with elementary
studies.
Nothing could be more exact, more clearly cut, than the scholastic
organization proposed by Comenius. We shall find in it what
the experience of three centuries has finally sanctioned and
established, the distribution of schools into these grades,--infant
schools, primary schools, secondary schools, and higher schools.
The first grade of instruction is the _maternal school_, the school
_by the mother’s knee_, _materni gremii_, as Comenius calls it.
The mother is the first teacher. Up to the age of six the child
is taught by her; he is initiated by her into those branches of
knowledge that he will pursue in the primary school.
The second grade is the _elementary public school_. All the
children, girls and boys, enter here at six, and leave at twelve.
The characteristic of this school is that the instruction there
given is in the mother tongue, and this is why Comenius calls it
the “common” school, _vernacula_, a term given by the Romans to the
language of the people.
The third grade is represented by the _Latin school_ or
_gymnasium_. Thither are sent the children from twelve to
eighteen years of age for whom has been reserved a more complete
instruction, such as we would now call secondary instruction.
Finally, to the fourth grade correspond the _academies_, that
is, institutions of higher instruction, opened to young men from
eighteen to twenty-four years of age.
The child, if he is able, will traverse these four grades in
succession; but, in the thought of Comenius, the studies should be
so arranged in the elementary schools, that in leaving them, the
pupil shall have a general education which makes it unnecessary for
him to go farther, if his condition in life does not destine him to
pursue the courses of the Latin School.
“We pursue,” says Comenius, “a general education, the teaching to
all men of all the subjects of human concern.... The purpose of the
people’s school shall be that all children of both sexes, from the
tenth to the twelfth or the thirteenth year, may be instructed in
that knowledge which is useful during the whole of life.”
This was an admirable definition of the purpose of the primary
school. A thing not less remarkable is that Comenius establishes an
elementary school in each village:--
“There should be a maternal school in each family; an elementary
school in each district; a gymnasium in each city; an academy in
each kingdom, or even in each considerable province.”
140. ELEMENTARY INITIATION INTO ALL THE STUDIES.--One of the most
novel and most original ideas of the great Slavic educator is the
wish that, from the earliest years of his life, the child may
acquire some elementary notions of all the sciences that he is to
study at a later period. From the cradle, the gaze of the infant,
guided by the mother, should be directed to all the objects that
surround him, so that his growing powers of reflection will be
brought into play in working on these sense intuitions. “Thus,
from the moment he begins to speak, the child comes to know
himself, and, by his daily experience, certain general and abstract
expressions; he comes to comprehend the meaning of the words
_something_, _nothing_, _thus_, _otherwise_, _where_, _similar_,
_different_; and what are generalizations and the categories
expressed by these words but the rudiments of metaphysics? In the
domain of physics, the infant can learn to know water, earth,
air, fire, rain, snow, etc., as well as the names and uses of
the parts of his body, or at least of the external members and
organs. He will take his first lesson in optics in learning to
distinguish light, darkness, and the different colors; and in
astronomy, in noticing the sun, the moon, and the stars, and in
observing that these heavenly bodies rise and set every day. In
geography, according to the place where he lives, he will be shown
a mountain, a valley, a plain, a river, a village, a hamlet, a
city, etc. In chronology, he will be taught what an hour is, a
day, a week, a year, summer, winter, yesterday, the day before
yesterday, to-morrow, the day after to-morrow, etc. History, such
as his age will allow him to conceive, will consist in recalling
what has recently passed, in taking account of it, and in noting
the part that this one or that has taken in such or such an affair.
Arithmetic, geometry, statistics, mechanics, will not remain
strangers to him. He will acquire the elements of these sciences in
distinguishing the difference between little and much, in learning
to count up to ten, in observing that three is more than two; that
one added to three makes four; in learning the sense of the words
_great_ and _small_, _long_ and _short_, _wide_ and _narrow_,
_heavy_ and _light_; in drawing lines, curves, circles, etc.; in
seeing goods measured with a yard-stick; in weighing an object in
a balance; in trying to make something or to take it to pieces, as
all children love to do.
“In this impulse to construct and destroy, there is but the effort
of the little intelligence to succeed in making or building
something for himself; so that, instead of opposing the child in
this, he should be encouraged and guided.”
“The grammar of the first period will consist in learning to
pronounce the mother tongue correctly. The child may receive
elementary notions even of politics, in observing that certain
persons assemble at the city hall, and that they are called
councillors; and that among these persons there is one called
mayor, etc.”[102]
141. THE PEOPLE’S SCHOOL.--Divided into six classes, the people’s
school should prepare the child either for active life or for the
higher courses. Comenius sends here not only the sons of peasants
and workmen, but the sons of the middle class or of the nobility,
who will afterwards enter the Latin school. In other terms, the
study of Latin is postponed till the age of twelve; and up to that
period all children must receive a thorough primary education,
which will comprise, with the mother tongue, arithmetic, geometry,
singing, the salient facts of history, the elements of the
natural sciences, and religion. The latest reforms in secondary
instruction, which, only within a very late period, have postponed
the study of Latin till the sixth year,[103] and which till then
keep the pupil upon the subjects of primary instruction,--what are
they but the distant echo of the thought of Comenius? Let it be
noted, too, that the plan of Comenius gave to its primary school a
complete encyclopædic course of instruction, which was sufficient
for its own ends, but which, while remaining elementary, was a
whole, and not a beginning.[104]
Surely, the programme of studies devised by Comenius did not fail
in point of insufficiency; we may be allowed, on the contrary, to
pronounce it too extended, too crowded, conformed rather to the
generous dreams of an innovator than to a prudent appreciation of
what is practically possible; and we need not be astonished that,
to lighten in part the heavy burden that is imposed on the teacher,
Comenius had the notion of dividing the school into sections which
assistants, chosen from among the best pupils, should instruct
under the supervision of the master.
142. SITE OF THE SCHOOL.--One is not a complete educator
save on the condition of providing for the exterior and
material organization of the school, as well as for its moral
administration. In this respect, Comenius is still deserving of our
encomiums. He requires a yard for recreation, and demands that the
school-house have a gay and cheerful aspect. The question had been
discussed before him by Vives (1492-1540).
“There should be chosen,” says the Spanish educator, “a healthful
situation, so that the pupils may not one day have to take
their flight, dispersed by the fear of an epidemic. Firm health
is necessary to those who would heartily and profitably apply
themselves to the study of the sciences. And the place selected
should be isolated from the crowd, and especially at a distance
from occupations that are noisy, such as those of smiths,
stone-masons, machinists, wheelwrights, and weavers. However, I
would not have the situation too cheerful and attractive, lest it
might suggest to the scholars the taking of too frequent walks.”
But these considerations that do honor to Vives and to Comenius,
were scarcely in harmony with the resources then at the disposal of
the friends of instruction. There was scarcely occasion seriously
to consider how school-houses should be constructed and situated,
at a period when the most often there were no school-houses
existing. “In winter,” says Platter, “we slept in the school-room,
and in summer in the open air.”[105]
143. SENSE INTUITIONS.--If Comenius has traced with a master hand
the general organization of the primary school, he has no less
merit in the matter of methods.
When they recommend the observation of sensible things as the first
intellectual exercise, modern educators do but repeat what Comenius
said three centuries ago.
“In the place of dead books, why should we not open the living
book of nature? ... To instruct the young is not to beat into them
by repetition a mass of words, phrases, sentences, and opinions
gathered out of authors; but it is to open their understanding
through things....
“The foundation of all knowledge consists in correctly representing
sensible objects to our senses, so that they can be comprehended
with facility. I hold that this is the basis of all our other
activities, since we could neither act nor speak wisely unless
we adequately comprehended what we were to do and say. Now it
is certain that _there is nothing in the understanding that was
not first in the senses_, and, consequently, it is to lay the
foundation of all wisdom, of all eloquence, and of all good and
prudent conduct, carefully to train the senses to note with
accuracy the differences between natural objects; and as this
point, important as it is, is ordinarily neglected in the schools
of to-day, and as objects are proposed to scholars that they do not
understand because they have not been properly represented to their
senses or to their imagination, it is for this reason, on the one
hand, that the toil of teaching, and on the other, that the pain of
learning, have become so burdensome and so unfruitful....
“We must offer to the young, not the shadows of things, but the
things themselves, which impress the senses and the imagination.
Instruction should commence with a real observation of things, and
not with a verbal description of them.”
We see that Comenius accepts the doctrine of Bacon, even to his
absolute sensationalism. In his pre-occupation with the importance
of instruction through the senses, he goes so far as to ignore that
other source of knowledge and intuitions, the inner consciousness.
144. SIMPLIFICATION OF GRAMMATICAL STUDY.--The first result of the
experimental method applied to instruction, is to simplify grammar
and to relieve it from the abuse of abstract rules. “Children,”
says Comenius, “need examples and things which they can see, and
not abstract rules.”
And in the _Preface_ of the _Janua linguarum_, he dwells upon the
faults of the old method employed for the study of languages.
“It is a thing self-evident, that the true and proper way of
teaching languages has not been recognized in the schools up to the
present time. The most of those who devoted themselves to the study
of letters grew old in the study of words, and upwards of ten years
was spent in the study of Latin alone; indeed, they even spent
their whole life in the study, with a very slow and very trifling
profit, which did not pay for the trouble devoted to it.”[106] It
is by use and by reading that Comenius would abolish the abuse
of rules. Rules ought to intervene only to aid use and give it
surety. The pupil will thus learn language, either in speaking, or
in reading a book like the _Orbis Pictus_, in which he will find
at the same time all the words of which the language itself is
composed, and examples of all the constructions of its syntax.
145. NECESSITY OF DRILL AND PRACTICE.--Another essential point
in the new method, is the importance attributed by Comenius
to practical exercises: “Artisans,” he said, “understand this
matter perfectly well. Not one of them will give an apprentice a
theoretical course on his trade. He is allowed to notice what is
done by his master, and then the tool is put in his hands: it is in
smiting that one becomes a smith.”[107]
It is no longer the thing to repeat mechanically a lesson learned
by heart. There must be a gradual habituation to action, to
productive work, to personal effort.
146. GENERAL BEARING OF THE WORK OF COMENIUS.--How many other new
and judicious ideas we shall have to gather from Comenius! The
methods which we would be tempted to consider as wholly recent, his
imagination had already suggested to him. For example, preceding
the _Orbis Pictus_, we find an alphabet, where to each letter
corresponds the cry of an animal, or else a sound familiar to the
child. Is not this already the very essence of the phononimic
processes[108] brought into fashion in these last years? But what
is of more consequence with Comenius than a few happy discoveries
in practical pedagogy, is the general inspiration of his work. He
gives to education a psychological basis in demanding that the
faculties shall be developed in their natural order: first, the
senses, the memory, the imagination, and lastly the judgment and
the reason. He is mindful of physical exercises, of technical and
practical instruction, without forgetting that in the primary
schools, which he calls the “studios of humanity,” there must be
trained, not only strong and skilful artisans, but virtuous and
religious men, imbued with the principles of order and justice. If
he has stepped from theology to pedagogy, and if he permits himself
sometimes to be borne along by his artless bursts of mysticism, at
least he does not forget the necessities of the real condition,
and of the present life of men. “The child,” he says, “shall learn
only what is to be useful to him in this life or in the other.”
Finally, he does not allow himself to be absorbed in the minute
details of school management. He has higher views,--he is working
for the regeneration of humanity. Like Leibnitz, he would freely
say: “Give me for a few years the direction of education, and I
agree to transform the world!”
[147. ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.--1. Decisive changes in human opinion,
political, religious, or scientific, involve corresponding
changes in the purposes and methods of education.
2. The Reformation was a breaking with authority in matters
of religion, as the Baconian philosophy was a breaking with
authority in matters of science; and their joint effect on
education was to subject matters of opinion, belief, and
knowledge to the individual reason, experience, and observation.
3. In holding each human being responsible for his own salvation,
the Reformation made it necessary for every one to read, and the
logical consequence of this was to make instruction universal;
and as schools were multiplied, the number of teachers must be
increased, and their grade of competence raised.
4. The conception that ignorance is an evil, and a constant
menace to spiritual and temporal safety, led to the idea of
compulsory school-attendance.
5. In the recoil from the intuitions of the intellect sanctioned
by Socrates, to the intuitions of the senses sanctioned by Bacon,
education passed from an extreme dependence on reflection and
reason, to an extreme dependence on sense and observation; so
that inference has been thrown into discredit, and the verdict
of the senses has been made the test of knowledge.
6. In adapting the conception of universal education to the
social conditions of his time, Comenius was led to a gradation of
schools that underlies all modern systems of public instruction.]
FOOTNOTES:
[95] Dittes, _op. cit._ p. 127.
[96] Luther’s argument for compulsion should not be omitted:
“It is my opinion that the authorities are bound to force their
subjects to send their children to school.... If they can oblige
their able-bodied subjects to carry the lance and the arquebuse, to
mount the ramparts, and to do complete military service, for a much
better reason may they, and ought they, to force their subjects to
send their children to school, for here it is the question of a
much more terrible war with the devil.” (P.)
[97] Names for treatises on grammar and philosophy respectively.
Donatus was a celebrated grammarian and rhetorician who taught
at Rome in the middle of the fourth century A.D.; and Alexander,
a celebrated Greek commentator on the writings of Aristotle, who
taught the Peripatetic philosophy at Athens in the end of the
second and the beginning of the third centuries A.D. (P.)
[98] Michelet, _Nos fils_, p. 175 _et seq._
[99] This is, perhaps, the earliest appearance of the conception
that learning should be a process of discovery or of re-discovery.
Condillac (1715-1780) has elaborated this idea in the introduction
to his _Grammaire_, and Spencer (_Education_, p. 122) makes it a
fundamental law of teaching. If this assumed principle were to be
rigorously applied, as, fortunately, it cannot be, progress in
human knowledge would be impossible. Mr. Bain’s comment on this
doctrine (_Education as a Science_, p. 94) is as follows: “This
bold fiction is sometimes put forward as one of the regular arts of
the teacher; but I should prefer to consider it as an extraordinary
device, admissible only on special occasions.” (P.)
[100] It may not be generally known that Comenius was once
solicited to become the President of Harvard College. The following
is a quotation from Vol. II., p. 14, of Cotton Mather’s _Magnalia_:
“That brave old man, Johannes Amos Commenius, the fame of whose
worth hath been _trumpetted_ as far as more than three languages
(whereof every one is indebted unto his _Janua_) could carry it,
was indeed agreed withal, by our Mr. Winthrop in his travels
through the _low countries_, to come over into New England, and
illuminate this Colledge and _country_, in the quality of a
President, which was now become vacant. But the solicitations of
the Swedish Ambassador diverting him another way, that incomparable
Moravian became not an American.” This was on the resignation of
President Dunster, in 1654. (P.)
[101] The most complete account ever written of Comenius and his
writings is, “John Amos Comenius,” by S. S. Laurie (Boston: 1885).
It is an invaluable contribution to the philosophy and the history
of education. (P.)
[102] Buisson’s _Dictionnaire de Pédagogie_, Article COMENIUS.
[103] In the French Lycées and Colleges the grades are named as
follows, beginning with the lowest: “ninth, eighth, seventh, sixth,
fifth, fourth, third, second, rhetoric, philosophy, preparatory
mathematics, elementary mathematics, special mathematics.” Latin
was formerly begun in an earlier grade.
[104] The public school of the European type may be represented by
a series of (3) pyramids, the second higher than the first, and
the third higher than the second, each independent and complete in
itself; while the public school of the American type is represented
by a single pyramid in three sections. While in an English, French,
or German town, public education is administered in three separate
establishments, in an American town there is a single graded school
that fulfills the same functions. (P.)
[105] Platter, a Swiss teacher of the sixteenth century (1499-1582).
[106] For this quotation, as for all those which we borrow from the
preface of the _Janua linguarum_, a French edition of which (in
three languages: Latin, German, and French) appeared in 1643, we
copy from the authentic text.
[107] There is a misleading fallacy in all such illustrations. What
analogy is there between the learning of history or geology and
the learning of a trade like carpentry? Should a physician and a
blacksmith be educated on the same plan? In every case knowledge
should precede practice; and the liberal arts are best learned by
first learning their correlative sciences. (P.)
[108] “A process of instruction which consists in placing beside
the elements of human speech thirty-three onomatopoetic gestures,
which recall to the sight the same ideas that the sounds and the
articulations of the voice recall to the ear.”--GROSSELIN. (P.)
CHAPTER VII.
THE TEACHING CONGREGATIONS.--JESUITS AND JANSENISTS.
THE TEACHING CONGREGATIONS; JESUITS AND JANSENISTS; FOUNDATION
OF THE SOCIETY OF JESUS (1540); DIFFERENT JUDGMENTS ON THE
EDUCATIONAL MERITS OF THE JESUITS; AUTHORITIES TO CONSULT;
PRIMARY INSTRUCTION NEGLECTED; CLASSICAL STUDIES; LATIN AND
THE HUMANITIES; NEGLECT OF HISTORY, OF PHILOSOPHY, AND OF THE
SCIENCES IN GENERAL; DISCIPLINE; EMULATION ENCOURAGED; OFFICIAL
DISCIPLINARIAN; GENERAL SPIRIT OF THE PEDAGOGY OF THE JESUITS;
THE ORATORIANS; THE LITTLE SCHOOLS; STUDY OF THE FRENCH LANGUAGE;
NEW SYSTEM OF SPELLING; THE MASTERS AND THE BOOKS OF PORT
ROYAL; DISCIPLINE IN PERSONAL REFLECTION; GENERAL SPIRIT OF THE
INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION AT PORT ROYAL; NICOLE; MORAL PESSIMISM;
EFFECTS ON DISCIPLINE; FAULTS IN THE DISCIPLINE OF PORT ROYAL;
GENERAL JUDGMENT ON PORT ROYAL; ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.
148. THE TEACHING CONGREGATIONS.[109]--Up to the French Revolution,
up to the day when the conception of a public and national
education was embodied in the legislative acts of our assembled
rulers, education remained almost exclusively an affair of the
Church. The universities themselves were dependent in part on
religious authority. But especially the great congregations assumed
a monopoly of the work of teaching, the direction and control of
which the State had not yet claimed for her right.
Primary instruction, it is true, scarcely entered at first into the
settled plans of the religious orders. The only exception to this
statement that can properly be made, is the congregation of the
_Christian Doctrine_, which a humble priest, Cæsar de Bus, founded
at Avignon in 1592, the avowed purpose of which was the religious
education of the children of the company.[110] But, on the other
hand, secondary instruction provoked the greatest educational event
of the sixteenth century, the founding of the company of Jesus,
and this movement was continued and extended in the seventeenth
century, either in the colleges of the Jesuits, ever growing in
number, or in other rival congregations.
149. JESUITS AND JANSENISTS.--Among the religious orders that have
consecrated their efforts to the work of teaching, the first place
must be assigned to the Jesuits and the Jansenists. Different in
their statutes, their organization, and their destinies, these
two congregations are still more different in their spirit. They
represent, in fact, two opposite, and, as it were, contrary phases
of human nature and of the Christian spirit. For the Jesuits,
education is reduced to a superficial culture of the brilliant
faculties of the intelligence; while the Jansenists, on the
contrary, aspire to develop the solid faculties, the judgment,
and the reason. In the colleges of the Jesuits, rhetoric is held
in honor; while in the Little Schools of Port Royal, it is rather
logic and the exercise of thought. The shrewd disciples of Loyola
adapt themselves to the times, and are full of compassion for human
weakness; the solitaries of Port Royal are exacting of others and
of themselves. In their suppleness and cheerful optimism, the
Jesuits are almost the Epicureans of Christianity; with their
austere and somewhat sombre doctrine, the Jansenists would rather
be the Stoics. The Jesuits and the Jansenists, those great rivals
of the seventeenth century, are still face to face as enemies at
the present moment. While the inspiration of the Jesuits tries to
maintain the old worn-out exercises, like Latin verse, and the
abuse of the memory, the spirit of the Jansenists animates and
inspires the reformers, who, in the teaching of the classics, break
with tradition and routine, to substitute for exercises aimed at
elegance, and for a superficial instruction, studies of a greater
solidity and an education that is more complete.
The merit of institutions ought not always to be measured by
their apparent success. The colleges of the Jesuits, during three
centuries, have had a countless number of pupils; the Little
Schools of Port Royal did not live twenty years, and during their
short existence they enrolled at most only some hundreds of pupils.
And yet the methods of the Jansenists have survived the ruin of
their colleges and the dispersion of the teachers who had applied
them. Although the Jesuits have not ceased to rule in appearance,
it is the Jansenists who triumph in reality, and who to-day control
the secondary instruction of France.
150. FOUNDATION OF THE SOCIETY OF JESUS.--In organizing the Society
of Jesus, Ignatius Loyola, that compound of the mystic and the
man of the world, purposed to establish, not an order devoted to
monastic contemplation, but a real fighting corps, a Catholic army,
whose double purpose was to conquer new provinces to the faith
through missions, and to preserve the old through the control of
education. Solemnly consecrated by the Pope Paul III., in 1540,
the congregation had a rapid growth. As early as the middle of the
sixteenth century, it had several colleges in France, particularly
those of Billom, Mauriac, Rodez, Tournon, and Pamiers. In 1561
it secured a footing in Paris, notwithstanding the resistance of
the Parliament, of the university, and of the bishops themselves.
A hundred years later it counted nearly fourteen thousand pupils
in the province of Paris alone. The college of Clermont, in 1651,
enrolled more than two thousand young men. The middle and higher
classes assured to the colleges of the society an ever-increasing
membership. At the end of the seventeenth century, the Jesuits
could inscribe on the roll of honor of their classes a hundred
illustrious names, among others, those of Condé and Luxembourg,
Fléchier and Bossuet, Lamoignon and Séguier, Descartes, Corneille,
and Molière. In 1710 they controlled six hundred and twelve
colleges and a large number of universities. They were the real
masters of education, and they maintained this educational
supremacy till the end of the eighteenth century.
151. DIFFERENT JUDGMENTS ON THE EDUCATIONAL MERITS OF THE
JESUITS.--Voltaire said of these teachers: “The Fathers taught me
nothing but Latin and nonsense.” But from the seventeenth century,
opinions are divided, and the encomiums of Bacon and Descartes
must be offset by the severe judgment of Leibnitz. “In the matter
of education,” says this great philosopher, “the Jesuits have
remained below mediocrity.”[111] Directly to the contrary, Bacon
had written: “As to whatever relates to the instruction of the
young, we must consult the schools of the Jesuits, for there can be
nothing that is better done.”[112]
152. AUTHORITIES TO CONSULT.--The Jesuits have never written
anything on the principles and objects of education. We must not
demand of them an exposition of general views, or a confession
of their educational faith. But to make amends, they have drawn
up with precision, with almost infinite attention to details,
the rules and regulations of their course of study. Already, in
1559, the _Constitutions_, probably written by Loyola himself,
devoted a whole book to the organization of the colleges of the
society.[113] But in particular, the _Ratio Studiorum_, published
in 1599, contains a complete scholastic programme, which has
remained for three centuries the invariable educational code of
the congregation. Without doubt, the Jesuits, always ready to
make apparent concessions to the spirit of the times, without
sacrificing anything of their own spirit, and without renouncing
their inflexible purpose, have introduced modifications into their
original rules; but the spirit of their educational practice has
remained the same, and, in 1854, Beckx, the actual general of the
order, could still declare that the _Ratio_ is the immutable rule
of Jesuit education.
153. PRIMARY INSTRUCTION NEGLECTED.--A permanent and characteristic
feature of the educational policy of the Jesuits is, that, during
the whole course of their history, they have deliberately neglected
and disdained primary instruction. The earth is covered with their
Latin colleges; and wherever they have been able, they have put
their hands on the institutions for university education; but
in no instance have they founded a primary school. Even in their
establishments for secondary instruction, they entrust the lower
classes to teachers who do not belong to their order, and reserve
to themselves the direction of the higher classes. Must we believe,
as they have declared in order to explain this negligence, that
the only reason for their reserve and their indifference is to be
sought for in the insufficiency of their teaching force? No; the
truth is that the Jesuits neither desire nor love the instruction
of the people. To desire and to love this, there must be faith in
conscience and reason; there must be a belief in human equality.
Now the Jesuits distrust the human intelligence, and administer
only the aristocratic education of the ruling classes, whom they
hope to retain under their own control. They wish to train amiable
gentlemen, accomplished men of the world; they have no conception
of training men. Intellectual culture, in their view, is but a
convenience, imposed on certain classes of the nation by their
rank. It is not a good in itself; it may even become an evil. In
certain hands it is a dangerous weapon. The ignorance of a people
is the best safeguard of its faith, and faith is the supreme end.
So we shall not be astonished to read this in the _Constitutions_:--
“None of those who are employed in domestic service on account
of the society, ought to learn to read and write, or, if they
already know these arts, to learn more of them. They shall not be
instructed without the consent of the General, for it suffices for
them to serve with all simplicity and humility our Master, Jesus
Christ.”
154. CLASSICAL STUDIES: LATIN AND THE HUMANITIES.--It is only in
secondary instruction that the Jesuits have taken position with
marked success. The basis of their teaching is the study of Latin
and Greek. Their purpose is to monopolize classical studies in
order to make them serve for the propagation of the Catholic faith.
To write in Latin is the ideal which they propose to their pupils.
The first consequence of this is the proscription of the mother
tongue. The _Ratio_ forbids the use of French even in conversation;
it permits it only on holidays. Hence, also, the importance
accorded to Latin and Greek composition, to the explication of
authors, and to the study of grammar, rhetoric, and poetry. It is
to be noted, besides, that the Jesuits put scarcely more into the
hands of their pupils than select extracts, expurgated editions.
They wish, in some sort, to efface from the ancient books whatever
marks the epoch and characterizes the time. They detach fine
passages of eloquence and beautiful extracts of poetry; but they
are afraid, it seems, of the authors themselves; they fear lest the
pupil find in them the old human spirit,--the spirit of nature.
Moreover, in the explication of authors, they pay more attention
to words than to things. They direct the pupil’s attention,
not to the thoughts, but to the elegancies of language, to the
elocutionary effect; in a word, to the form, which, at least, has
no religious character, and can in nowise give umbrage to Catholic
orthodoxy. They fear to awaken reflection and individual judgment.
As Macaulay has said, they seem to have found the point up to which
intellectual culture can be pushed without reaching intellectual
emancipation.
155. DISDAIN OF HISTORY, OF PHILOSOPHY, AND OF THE SCIENCES IN
GENERAL.--Preoccupied before all else with purely formal studies,
and exclusively devoted to the exercises which give a training in
the use of elegant language, the Jesuits leave real and concrete
studies in entire neglect. History is almost wholly banished from
their programme. It is only with reference to the Greek and Latin
texts that the teacher should make allusion to the matters of
history which are necessary for the understanding of the passage
under examination. No account is made of modern history, nor of
the history of France. “History,” says a Jesuit Father, “is the
destruction of him who studies it.” This systematic omission of
historical studies suffices to put in its true light the artificial
and superficial pedagogy of the Jesuits, admirably defined by
Beckx, who expresses himself thus:--
“The gymnasia will remain what they are by nature, a gymnastic
for the intellect, which consists far less in the assimilation of
real matter, in the acquisition of different knowledges, than in a
culture of pure form.”
The sciences and philosophy are involved in the same disdain as
history. Scientific studies are entirely proscribed in the lower
classes, and the student enters his year in philosophy,[114]
having studied only the ancient languages. Philosophy itself is
reduced to a barren study of words, to subtile discussions, and to
commentaries on Aristotle. Memory and syllogistic reasoning are the
only faculties called into play; no facts, no real inductions, no
care for the observation of nature. In all things the Jesuits are
the enemies of progress. Intolerant of everything new, they would
arrest the progress of the human mind and make it immovable.
156. DISCIPLINE.--Extravagant statements have been made relative
to the reforms in discipline introduced by the Jesuits into their
educational establishments. The fact is, that they have caused to
prevail in their colleges more of order and of system than there
was in the establishments of the University. On the other hand,
they have attempted to please their pupils, to gild for them, so
to speak, the bars of the prison which confined them. Theatrical
representations, excursions on holidays, practice in swimming,
riding, and fencing,--nothing was neglected that could render their
residence at school endurable.
But, on the other hand, the Jesuits have incurred the grave fault
of detaching the child from the family. They wish to have absolute
control of him. The ideal of the perfect scholar is to forget his
parents. Here is what was said by a pupil of the Jesuits, who
afterwards became a member of the Order, J. B. de Schultaus:--
“His mother paid him a visit at the College of Trent. He refused
to take her hand, and would not even raise his eyes to hers. The
mother, astonished and grieved, asked her son the cause of such
a cold greeting. ‘I refuse to notice you,’ said the pupil, ‘not
because you are my mother, but because you are a woman.’ And
the biographer adds: ‘This was not excessive precaution; woman
preserves to-day the faults she had at the time of our first
father; it is always she who drives man from Paradise.’ When the
mother of Schultaus died, he did not show the least emotion, having
long ago adopted the Holy Virgin for his true mother.”
157. EMULATION ENCOURAGED.--The Jesuits have always considered
emulation as one of the essential elements of discipline. “It is
necessary,” says the _Ratio_, “to encourage an honorable emulation;
it is a great stimulus to study.” Superior on this point, perhaps
on this alone, to the Jansenists, who through mistrust of human
nature feared to excite pride by encouraging emulation, the Jesuits
have always counted upon the self-love of the pupil. The _Ratio_
multiplies rewards,--solemn distributions of prizes, crosses,
ribbons, decorations, titles borrowed from the Roman Republic,
such as _decurions_ and _prætors_; all means, even the most
puerile, were invented to nourish in pupils an ardor for work, and
to incite them to surpass one another. Let us add that the pupil
was rewarded, not only for his own good conduct, but for the bad
conduct of his comrades if he informed against them. The _decurion_
or the _prætor_ was charged with the police care of the class, and,
in the absence of the official disciplinarian, he himself chastised
his comrades; in the hands of his teacher, he became a spy and an
informer. Thus a pupil, liable to punishment for having spoken
French contrary to orders, will be relieved from his punishment if
he can prove by witnesses that one of his comrades has committed
the same fault on the same day.
158. OFFICIAL DISCIPLINARIAN.--The rod is an element, so to speak,
of the ancient pedagogical régime. It holds a privileged place both
in the colleges and in private education. Louis XIV. officially
transmits to the Duke of Montausier the right to correct his son.
Henry IV. wrote to the governor of Louis XIII.: “I complain because
you did not inform me that you had whipped my son; for I desire
and order you to whip him every time that he shall be guilty of
obstinacy or of anything else that is bad; for I well know that
there is nothing in the world that can do him more good than that.
This I know from the lessons of experience, for when I was of his
age, I was soundly flogged.”[115]
The Jesuits, notwithstanding their disposition to make discipline
milder, were careful not to renounce a punishment that was in use
even at court. Only, while the Brethren of the Christian Schools,
according to the regulations of La Salle, chastised the guilty
pupil themselves, the Jesuits did not think it becoming the dignity
of the master to apply the correction himself. They reserved to a
laic the duty of handling the rods. An official disciplinarian,
a domestic, a porter, was charged in all the colleges with the
functions of chief executioner. And while the _Ratio Studiorum_
recommends moderation, certain witnesses prove that the special
disciplinarian did not always carry a discreet hand. Here, for
example, is an account given by Saint Simon:--
“The eldest son of the Marquis of Boufflers was fourteen years old.
He was handsome, well formed, was wonderfully successful, and full
of promise. He was a resident pupil of the Jesuits with the two
sons of d’Argenson. I do not know what indiscretion he and they
were guilty of. The Fathers wished to show that they neither feared
nor stood in awe of any one, and they flogged the boy, because,
in fact, they had nothing to fear of the Marquis of Boufflers;
but they were careful not to treat the two others in this way,
though equally culpable, because every day they had to count with
d’Argenson, who was lieutenant of police. The boy Boufflers was
thrown into such mental agony that he fell sick on the same day,
and within four days was dead.... There was a universal and furious
outcry against the Jesuits, but nothing ever came of it.”[116]
159. GENERAL SPIRIT OF THE PEDAGOGY OF THE JESUITS.--The general
principles of the doctrine of the Jesuits are completely opposed to
our modern ideas. Blind obedience, the suppression of all liberty
and of all spontaneity, such is the basis of their moral education.
“To renounce one’s own wishes is more meritorious than to raise
the dead;” “We must be so attached to the Roman Church as to hold
for black an object which she tells us is black, even when it is
really white;” “Our confidence in God should be strong enough to
force us, in the lack of a boat, to cross the ocean on a single
plank;” “If God should appoint for our master an animal deprived
of reason, you should not hesitate to render it obedience, as to a
master and a guide, for this sole reason, that God has ordered it
thus;” “One must allow himself to be governed by divine Providence
acting through the agency of the superiors of the Order, just as if
he were a dead body that could be put into any position whatever,
and treated according to one’s good pleasure; or as if one were a
bâton in the hands of an old man who uses it as he pleases.”
As to intellectual education, as they understand it, it is wholly
artificial and superficial. To find for the mind occupations that
absorb it, that soothe it like a dream, without wholly awakening
it; to call attention to words, and to niceties of expression, so
as to reduce by so much the opportunity for thinking; to provoke a
certain degree of intellectual activity, prudently arrested at the
place where the reflective reason succeeds an embellished memory;
in a word, to excite the spirit just enough to arouse it from its
inertia and its ignorance, but not enough to endow it with a real
self-activity by a manly display of all its faculties,--such is
the method of the Jesuits. “As to instruction,” says Bersot, “this
is what we find with them: history reduced to facts and tables,
without the lesson derived from them bearing on the knowledge of
the world; even the facts suppressed or altered when they say too
much; philosophy reduced to what is called empirical doctrine,
and what de Maistre called the philosophy of the nothing, without
danger of one’s acquiring a liking for it; physical science reduced
to recreations, without the spirit of research and liberty;
literature reduced to the complaisant explication of the ancient
authors, and ending in innocent witticisms.... With respect to
letters, there are two loves which have nothing in common save
their name; one of them makes men, the other, great boys. It is the
last that we find with the Jesuits; they amuse the soul.”
160. THE ORATORIANS.--Between the Jesuits, their adversaries,
and the Jansenists, their friends, the Oratorians occupy an
intermediate place. They break already with the over-mechanical
education, and with the wholly superficial instruction which
Ignatius Loyola had inaugurated. Through some happy innovations
they approach the more elevated and more profound education of Port
Royal. Founded in 1614, by Bérulle, the Order of the Oratory soon
counted quite a large number of colleges of secondary instruction,
and, in particular, in 1638, the famous college of Juilly. While
with the Jesuits it is rare to meet the names of celebrated
professors, several renowned teachers have made illustrious the
Oratory of the seventeenth century. We note the Père Lamy, author
of _Entretiens sur les Sciences_ (1683); the Père Thomassin,
whom the Oratorians call the “incomparable theologian,” and who
published, from 1681 to 1690, a series of _Methods_ for studying
the languages, philosophy, and letters; Mascaron and Massillon,
who taught rhetoric at the Oratory; the Père Lecointe and the Père
Lelong, who taught history there. All these men unite, in general,
some love of liberty to ardor of religious sentiment; they wish
to introduce more air and more light into the cloister and the
school; they have a taste for the facts of history and the truths
of science; finally, they attempt to found an education at once
liberal and Christian, religious without abuse of devotion, elegant
without refinement, solid without excess of erudition, worthy,
finally, to be counted as one of the first practical tentatives of
modern pedagogy.
The limits of this study forbid our entering into details. Let us
merely note a few essential points. That which distinguishes the
Oratorians, is, first, a sincere and disinterested love of truth.
“We love the truth,” says the Père Lamy; “the days do not suffice
to consult her as long as we would wish; or, rather, we never grow
weary of the pleasure we find in studying her. There has always
been that love for letters in this House: those who have governed
it have tried to nourish it. When there is found among us some
penetrating and liberally endowed spirit who has a rare genius for
the sciences, he is discharged from all other duties.”[117]
Nowhere have ancient letters been more loved than at the Oratory.
“In his leisure hours the Père Thomassin read only the authors of
the humanities;” and yet French was not there sacrificed to Latin.
The use of the Latin language was not obligatory till after the
fourth year, and even then not for the lessons in history, which,
till the end of the courses, had to be given in French. History, so
long neglected even in the colleges of the University, particularly
the history of France, was taught to the pupils of the Oratory.
Geography was not separated from it; and the class-rooms were
furnished with large mural maps. On the other hand, the sciences
had a place in the course of study. A Jesuit father would not have
expressed himself as the Père Lamy has done:--
“It is a pleasure to enter the laboratory of a chemist. In the
places where I have happened to be, I did not miss an opportunity
to attend the anatomical lectures that were given, and to witness
the dissection of the principal parts of the human body.... I know
of nothing of greater use than algebra and arithmetic.”
Finally, philosophy itself,--the Cartesian philosophy, so
mercilessly decried by the Jesuits,--was in vogue at the Oratory.
“If Cartesianism is a pest,” wrote the regents of the College of
Angers, “there are more than two hundred of us who are infected
with it.” ... “They have forbidden the Fathers of the Oratory to
teach the philosophy of Descartes, and, consequently, the blood to
circulate,” wrote Madame de Sévigné, in 1673.
Let us also furnish proof of the progress and amelioration of the
discipline at the Oratory:--
“There are many other ways besides the rod,” says the Père Lamy;
“and, to lead pupils back to their duty, a caress, a threat,
the hope of a reward, or the fear of a humiliation, has greater
efficiency than whips.”
The ferule, it is true, and whips also, were not forbidden, but
made part of the _legitima pœnarum genera_. But it does not appear
that use was often made of them; either through a spirit of
mildness, or through prudence, and through the fear of exasperating
the child.
“There is needed,” says the Père Lamy again, “a sort of politics
to govern this little community,--to lead them through their
inclinations; to foresee the effect of rewards and punishments, and
to employ them according to their proper use. There are times of
stubbornness when a child would sooner be killed than yield.”
What made it easier at the Oratory to maintain the authority of
the master without resorting to violent punishments, is that the
same professor accompanied the pupils through the whole series
of their classes. The Père Thomassin, for example, was, in turn,
professor of grammar, rhetoric, philosophy, mathematics, history,
Italian, and Spanish,--a touching example, it must be allowed, of
an absolute devotion to scholastic labor. But this universality,
somewhat superficial, served neither the real interests of the
masters nor those of their pupils. The great pedagogical law is the
division of labor.
161. FOUNDATION OF THE LITTLE SCHOOLS.--From the very organization
of their society, the Jansenists gave evidences of an ardent
solicitude for the education of youth. Their founder, Saint Cyran,
said: “Education is, in a sense, the _one thing necessary_....
I wish you might read in my heart the affection I feel for
children.... You could not deserve more of God than in working for
the proper bringing up of children.” It was in this disinterested
feeling of charity for the good of the young, in this display of
sincere tenderness for children, that the Jansenists, in 1643,
founded the Little Schools at Port Royal in the Fields, in the
vicinity, and then in Paris.[118] They received into those schools
only a small number of pupils, preoccupied as they were, not with
dominating the world and extending their influence, but with
doing modestly and obscurely the good they could. Persecution did
not long grant them the leisure to continue the work they had
undertaken. By 1660 the enemies of Port Royal had triumphed; the
Jesuits obtained an order from the king closing the schools and
dispersing the teachers. Pursued, imprisoned, expatriated, the
solitaries of Port Royal had but the opportunity to gather up in
memorable documents the results of their educational experience all
too short.[119]
162. THE TEACHERS AND THE BOOKS OF PORT ROYAL.--Singular
destiny,--that of those teachers whom a relentless fate permitted
to exercise their functions for only five years, yet who, through
their works, have remained perhaps the best authorized exponents
of French education! The first of these is Nicole, the moralist
and logician, one of the authors of the Port Royal _Logic_, who
taught philosophy and the humanities in the Little Schools, and who
published in 1670, under the title, _The Education of a Prince_, a
series of reflections on education, applicable, as he himself says,
to children of all classes. Another is Lancelot, the grammarian,
the author of the _Methods_ for learning the Latin, Greek, Italian,
and Spanish languages. Then there is Arnauld, the great Arnauld,
the ardent theologian, who worked on the _Logic_, and the _General
Grammar_, and who finally composed the _Regulation of Studies in
the Humanities_. In connection with these celebrated names, we
must mention other Jansenists not so well known, such as De Sacy
and Guyot, both of whom were the authors of a large number of
translations; Coustel, who published the _Rules for the Education
of Children_ (1687); Varet, the author of _Christian Education_
(1668). Let us add to this list, still incomplete, the _Regimen for
Children_, by Jacqueline Pascal (1657), and we shall have some idea
of the educational activity of Port Royal.
163. THE STUDY OF THE FRENCH LANGUAGE.--As a general rule, we may
have a good opinion of the teachers who recommend the study of the
mother tongue. In this respect, the solitaries of Port Royal are in
advance of their time. “We first teach to read in Latin,” said the
Abbé Fleury, “because, compared with French, we pronounce it more
as it is written.”[120] A curious reason, which did not satisfy
Fleury himself; for he acknowledged the propriety of putting, as
soon as possible, into the hands of children, the French books
that they can understand. This was what was done at Port Royal.
With their love of exactness and clearness, with their disposition,
wholly Cartesian, to make children study only the things they can
comprehend, the Jansenists saw at once the great absurdity of
choosing Latin works as the first reading-books. “To learn Latin
before learning the mother tongue,” said Comenius, wittily, “is
like wishing to mount a horse before knowing how to walk.” And
again, as Sainte-Beuve says, “It is to compel unfortunate children
to deal with the unintelligible in order to proceed towards
the unknown.” For these unintelligible texts, the Jansenists
substituted, not, it is true, original French works, but at least
good translations of Latin authors. For the first time in France,
the French language was made the subject of serious study. Before
being made to write in Latin, pupils were drilled in writing in
French. They were set to compose little narratives, little letters,
the subjects of which were borrowed from their recollections, by
being asked to relate on the spot what they had retained of what
they had read.
164. NEW SYSTEM OF SPELLING.--In their constant preoccupation to
make study easier, the Jansenists reformed the current method of
learning to read. “What makes reading more difficult,” says Arnauld
in Chapter VI. of the _General Grammar_, “is that while each letter
has its own proper name, it is given a different name when it is
found associated with other letters. For example, if the pupil is
made to read the syllable _fry_, he is made to say _ef_, _ar_,
_y_, which invariably confuses him. It is best, therefore, to
teach children to know the letters only by the names of their real
pronunciation, to name them only by their natural sounds.” Port
Royal proposes, then, “to have children pronounce only the vowels
and the diphthongs, and not the consonants, which they need not
pronounce, except in the different combinations which they form
with the same vowels or diphthongs, in syllables and words.”
This method has become celebrated under the name of the Port Royal
Method; and it appears, from a letter of Jacqueline Pascal, that
the original notion was due to Pascal himself.[121]
165. DISCIPLINE IN PERSONAL REFLECTION.--That which profoundly
distinguishes the method of the Jansenists from the method of the
Jesuits, is that at Port Royal the purpose is less to make good
Latinists than to train sound intelligences. The effort is to call
into activity the judgment and personal reflection. As soon as the
child is capable of it, he is made to think and comprehend. In the
lessons of the class-room, not a word is allowed to pass till the
child has understood its meaning. Only those tasks are proposed
to the child which are adapted to his childish intelligence. His
attention is occupied only with the things that are within the
compass of his powers.
The grammars of Port Royal are written in French, “because it is
ridiculous,” says Nicole, “to teach the principles of a language in
the very language that is to be learned, and that for the present
is unknown.” Lancelot, in his _Methods_, abbreviates and simplifies
grammatical studies:--
“I have found out, at last, how useful this maxim of Ramus
is,--_Few precepts and much practice_: and, also, that as soon as
children begin to know these rules somewhat, it is well to make
them observe them in practice.”
It is by the reading of authors that the grammar of Port Royal
completes the theoretical study of the rules that are rigidly
reduced to their minimum. The professor, with reference to such or
such a passage of an author, will make appropriate oral remarks.
In this way the example, not the dry and uninteresting one of the
grammar, but the living example, expressive, and, drawn from a
writer that is being read with interest, will precede or accompany
the rule, and the particular case will explain the general law.
This is an excellent method, because it accords with the real
movement of the mind, and adapts the sequence of studies to the
progress of the intelligence, and also because, according to the
advice of Descartes, the child in this way proceeds from the known
to the unknown, from the simple to the complex.
166. GENERAL SPIRIT OF THE INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION AT PORT
ROYAL.--Without doubt, we need not expect to find among the
solitaries of Port Royal a disinterested devotion to science. In
their view, instruction is but a means of forming the judgment.
“The sciences should be employed,” says Nicole, “only as an
instrument for perfecting the reason.” Historical, literary, and
scientific knowledge has no intrinsic value. The thing required is
simply to employ those subjects for educating just, equitable, and
judicious men. Nicole declares that it would be better absolutely
to ignore the sciences than to become absorbed in the useless
portions of them. Speaking of astronomical researches, and of the
works of those mathematicians who believe that “it is the finest
thing in the world to know whether there is a bridge and an arch
suspended around the planet Saturn,” he concludes that it is
preferable to be ignorant of those things than to be ignorant that
they are vain.
But, on the other hand, the Jansenists have struck from their
programme of studies everything that is merely sterile verbiage,
exercises of memory or of artificial imagination. Little attention
is given to Latin verse at Port Royal. Version takes precedence of
the theme,[122] and the oral theme often replaces the written. The
pupil is to be taught, “not to be blinded by a vain flash of words
void of sense, not to rest satisfied with mere words or obscure
principles, and never to be satisfied till he has gained a clear
insight into things.”
167. PEDAGOGICAL PRINCIPLES OF NICOLE.--In his treatise on the
_Education of a Prince_, Nicole has summarized, under the form
of aphorisms, some of the essential principles of his system of
education.
Let us first notice this maxim, a true pedagogical axiom: “The
purpose of instruction is to carry forward intelligences to the
farthest point they are capable of attaining.” This is saying that
every child, whether of the nobility or of the people, has the
right to be instructed according to his aptitude and ability.
Another axiom: We must proportion difficulties to the growing
development of the child’s intelligence. “The greatest minds have
but a limited range of intelligence. In all of them there are
regions of twilight and shadow; but the intelligence of the child
is almost wholly pervaded by shadows; he catches glimpses of but
few rays of light. So everything depends on managing these rays, on
increasing them, and on exposing to them whatever we wish to have
the child comprehend.”
A corollary to the preceding axiom is, that the first appeal must
be made to the senses. “The intelligence of children always being
very dependent on the senses, we must, as far as possible, address
our instruction to the senses, and cause it to reach the mind, not
only through hearing, but also through seeing.” Consequently,
geography is a study well adapted to early years, provided we
employ books in which the largest cities are pictured. If children
study the history of a country, we must not neglect to show them
the situation of places on the map. Nicole also recommends that
they be shown pictures that represent the machines, the arms, and
the dress of the ancients, and also the portraits of kings and
illustrious men.
168. MORAL PESSIMISM.--Man is wicked, human nature is corrupt: such
is the cry of despair that comes to our ears from all the writings
of the Jansenists.
“The devil,” says Saint Cyran, “already possesses the soul of even
the unborn child.” ...
And again: “We must always pray for souls, and always be on the
watch, standing guard as in a city menaced by an enemy. On the
outside the devil makes his rounds.” ...
“As soon as children begin to have reason,” says another Jansenist,
“we observe in them only blindness and weakness. Their minds are
closed to spiritual things, and they cannot comprehend them. But,
on the contrary, their eyes are open to evil; their senses are
susceptible to all sorts of corruption, and they have a natural
inertia that inclines them to it.”
“You ought,” writes Varet, “to consider your children as wholly
inclined to evil, and carried forward towards it. All their
inclinations are corrupt, and, not being governed by reason, they
will permit them to find pleasure and diversion only in the things
that carry them towards vice.”
169. EFFECTS ON DISCIPLINE.--The doctrine of the original
perversity of man may produce contrary results, and direct
the practical conduct of those who accept it in two opposite
directions. They are either inspired with severity toward beings
deeply tainted and vicious, or they are excited to pity and to
tenderness for those fallen creatures who suffer from an incurable
evil. The solitaries of Port Royal obeyed the second tendency. They
were as affectionate and good to the children confided to their
care as, in theory, they were harsh and rigorous towards human
nature. In the presence of their pupils they felt touched with an
infinite tenderness for those poor sick souls, whom they would
willingly cure of their ills, and raise from their fall, at the
cost of any and every sacrifice.
The conception of the native wickedness of man had still another
result at Port Royal. It increased the zeal of the teachers. It
prompted them to multiply their assiduity and vigilance in order to
keep guard over young souls, and there destroy, whenever possible,
the seeds of evil that sin had sown in them. When one is charged
with the difficult mission of moral education, it is, perhaps,
dangerous to have too much confidence in human nature, and to form
too favorable an opinion of its qualities and dispositions; for
then one is tempted to accord to the child too large a liberty, and
to practise the maxim, “Let it take its own course, let it pass”
(_Laissez faire, laissez passer_). It is better to err on the other
side, in excess of mistrust; for, in this case, knowing the dangers
that menace the child, we watch over him with more attention,
abandon him less to the inspiration of his caprices, and expect
more of education; we demand of effort and labor what we judge
nature incapable of producing by herself.
Vigilance, patience, mildness,--these are the instruments of
discipline in the schools of Port Royal. There were scarcely any
punishments in the Little Schools. “To speak little, to tolerate
much, to pray still more,”--these are the three things that Saint
Cyran recommended. The threat to send children home to their
parents sufficed to maintain order in a flock somewhat small. In
fact, all whose example would have proved bad were sent away; an
excellent system of elimination when it is practicable. The pious
solitaries endured without complaint, faults in which they saw the
necessary consequences of the original fall. Penetrated, however,
as they were, with the value of human souls, their tenderness for
children was mingled with a certain respect; for they saw in them
the creatures of God, beings called from eternity to a sublime
destiny or to a terrible punishment.
170. FAULTS IN THE DISCIPLINE OF PORT ROYAL.--The Jansenists did
not shun the logical though dangerous consequences that were
involved, in germ, in their pessimistic theories of human nature.
They fell into an excess of prudence or of rigidity. They pushed
gravity and dignity to a formalism that was somewhat repulsive. At
Port Royal pupils were forbidden to thee and thou one another. The
solitaries did not like familiarities, faithful in this respect to
the _Imitation of Jesus Christ_, in which it is somewhere said that
it does not become a Christian to be on familiar terms with any
one whatever. The young were thus brought up in habits of mutual
respect, which may have had their good side, but which had the
grave fault of being a little ridiculous in children, since they
forced them to live among themselves as _little gentlemen_, while
at the same time they oppose the development of those intimate
friendships, of those lasting attachments of which all those who
have lived at college know the sweetness and the charm.
The spirit of asceticism is the general character of all the
Jansenists. Varet declares that balls are places of infamy. Pascal
denies himself every agreeable thought, and what he called an
agreeable thought was to reflect on geometry. Lancelot refuses
to take to the theatre the princes of Conti, of whom he was the
preceptor.
But perhaps a graver fault at Port Royal was, that through fear
of awakening self-love, the spirit of emulation was purposely
suppressed. It is God alone, it was said, who is to be praised for
the qualities and talents manifested by men. “If God has placed
something of good in the soul of a child, we must praise Him for
it and keep silent.” By this deliberate silence men put themselves
on guard against pride; but if pride is to be feared, is indolence
the less so? And when we purposely avoid stimulating self-love
through the hope of reward, or through a word of praise given in
due season, we run a great risk of not overcoming the indolence
that is natural to the child, and of not obtaining from him any
serious effort. Pascal, the greatest of the friends of Port Royal,
said: “The children of Port Royal, who do not feel that stimulus of
envy and glory, fall into a state of indifference.”
171. GENERAL JUDGMENT ON PORT ROYAL.--After all has been said, we
must admire the teachers of Port Royal, who were doubtless deceived
on some points, but who were animated by a powerful feeling
of their duty to educate, and by a perfect charity. Ardor and
sincerity of religious faith; a great respect for the human person;
the practice of piety held in honor, but kept subordinate to the
reality of the inner feeling; devotion advised, but not imposed;
a marked mistrust of nature, corrected by displays of tenderness
and tempered by affection; above all, the profound, unwearied
devotion of Christian souls who give themselves wholly and without
reserve to other souls to raise them up and save them,--this is
what was done by the discipline of Port Royal. But it is rather in
the methods of teaching, and in the administration of classical
studies, that we must look for the incontestable superiority of
the Jansenists. The teachers of the Little Schools were admirable
humanists, not of form, as the Jesuits were, but of judgment. They
represent, it seems to us, in all its beauty and in all its force,
that intellectual education, already divined by Montaigne, which
prepares for life men of sound judgment and of upright conscience.
They founded the teaching of the humanities. “Port Royal,” says
an historian of pedagogy, Burnier, “simplifies study without,
however, relieving it of its wholesome difficulties; it strives
to make it interesting, while it does not convert it into child’s
play; it purposes to confide to the memory only what has first been
apprehended by the intelligence.... It has given to the world ideas
that it has not again let go, and fruitful principles from which we
have but to draw their logical consequences.”
[172. ANALYTICAL SUMMARY. 1. In the history of the three great
teaching congregations we have an illustration of the supposed
power of education over the destinies of men.
2. To resist the encroachments of Protestantism that followed the
diffusion of instruction among the people, Loyola organized his
teaching corps of Catholic zealots; and this mode of competition
for purposes of moral, sectarian, and political control has
covered the earth, in all Christian countries, with institutions
of learning.
3. The tendency towards extremes, and the difficulty of
attaining symmetry and completeness, are seen in the preference
of the Jesuits for form, elegance, and mere discipline, in
their excessive use of emulation; and in the pessimism of the
Jansenists, their distrust of human nature, and their fear of
human pride.]
FOOTNOTES:
[109] Religious congregations, as known in France, are associations
of persons who, consecrating themselves to the service of God,
make a vow to live in common under the same rule. Many of these
congregations devote themselves to the work of teaching, and
these are of two classes, the authorized and the unauthorized.
For example, the “Brethren of the Christian Schools,” founded
by La Salle, is an _authorized_, and the “Society of Jesus” an
_unauthorized_, congregation. From statistics published in 1878,
it appears that there were then in France, 24 congregations of men
authorized to teach, and controlling 3096 establishments; and 528
similar congregations of women, controlling 16,478 establishments.
At the same time there were 85 unauthorized congregations of men,
and 260 unauthorized congregations of women, devoted to teaching.
(P.)
[110] The congregation of the _Doctrinaries_ founded at a later
period establishments of secondary instruction. Maine de Biran,
Laromiguière, and Lakanal were pupils of the _Doctrinaries_.
[111] _Leibnitii Opera_, Genevæ, 1768, Tome VI. p. 65.
[112] _Bacon de Augmentis Scientiarum_, Lib. VI. chap. IV.
[113] See the fourth book of the _Constitutions_.
[114] See note to § 141.
[115] Letter to Madame Montglat, Nov. 14, 1607.
[116] Saint Simon, _Mémoires_, Tome IX. 83.
[117] _Entretiens sur les Sciences_, p. 197.
[118] For the Little Schools of Port Royal, see a recent account by
Carré (_Revue Pédagogique_, 1883, Nos. 2 and 8).
[119] No more pathetic piece of history has ever been written than
that which relates the vindictive and relentless persecution of
the peaceful and pious solitaries of Port Royal: “The house was
razed to the ground, and even the very foundations ploughed up.
The gardens and walks were demolished; and the dead were even torn
from their graves, that not a vestige might be left to mark the
spot where this celebrated institution had stood.”--_Lancelot’s
Tour to La Grande Chartreuse_, p. 243. See also _Narrative of the
Demolition of Port Royal_ (London, 1816). (P.)
[120] _Du choix et de la méthode des études._
[121] See Cousin, _Jacqueline Pascal_, p. 262.
[122] _Version_: translation from Latin or Greek into French.
_Theme_: translation of French into Latin or Greek. (P.)
CHAPTER VIII.
FÉNELON.
EDUCATION IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY; FÉNELON (1651-1715);
HOW FÉNELON BECAME A TEACHER; ANALYSIS OF THE TREATISE ON
THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS; CRITICISM OF MONASTIC EDUCATION;
REFUTATION OF THE PREJUDICES RELATIVE TO WOMEN; GOOD OPINION
OF HUMAN NATURE; INSTINCTIVE CURIOSITY; LESSONS ON OBJECTS;
FEEBLENESS OF THE CHILD; INDIRECT INSTRUCTION; ALL ACTIVITY
MUST BE PLEASURABLE; FABLES AND HISTORICAL NARRATIVES; MORAL
AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION; STUDIES PROPER FOR WOMEN; EDUCATION OF
THE DUKE DE BOURGOGNE (1689-1695); HAPPY RESULTS; THE FABLES;
THE DIALOGUES OF THE DEAD; VARIETY OF DISCIPLINARY AGENTS;
DIVERSIFIED INSTRUCTION; THE TELEMACHUS; FÉNELON AND BOSSUET;
SPHERE AND LIMITS OF EDUCATION; ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.
173. EDUCATION IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.--Outside of the teaching
congregations, the seventeenth century counts a certain number of
independent educators, isolated thinkers, who have transmitted to
us in durable records the results of their reflection or of their
experience. The most of these belong to the clergy,--they are
royal preceptors. In a monarchical government there is no grander
affair than the education of princes. Some others are philosophers,
whom the general study of human nature has led to reflect on the
principles of education. Without pretending to include everything
within the narrow compass of this elementary history, we would make
known either the fundamental doctrines or the essential methods
which have been concerned in the education of the seventeenth
century, and which, at the same time, have made a preparation for
the educational reforms of the succeeding centuries.
174. FÉNELON (1651-1715).--Fénelon holds an important place in
French literature; but it seems that of all the varied aspects of
his genius, the part he played as an educator is the most important
and the most considerable. Fénelon wrote the first classical work
of French pedagogy, and it may be said, considering the great
number of authors who have been inspired by his thoughts, that he
is the head of a school of educators.
175. HOW FÉNELON BECAME A TEACHER.--It is well known that the
valuable treatise, _On the Education of Girls_, was written in
1680, at the request of the Duke and the Duchess of Beauvilliers.
These noble friends of Fénelon, besides several boys, had eight
girls to educate. It was to assist, by his advice, in the education
of this little family school, that Fénelon wrote his book which was
not designed at first for the public, and which did not appear till
1687. The young Abbé who, in 1680, was but thirty years old, had
already had experience in educational matters in the management of
the Convent of the _New Catholics_ (1678). This was an institution
whose purpose was to retain young Protestant converts in the
Catholic faith, or even to call them there by mild force. It would
have been better, we confess, for the glory of Fénelon, if he had
gained his experience elsewhere than in that mission of fanaticism,
where he was the auxiliary of the secular arm, the accomplice of
dragoons, and where was prepared the Revocation of the Edict of
Nantes. We would have preferred that the _Education of Girls_ had
not been planned in a house where were violently confined girls
torn from their mothers, and wives stolen from their husbands. But
if the first source of Fénelon’s educational inspiration was not
as pure as one could wish, at least in the book there is nothing
that betrays the spirit of intolerance and violence with which the
author was associated. On the contrary, _The Education of Girls_
is a work of gentleness and goodness, of a complaisant and amiable
grace, which is pervaded by a spirit of progress.
Fénelon soon had occasion to apply the principles that he had set
forth in his treatise. August 16, 1689, he was chosen preceptor
of the Duke of Bourgogne,[123] with the Duke of Beauvilliers for
governor, and the Abbé Fleury for sub-preceptor. From 1689 to 1695,
he directed with marvellous success the education of a prince,
“a born terror,” as Saint Simon expressed it, but who, under the
penetrating influence of his master, became an accomplished man,
almost a saint. It was for his royal pupil that he composed, one
after another, a large number of educational works, such as the
_Collection of Fables_, the _Dialogues of the Dead_, the treatise
on _The Existence of God_, and especially the _Telemachus_, one of
the most popular works in French literature.
In furnishing occasion for the exercise of his educational
activity, events served Fénelon according to his wish. We may
say that his nature predestinated him to the work of education.
With his tender soul, preserving its paternal instincts even in
his celibate condition, with his admirable grace of spirit, with
his various erudition and profound knowledge of antiquity, with
his competence in the studies of grammar and history, attested by
different passages in his _Letter to the Academy_; finally, with
his temperate disposition and his inclinations towards liberalism
in a century of absolute monarchy, he was made to become one of the
guides, one of the masters, of French education.
176. ANALYSIS OF THE TREATISE ON THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS.--This
charming masterpiece of Fénelon’s should be read entire. A rapid
analysis would not suffice, as it is difficult to reduce to a
few essential points the flowing thought of our author. With a
facility in expression inclining to laxness, and with a copiousness
of thought somewhat lacking in exactness, Fénelon easily repeats
himself; he returns to thoughts which have already been elaborated,
and does not restrict his easy flowing thought to a rigorous and
methodical plan. We may, however, distinguish three principal parts
in the thirteen chapters composing the work. Chapters I. and II.
are critical, and in these the ordinary faults in the education
of women are brought into sharp outline; then in chapters III.
to VIII. we have general observations, and the statement of the
principles and methods that should be followed and applied in the
education of boys as in the education of girls; and finally, from
chapter IX. to the end of the book, are all the special reflections
which relate exclusively to the merits and demerits, the duties and
the studies, of women.
177. CRITICISM ON MONASTIC EDUCATION.--In the opening of the
treatise, as in another little essay[124] that is usually included
in this volume, Fénelon expresses a preference for a liberal and
humane education, where the light of the world penetrates, and
which is not confined to the shadow of a monastery:--
“I conclude that it is better for your daughter to be with you
than in the best convent that you could select.... If a convent
is not well governed, she will see vanity honored, which is the
most subtile of all the poisons that can affect a young girl.
She will there hear the world spoken of as a sort of enchanted
place, and nothing makes a more pernicious impression than that
deceptive picture of the world, which is seen at a distance with
admiration, and which exaggerates all its pleasures without showing
its disappointments and its sorrows.... So I would fear a worldly
convent even more than the world itself. If, on the contrary, a
convent conforms to the fervor and regularity of its constitution,
a girl of rank will grow up there in a profound ignorance of the
world.... She leaves the convent like one who had been confined in
the shadows of a deep cavern, and who suddenly returns to the full
light of day. Nothing is more dazzling than this sudden transition,
than this glare to which one has never been accustomed.”
178. REFUTATION OF THE PREJUDICES RELATIVE TO THE EDUCATION OF
WOMEN.--It is, then, for mothers that Fénelon writes his book,
still more than for the convents that he does not love. Woman is
destined to play a grand part in domestic life. “Can men hope for
any sweetness in life, if their most select companionship, which
is that of marriage, is turned into bitterness?” Then let us cease
to neglect the education of women, and renounce the prejudices by
which we pretend to justify this neglect. A learned woman, it is
said, is vain and affected! But it is not proposed that women shall
engage in useless studies which would make ridiculous pedants of
them; it is simply a question of teaching them what befits their
position in the household. Woman, it is said again, ordinarily has
a weaker intellect than man! But this is the best of reasons why it
is necessary to strengthen her intelligence. Finally, woman should
be brought up in ignorance of the world! But, replies Fénelon, the
world is not a phantom; “it is the aggregate of all the families”;
and women have duties to fulfill in it which are scarcely less
important than those of men. “Virtue is not less for women than for
men.”
179. GOOD OPINION OF HUMAN NATURE.--There are two categories of
Christians: the first dwell particularly on the original fall;
and the others attach themselves by preference to the doctrine of
redemption. For the first, the child is deeply tainted with sin;
his only inclinations are those towards evil; he is a child of
wrath, who must be severely punished. For the others, the child,
redeemed by grace, “has not yet a fixed tendency towards any
object”; his instincts have no need of being thwarted; all they
need is direction. Fénelon follows this last mode of thinking,
which is the correct one. He does not fear self-love, and does
not interdict deserved praise. He counts upon the spontaneity of
nature. He regrets the education of the ancients, who left more
liberty to children. Finally, in his judgments on human nature, he
is influenced by a cheerful and amiable optimism, and sometimes by
an excess of complacency and approbation.
180. FEEBLENESS OF THE CHILD.--But if Fénelon believes in the
innocence of the child, he is not the less convinced of its
feebleness. Hence the measures he recommends to those who have in
charge the bringing up of children: “The most important thing in
the first years of infancy is the management of the child’s health.
Through the selection of food and the régime of a simple life,
the body should be supplied with pure blood.... Another thing of
great importance is to allow the organs to strengthen by holding
instruction in abeyance....” The intellectual weakness of the child
comes for the most part from his inability to fix his attention.
“The mind of the child is like a lighted taper in a place exposed
to the wind, whose flame is ever unsteady.” Hence the urgent
necessity of not pressing children beyond measure, of training them
little by little as occasion permits, “of serving and assisting
Nature, without urging her.”
181. INSTRUCTIVE CURIOSITY; OBJECT LESSONS.--If the inattention
of the child is a great obstacle to his progress, his natural
curiosity, by way of compensation, is a potent auxiliary. Fénelon
knows the aid that can be derived from this source, and we shall
quote entire the remarkable passage in which he indicates the means
of calling it into exercise through familiar lessons which are
already real lessons on objects:--
“Curiosity in children is a natural tendency which comes as the
precursor of instruction. Do not fail to take advantage of it. For
example, in the country they see a mill, and they wish to know what
it is. They should be shown the manner of preparing the food that
is needed for human use. They notice harvesters, and what they are
doing should be explained to them; also, how the wheat is sown,
and how it multiplies in the earth. In the city, they see shops
where different arts are practised, and where different wares are
sold. You should never be annoyed by their questions; these are so
many opportunities offered you by nature for facilitating the work
of instruction. Show that you take pleasure in replying to such
questions, and by this means you will insensibly teach them how all
the things are made that serve human needs, and that give rise to
commercial pursuits.”
182. INDIRECT INSTRUCTION.--Even when the child has grown up, and
is more capable of receiving direct instruction, Fénelon does not
depart from his system of mild management and precaution. There are
to be no didactic lessons, but as far as possible the instruction
shall be indirect. This is the great educational method of Fénelon,
and we shall soon see how he applied it to the education of the
Duke of Bourgogne. “The less formal our lessons are, the better.”
However, there is need of discretion and prudence in the choice of
the first ideas, and the first pictures that are to be impressed on
the child’s mind.
“Into a reservoir so little and so precious only exquisite
things should be poured.” The absence of pedantry is one of the
characteristics of Fénelon. “In rhetoric,” he says, “I will give
no rules at all; it is sufficient to give good models.” As to
grammar, “I will give it no attention, or, at least, but very
little.” Instruction must be insinuated, not imposed. We must
resort to unexpected lessons,--to such as do not appear to be
lessons. Fénelon here anticipates Rousseau, and suggests the system
of pre-arranged scenes and instructive artifices, similar to those
invented for Émile.[125]
183. ALL ACTIVITY MUST BE PLEASURABLE.--One of the best qualities
of Fénelon as a teacher is that of wishing that study should be
agreeable; but this quality becomes a fault with him, because he
makes an abuse of attractive instruction. We can but applaud him
when he criticises the harsh and crabbed pedagogy of the Middle
Age, and depicts to us those tiresome and gloomy class-rooms, where
teachers are ever talking to children of words and things of which
they understand nothing. “No liberty,” he says, “no enjoyment, but
always lessons, silence, uncomfortable postures, correction, and
threats.” And so there is nothing more just than this thought: “In
the current education, all the pleasure is put on one side, and
all that is disagreeable on the other; the disagreeable is all
put into study, and all the pleasure is found in the diversions.”
Fénelon would change all this. For study, as for moral discipline,
“pleasure must do all.”
First, as to study, seek the means of making agreeable to children
whatever you require of them. “We must always place before them a
definite and agreeable aim to sustain them in their work.” “Conceal
their studies under the appearance of liberty and pleasure.”
“Let their range of vision extend itself a little, and their
intelligence acquire more breadth.” “Mingle instruction with play.”
“I have seen,” he says again, “certain children who have learned to
read while playing.”
For giving direction to the will, as for giving activity to
the intelligence, never subject children to cold and absolute
authority. Do not weary them by an indiscreet exactness. Let wisdom
appear to them only at intervals, and then with a laughing face.
Lead them by reason whenever it is possible for you to do it. Never
assume, save in case of extreme necessity, an austere, imperious
air that makes them tremble.
“You would close their heart and destroy their confidence, without
which there is no profit to hope for from education. Make yourself
loved by them. Let them feel at ease in your presence, so that they
do not fear to have you see their faults.”
Such, intellectually and morally, is the amiable discipline dreamed
of by Fénelon. It is evident that the imagination of our author
conducts him a little too far and leads him astray. Fénelon sees
everything on the bright side. In education, such as this too
complacent teacher dreams of it, there is no difficulty, nothing
laborious, no thorns. “All metals there are gold; all flowers
there are roses.” The child is almost exempted from making effort:
he shall not be made to repeat the lesson he has heard, “for fear
of annoying him.” It is necessary that he learn everything while
playing. If he has faults, he must not be told of them, save
with precaution, “for fear of hurting his feelings.” Fénelon is
decidedly too good-natured, too much given to cajolery. In his
effort to shun whatever is repulsive, he comes to exclude whatever
is laborious. He falls into an artless pleasantry when he demands
that the books of his pupil shall be “beautifully bound, with gilt
edges, and fine pictures.”
184. FABLES AND HISTORY.--Fénelon’s very decided taste for
agreeable studies, determines him to place in the foremost rank of
the child’s intellectual occupations, fables and history, because
narratives please the infant imagination above everything else. It
is with sacred history especially that he would have the attention
occupied, always selecting from it “that which presents the most
pleasing and the most magnificent pictures.” He properly demands,
moreover, that the teacher “animate his narrative with lively and
familiar tones, and so make all his characters speak.” By this
means we shall hold the attention of children without forcing it;
“for, once more,” he says, “we must be very careful not to impose
on them a law to hear and to remember these narratives.”
185. MORAL AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION.--Contrary to Rousseau’s
notions, Fénelon requires that children should early have their
attention turned to moral and religious truths. He would have this
instruction given in the concrete, by means of examples drawn from
experience. We need not fear to speak to them of God as a venerable
old man, with white beard, etc. Whatever of the superstitious
there may be in these conceptions adapted to the infant imagination
will be corrected afterwards by the reason. It is to be noted,
moreover, that a religion of extremes is not what Fénelon desires.
He fears all exaggerations, even that of piety. What he demands is
a tempered devotion, a reasonable Christianity. He is suspicious
of false miracles. “Accustom girls,” he says, “not to accept
thoughtlessly certain unauthorized narrations, and not to practise
certain forms of devotion introduced by an indiscreet zeal.” But
possibly, without intending it, Fénelon himself is preparing the
way for the superstition he combats, when, for the purpose of
indoctrinating the child with the first principles of religion, he
presents to him the notion of God under sensible forms, and speaks
to him of a paradise where all is of gold and precious stones.
186. STUDIES PROPER FOR WOMEN.--So far, we have noted in Fénelon’s
work only general precepts applicable to boys and girls alike. But
in the last part of his work, Fénelon treats especially of women’s
own work, of the qualities peculiarly their own, of their duties,
and of the kind of instruction they need in order to fulfill them.
No one knew better than Fénelon the faults that come to woman
through ignorance,--unrest, unemployed time, inability to apply
herself to solid and serious duties, frivolity, indolence, lawless
imagination, indiscreet curiosity concerning trifles, levity, and
talkativeness, sentimentalism, and, what is remarkable with a
friend of Madame Guyon, a mania for theology: “Women are too much
inclined to speak decisively on religious questions.”
What does Fénelon propose as a corrective of these mischievous
tendencies? It must be confessed that the plan of instruction which
he proposes is still insufficient, and that it scarcely accords
with the ideal as we conceive it to-day.
“Keep young girls,” he says, “within the common bounds, and teach
them that there should be for their sex a modesty with respect to
knowledge almost as delicate as that inspired by the horror of
vice.”
Is not this the same as declaring that knowledge is not intended
for women, and that it is repugnant to their delicate nature?
When Fénelon tells us that a young girl ought to learn to read
and write correctly (and observe that account is taken only of
the daughters of the nobility and of the wealthy middle classes);
when he adds, _let her also learn grammar_, we can infer from
these puerile prescriptions, that Fénelon does not exact any great
things from women in the way of knowledge. And yet, such as it is,
this programme surpassed, in the time of Fénelon, the received
custom, and constituted a substantial progress. It was to state an
excellent principle, whose consequences should have been more fully
analyzed, to demand that women should learn all that is necessary
for them to know, in order to bring up their children. Fénelon
should also be commended for having recommended to young women
the reading of profane authors. He who had been nourished on such
literature, who was, so to speak, but a Greek turned Christian, who
knew Homer so perfectly as to write the _Telemachus_, could not,
without belying himself, advise against the studies from which he
had derived so much pleasure and profit. He also recognized the
utility of history, ancient and modern. He grants a place to poetry
and eloquence, provided an elimination be made of whatever would be
dangerous to purity of morals. What we comprehend less easily is
that he condemns, as severely as he does, music, which, he says,
“furnishes diversions that are poisonous.”
But these faults, this mistrust of too high an intellectual
culture, ought not to prevent us from admiring the _Education of
Girls_. Let us be grateful to Fénelon for having resisted, in
part, the prejudices of a period when young women were condemned
by their sex to an almost absolute ignorance; for having declared
that he would follow a course contrary “to that of alarm and of a
superficial culture of the intelligence”; and finally, for having
written a book, all the generous inspirations of which Madame de
Maintenon herself has not caught; and of which we may say, finally,
that almost everything that it contains is excellent, and that it
is defective only in what it does not contain.
187. MADAME DE LAMBERT (1647-1733).--Fénelon, as an educator of
women, was the founder of a school. From Rollin to Madame de
Genlis, how many teachers have been inspired by him! But in the
front rank of his pupils we must place Madame de Lambert. In her
_Counsels to her Son_ (1701), and especially in her _Counsels to
her Daughter_ (1728), she has taken up the tradition of Fénelon
with greater breadth and freedom of spirit. “As discreet as he with
respect to works of the imagination, of which she fears that the
reading may inflame the mind;” more severe, even, than he towards
Racine, whose name she seems to hesitate to pronounce; disposed
to exclude her daughter from “plays, representations that move
the passions, music, poetry,--all belonging to the retinue of
pleasure,--in other respects, Madame de Lambert takes precedence
and surpasses her master” (Gréard). She reproaches Molière for
having abandoned women to idleness, pastime, and pleasure. She
loves history, especially the history of France, “which no one is
permitted not to know.” Finally, without entering into the details
of her protests, she makes a powerful plea for the cause of woman’s
education; she already belongs to the eighteenth century.
188. EDUCATION OF THE DUKE OF BOURGOGNE.--Singularly enough,
Fénelon did not make an application of his ideas on education
till after he had set them forth in a theoretical treatise.
The education of the Duke of Bourgogne permitted him to make a
practical test of the rules established in the _Education of
Girls_. Nothing is of more interest to the historian of pedagogy
than the study of that princely education into which Fénelon
put all his mind and heart, and which, by its results, at once
brilliant and insufficient, exhibits the merits and the faults of
his plan of education.
189. HAPPY RESULTS.--The Duke of Bourgogne with his active
intelligence, and also with his impetuous, indocile character,
and his fits of passion, was just the pupil for the teacher who
relied on _indirect instruction_. It would have been unwise to
indoctrinate with heavy didactic lessons a spirit so impetuous.
Through tact and industry, Fénelon succeeded in captivating the
attention of the prince, and in skillfully insinuating into his
mind knowledges that he would probably have rejected, had they been
presented to it in a scientific and pedantic form. “I have never
seen a child,” says Fénelon, “who so readily understood the finest
things of poetry and eloquence.” Doubtless the happy nature of the
prince contributed a large part towards these results; but the art
of Fénelon had also its share in the final account.
190. MORAL LESSONS; THE FABLES.--How shall morals be taught to a
violent and passionate child? Fénelon did not think of preaching
fine sermons to him; but presented to him, under the form of
_Fables_, the moral precepts that he wished to inculcate. The
_Fables_ of Fénelon certainly have not, as a whole, a large
literary value; but, to form a just appreciation of them, we
must recollect that their merit is especially to be seen in the
circumstances attending their composition. Composed from day to
day, they were adapted to the circumstances of the life of the
young prince; they were filled with allusions to his faults and
his virtues, and they conveyed to him, at the favorable moment,
under the veil of a pleasing fiction, the commendation or the
censure that he deserved. “One might,” says the Cardinal de
Bausset, “follow the chronological order in which these pieces
were composed, by comparing them with the progress which age and
instruction must have made in the education of the prince.” The
apologues, even with their very general morals, will always have
their value and place in the education of children. What shall
be said of the fables in which the moral, wholly individual, was
addressed exclusively to the pupil for whom they were written,
either on account of some perversity that he let come to the
surface, or of a rising virtue that had been manifested in his
conduct? It is thus that the fable called _The Capricious_
presented to the young duke the picture of his fits of passion,
and taught him to correct himself; that of the _Bee and the Fly_
reminded him that the most brilliant qualities serve no good
purpose without moderation. One day, in a fit of anger, the prince
so far forgot himself as to say to Fénelon, who was reproving him:
“_No, no, Sir! I know who I am, and who you are!_” The next day,
doubtless in response to this explosion of princely self-conceit,
Fénelon had him read the fable entitled _Bacchus and the Faun_: “As
Bacchus could not abide a malicious jeerer always ready to make
sport of his expressions that were not correct and elegant, he said
to him in a fiery and important tone: ‘How dare you jeer the son of
Jupiter?’ The Faun replied without emotion: ‘Alas! how does the son
of Jupiter dare to commit any fault?’”
Certain fables, of a more elevated tone than the others, are not
designed simply to correct the faults of children; they prepare
the prince for the exercise of government. Thus, the fable of the
_Bees_ disclosed to him the beauties of an industrious State, and
one where order reigns; the _Nile and the Ganges_ taught him love
for the people, “compassion for humanity, harassed and suffering.”
Finally, from each of these fables there issued a serious lesson
under the pleasing exterior of a witticism; and more than once,
in reading them, the prince doubtless felt an emotion of pleasure
or of shame, as he recognized himself in a commendation or in a
reproof addressed to the imaginary personages of the _Fables_.
191. HISTORICAL LESSONS; THE DIALOGUES OF THE DEAD.--It is not
alone in moral education, but in intellectual education as well,
that Fénelon resorts to artifice. The ingenious preceptor has
employed fiction in all its forms the better to compass and
dominate the spirit of his pupil. There are the fables for moral
instruction, the dialogues for the study of history, and finally,
the epopée in the _Telemachus_, for the political education of the
heir to the throne of France.
The _Dialogues of the Dead_ put on the stage men of all countries
and conditions, Charles the Fifth and a monk of Saint-Just,
Aristotle and Descartes, Leonardo da Vinci and Poussin, Cæsar and
Alexander. History proper, literature, philosophy, the arts, were
the subjects of conversations composed, as in the _Fables_, at
different intervals, according to the progress and the needs of
the Duke of Bourgogne. These were attractive pictures that came
from time to time to be introduced into the scheme for the didactic
study of universal history. They should be taken only for what
they were intended to be,--the pleasing complement to a regular
and consecutive course of instruction. Fénelon knew better than
any one else that history is interesting in itself, and that to
make the study of it interesting, it is sufficient to present it to
the childish imagination with clearness, with vivacity, and with
feeling.
192. VARIETY OF DISCIPLINARY AGENTS.--The education of the Duke
of Bourgogne is the practical application of Fénelon’s principles
as to the necessity of employing an insinuating gentleness rather
than an authority which dryly commands. There are to be no sermons,
no lectures, but indirect means of moral instruction. The Duke
of Bourgogne was irascible. Instead of reading to him Seneca’s
treatise _On Anger_, this is Fénelon’s device: One morning he has
a cabinet-maker come to his apartments, whom he has instructed for
the purpose. The prince enters, stops, and looks at the tools. “Go
about your business, Sir,” cries the workman, who assumes a most
threatening air, “for I am not responsible for what I may do; when
I am in a passion, I break the arms and legs of those whom I meet.”
We guess the conclusion of the story, and how, by this experimental
method, Fénelon contrives to teach the prince to guard against
anger and its effects.
When indirect means did not answer, Fénelon employed others. It is
thus that he made frequent appeals to the self-love of his pupil;
he reminded him of what he owed to his name and to the hopes of
France. He had him record his word of honor that he would behave
well: “I promise the Abbé Fénelon, on the word of a prince, that
I will obey him, and that, in case I break my word, I will submit
to any kind of punishment and dishonor. Given at Versailles, this
29th day of November, 1689. Signed: Louis.” At other times Fénelon
appealed to his feelings, and conquered him by his tenderness and
goodness. It is in such moments of tender confidence that the
prince said to him, “I leave the Duke of Bourgogne outside the
door, and with you I am but the little Louis.” Finally, at other
times, Fénelon resorted to the harshest punishments; he sequestered
him, took away his books, and interdicted all conversation.
193. DIVERSIFIED INSTRUCTION.--By turns serious and tender, mild
and severe, in his moral discipline, Fénelon was not less versatile
in his methods of instruction. His dominant preoccupation was to
_diversify_ studies--the term is his own. If a given subject of
study was distasteful to his pupil, Fénelon passed to another.
Although the success of his tutorship seems to be a justification
of his course, there is ground for thinking that, as a general
rule, Fénelon’s precept is debatable, and that his example should
not be followed by making an over-use of amusement and agreeable
variety. Fénelon has too often made studies puerile through his
attempts to make them agreeable.
194. RESULTS OF THE EDUCATION OF THE DUKE OF BOURGOGNE.--It seems
like a paradox to say that Fénelon was too successful in his
educational apostleship; and yet this is the truth. Under his
hand--“the ablest hand that ever was,” says Saint Simon--the prince
became in all respects the image of his master. He was a bigot to
the extent of being unwilling to attend a royal ball because that
worldly entertainment coincided with the religious celebration of
the Epiphany; he was rather a monk than a king; he was destitute
of all spirit of initiative and liberty, irresolute, absorbed in
his pious erudition and mystic prayers; finally, he was another
Telemachus, who could not do without his Mentor. Fénelon had
monopolized and absorbed the will of his pupil. He had forgotten
that the purpose of education is to form, not a pale copy, an image
of the master, but a man independent and free, capable of sufficing
for himself.
195. THE TELEMACHUS.--The _Telemachus_, composed from 1694 to 1698,
was designed for the Duke of Bourgogne; but he was not to read it,
and did not read it, in fact, till after his marriage. Through this
epopée in prose, this romance borrowed from Homer, Fénelon purposed
to continue the moral education of his pupil. But the book abounds
in sermons. “I could have wished,” said Boileau, “that the Abbé had
made his Mentor a little less a preacher, and that the moral of the
book could have been distributed a little more imperceptibly, and
with more art.” At least, they are beautiful and excellent sermons,
aimed against luxury, the spirit of conquest, the consequences
of absolute power, and against ambition and war. Louis XIV. had
probably read the _Telemachus_, and had comprehended the allusions
concealed in the description of the Republic of Salentum, when
he said of Fénelon that he was “the most chimerical spirit in
his kingdom.” Besides the moral lesson intended for princes, the
_Telemachus_ also contains bold reflections on political questions.
For example, note the conception of a system of public instruction,
very new for the time: “Children belong less to their parents than
to the Republic, and ought to be educated by the State. There
should be established public schools in which are taught the fear
of God, love of country, and respect for the laws.”
196. BOSSUET AND FÉNELON.--Bossuet, as preceptor of the
Dauphin,[126] was far from having the same success as Fénelon.
Nothing was overlooked, however, in the education of the son of
Louis XIV.; and the _Letter to Pope Innocent XI._ (1679), in which
Bossuet presents his scheme of study, gives proof of high fitness
for educational work. He recommends assiduous labor, no leaves
of absence, and play mingled with study. “A child must play and
enjoy himself,” he says. Emulation excited by the presence of
other children, who came to compete with the prince; a thorough
reading of the Latin authors, explained, not in fragments, as with
the Jesuits, but in complete texts; a certain breadth of spirit,
since the study of the comic poets--of Terence in particular--was
expressly recommended; a familiarity with the Greeks and the
Romans, “especially with the divine Homer”; the grammar learned in
French; history, “the mistress of human life,” studied with ardor,
and presented, first, in its particular facts, in the lessons which
the Dauphin drew up, and then in its general laws, the spirit of
which has been transmitted to us in the _Discourse on Universal
History_; geography learned “while playing and making imaginary
journeys”; philosophy; and finally the sciences, brilliantly
presented,--with such a programme, and under such a master, it
seems that the Dauphin ought to have been a student of the highest
rank; but he remained a mediocre pupil, “absorbed,” to use Saint
Simon’s expression, “in his own fat and gloom.”
It must certainly be acknowledged that, notwithstanding his
excellent intentions, Bossuet was in part responsible for the fact
that these results were insufficient, or, rather, nil. He did not
know how “to condescend,” as Montaigne says, “to the boyish ways of
his pupil.” In dealing with him he proceeded on too high a plane.
“The austere genius of Bossuet,” says Henry Martin, “did not know
how to become small with the small.” Bossuet lacked in flexibility
and tact, precisely the qualities that characterized Fénelon.
Bossuet, in education, as in everything else, is grandeur, noble
and sublime bearing; Fénelon, as preceptor, is address, insinuating
grace. That which dominates in the one is authority, a majesty
almost icy; that which constitutes the charm of the other is
versatility, a persuasive gentleness, a penetrating tenderness.
To be just, however, it must be added that the faults were not all
on Bossuet’s side. In that education, stamped with failure, the
pupil was the great culprit, with his ungrateful and rebellious
nature. “My lord has much spirit,” said a courtier, “but he has it
_concealed_.” For one not a courtier, does it not amount to the
same thing to have one’s spirit concealed and to have none at all?
197. SPHERE AND LIMITS OF EDUCATION.--It seems that, on one page
of the _Education of Girls_, Fénelon has traced in advance, and by
a sort of divination, the parallels of the two educations of the
Dauphin and of the Duke of Bourgogne respectively. How can we fail
to recognize the anticipated portrait of Fénelon’s future pupil in
this passage, written in 1680?
“It must be acknowledged, that of all the difficulties in
education, none is comparable to that of bringing up children who
are lacking in sensibility. The naturally quick and sensitive are
capable of terrible mistakes,--passion and presumption do so betray
them! But they have also great resources, and when far gone often
come to themselves. Instruction is a germ concealed within them,
which starts, and sometimes bears fruit, when experience comes to
the aid of knowledge, and the passions lose their power. At least,
we know how to make them attentive, and to awaken their curiosity.
We have the means of interesting them, and of stimulating them
through their sense of honor; but, on the other hand, we can gain
no hold on indolent natures.”
On the other hand, all that follows applies perfectly to the
Dauphin, the indocile pupil of Bossuet:--
“ ... All the thoughts of these are distractions; they are never
where they ought to be; they cannot be touched to the quick even by
corrections; they hear everything and feel nothing. This indolence
makes the pupil negligent, and disgusts him with whatever he does.
Under these conditions, the best planned education runs the risk
of failure.... Many people, who think superficially, conclude
from this poor success that nature does all for the production of
men of merit, and that education has no part in the result; but
the only conclusion to be drawn from the case is, that there are
natures like ungrateful soils, upon which culture has but little
effect.”[127]
Nothing better can be said, and Fénelon has admirably summed up the
lesson that should be drawn from these two princely illustrations
of the seventeenth century. If the sorry results of Bossuet’s
efforts should inspire the educator with some modesty, and prove to
him that the best grain does not grow in an ingrate soil, is not
the brilliant education of the Duke of Bourgogne, which developed
almost all the virtues in a soul where nature seemed to have
planted the seeds of all the vices, of a nature to increase the
confidence of teachers, and show them what can be done by the art
of a shrewd and able teacher?
[198. ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.--1. Education as a plastic art has
never been exhibited in a more favorable light than in this
history of Fénelon’s teaching; and perhaps the resistance that
sometimes sets at defiance the teacher’s art could not be better
illustrated than in the case of Bossuet’s royal pupil.
2. These two historical illustrations also exhibit the play of
the two factors that enter into education,--nature and art.
Fénelon’s teaching illustrates the potency of human art in
controlling, modifying, almost re-creating a work of nature. The
Duke of Bourgogne was almost re-made to order.
3. Here is also an illustrious example of the attempt to make
education a pastime, to divest it of all constraint, to make
learning run parallel with the pupil’s inclinations. In the
natural recoil from a dry and formal teaching that had to be
enforced against the pupil’s will, it is sometimes forgotten that
a large part of life’s duties lie outside of our inclinations.
4. The policy of leading pupils at such a distance that they seem
to themselves to be following their own initiative, is one of the
highest of the teacher’s arts.
5. The inculcation of moral lessons through fables, after
Fénelon’s plan, is a practice that modern teaching might
profitably adopt.]
FOOTNOTES:
[123] Son of Louis XIV., born Aug. 6, 1682; died Feb. 18, 1712.
[124] See the _Advice_ of Fénelon, Archbishop Cambray, to a lady of
quality on the education of her daughter.
[125] For an example of this “artifice” carried to the extreme of
absurdity, see Miss Worthington’s translation of the _Émile_, p.
133. (P.)
[126] Eldest son of Louis XIV., born Nov. 1, 1661; died April 14,
1711.
[127] _Education of Girls_, Chap. V.
CHAPTER IX.
THE PHILOSOPHERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. DESCARTES,
MALEBRANCHE, LOCKE.
DESCARTES, MALEBRANCHE, LOCKE; DESCARTES (1596-1650); THE
DISCOURSE OF METHOD; CRITICISM OF THE CURRENT EDUCATION; GREAT
PRINCIPLES OF MODERN PEDAGOGY; OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE PEDAGOGY;
MALEBRANCHE (1638-1715); SENSE INSTRUCTION CONDEMNED; INFLUENCE
OF ENVIRONMENT; LOCKE (1632-1704); THE THOUGHTS CONCERNING
EDUCATION; PHYSICAL EDUCATION; THE HARDENING PROCESS; HYGIENIC
PARADOXES; MORAL EDUCATION MORE IMPORTANT THAN INSTRUCTION; SENSE
OF HONOR THE PRINCIPLE OF MORAL DISCIPLINE; CONDEMNATION OF
CORPORAL PUNISHMENT; INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION; UTILITARIAN STUDIES;
PROGRAMME OF STUDIES; ATTRACTIVE STUDIES; SHOULD A TRADE BE
LEARNED? WORKING SCHOOLS; LOCKE AND ROUSSEAU; ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.
199. DESCARTES, MALEBRANCHE, AND LOCKE.--Descartes, a spiritualist;
Malebranche, an idealist; Locke, a sensationalist,--such are the
philosophers of the seventeenth century who are related to the
history of pedagogy. And yet the first two have only a remote
connection with it, through their exposition of some of its general
principles. Locke is the only one who has resolutely approached
educational questions in a special treatise that has become a
classic in English pedagogy.
200. DESCARTES (1596-1650).--Descartes, the father of modern
philosophy, does not generally figure in the lists drawn up by
the historians of education; and yet, in our opinion, there
is no thinker who has exercised a more decisive influence on
the destinies of education. The author of the _Discourse of
Method_ has, properly speaking, no system of pedagogy, having
never directly treated of educational affairs; but through his
philosophical principles he has changed the direction of human
thought, and has introduced into the study of known truths, as
well as into the search for new truths, a method and a taste for
clearness and precision, which have profited instruction in all of
its departments.
“We now find,” says Rollin, “in the discourses from the pulpit
and the bar, and in the dissertations on science, an order, an
exactness, a propriety, and a solidity, which were formerly not
so common. Many believe, and not without reason, that we owe this
manner of thinking and writing to the extraordinary progress which
has been made within a a century in the study of philosophy.”[128]
201. THE DISCOURSE OF METHOD (1637).--Every system of philosophy
contains in germ a special system of education. From the mere fact
that philosophers define, each in his own way, the nature and the
destiny of man, they come to different conclusions as to the aims
and methods of education. Only a few of them have taken pains to
deduce from their principles the consequences that are involved in
them; but all of them, whether they will or no, are educators.
Such is the case of Descartes. In writing, in the first part of his
_Discourse of Method_, his _Considerations Touching the Sciences_,
Descartes has written a chapter on practical pedagogy, and through
the general rules of his logic, he has, in effect, founded a new
theory of education.
202. CRITICISM OF THE CURRENT EDUCATION.--Descartes has given a
long account of the education which he had received among the
Jesuits, at the college of La Flèche, and this account furnished
him occasion, either to criticize the methods in use, or to
indicate his personal views and his educational preferences.
“From my infancy letters have been my intellectual nourishment....
But as soon as I had completed the course of study required for the
doctor’s degree, I found myself embarrassed with so many doubts and
errors that it seemed to me that I had received no other profit
from my efforts at learning than the discovery of my growing
ignorance.”
In other terms, Descartes ascertained that his studies, though
pursued with ardor for eight years in one of the most celebrated
schools of Europe, had not permitted him to acquire “a clear and
sure knowledge of all that is useful for living.” This was to
condemn the barren teaching and the formal instruction of the
Jesuits. Passing in review the different parts of the instruction,
Descartes first remarks that it was wrong to make an abuse of
the reading of ancient books; for, to hold converse with the men
of other centuries “is about the same as travelling; and when we
spend too much time in travelling, we become strangers in our own
country.” Then he complains that he was not made to know “the true
use of mathematics,” since he had been shown their application only
to the mechanic arts. He nearly condemns rhetoric and poetics,
since eloquence and poetry are “intellectual gifts rather than the
fruits of study.” The ancient languages--and in this he gravely
deceives himself--seem to him useful only for the understanding of
authors. He does not admit that the study of Latin or Greek can
contribute to intellectual development.
From these reflections there seems to issue the notion of an
instruction more solid, more positive, more directly useful for
the purposes of life, than that which had been brought into
fashion by the Jesuits. However, Descartes does not eliminate the
ordinary studies, as eloquence, “which has incomparable power and
beauty”; poetry, “which has an enchanting tenderness and melody”;
the reading of the classics, which is “a studied conversation with
the most estimable men of past centuries”; history, “which forms
the judgment”; fables, whose “charm arouses the spirit.” But he
would give to all these exercises a more practical turn, a more
utilitarian character, a more positive application.
203. GREAT PRINCIPLES OF MODERN PEDAGOGY.--Without intending
it, without any other thought than that of modifying the false
direction of the mind in the search for scientific truth, Descartes
has stated some of the great principles of modern pedagogy.
The first is the equal aptitude of minds to know and comprehend.
“Good sense,” says Descartes, “is the thing of all else in this
world that is most equally distributed.[129] ... The latent
ability to judge well, to distinguish the true from the false,
is naturally equal among all men.” What is this but saying that
all men are entitled to instruction? In a certain sense, what are
the innumerable primary schools scattered over the surface of the
civilized globe, but the application and the living commentary of
Descartes’ ideas on the equal distribution of good sense and reason
among men?
But, adds Descartes, “it is not enough to have a sound mind; the
principal thing is to make a good use of it.” In other words,
nature is not sufficient in herself; she needs to be guided and
directed. Method is the essential thing; it has a sovereign
importance. Success will depend less on natural qualities, such
as imagination, memory, quickness of thought, than upon the rules
of intellectual direction imposed on the mind. Education has a
far greater part than nature in the formation and development of
accurate and upright intelligences.
Another Cartesian principle is the substitution of free inquiry and
reflective conviction for blind beliefs founded upon authority.
Descartes promulgated this famous rule of his method: “The first
precept is, never to receive anything for true that I do not know,
upon evidence, to be such; ... and to comprise no more within my
judgments than what is presented so clearly and distinctly to my
mind that I have no occasion to call it in question.” In this
declaration he has not only reformed science and revolutionized
philosophy, but has banished from the school the old routine, the
mechanical processes and exercises of pure memory, and has made a
demand for rational methods that excite the intelligence, awaken
clear and distinct ideas, and provoke judgment and reflection. Of
course, it is not proposed to make a little Descartes out of every
child, despoiling him of received beliefs in order to construct
personal opinions _de novo_; but the rule of evidence, applied
with moderation and discretion, is none the less an excellent
pedagogical precept, which will never be disallowed by those who
wish to make of the child something more than a mere machine.
204. OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE PEDAGOGY.--We have now reached a
place where we may call into notice two different tendencies,
equally legitimate, which we shall find, with exaggerations that
compromise their utility, in the practice of modern teachers.
There are those who wish above all to develop the intelligence;
and there are others who are preoccupied with furnishing the mind
with a stock of positive knowledge. The first conceive instruction
as taking place, as it were, through what is within, through the
development of the internal qualities of precision and measure; the
others are preoccupied only with the instruction that takes place
through what is without, through an extended erudition, through
an accumulation of knowledges. In a word, if I may be allowed
the expression, some affect a subjective pedagogy, and others an
objective pedagogy. Bacon is of the latter number. That which
preoccupies the great English logician above everything else is
the extension of observations and experiments. “To reason without
knowing anything of that which we reason upon,” he says, “is as if
we were to weigh or measure the wind.” Descartes, however, who has
never neglected the study of facts, esteems them less as material
to be accumulated in the mind, than as instruments for training
the mind itself. He would have repudiated those teachers of our
day who seem to think the whole thing is done when there has been
made to pass before the mental vision of the child an interminable
series of object-lessons, without the thought of developing that
intelligence itself.
205. MALEBRANCHE (1638-1715).--We must not expect great pedagogical
wisdom from a mystical dreamer and resolute idealist, who has
imagined the vision of all things in God. Besides, Malebranche has
given only a passing attention to things relating to education.
The member of a teaching congregation, the Oratory, he has not
taught; and the whole effort of his mind was spent in the search
for metaphysical truth. Nevertheless, it is interesting to stop
for a moment this visionary who traverses the earth with eyes fixed
on the heavens, and inquire of him what he thinks of the very
practical question, education.
206. SENSE INSTRUCTION CONDEMNED.--Malebranche will reply to us,
with the prejudices of a metaphysician of the idealist type,
that the first thing to do is to nourish the child on abstract
truths. In his view, souls have no age, so to speak, and the
infant is already capable of ideal contemplation. Then let sense
instruction be abandoned, “for this is the reason why children
leave metaphysical thoughts, to apply themselves to sensations.”
Is it objected that the child does not seem very well adapted
to meditation on abstract truths? It is not so much the fault
of nature, Malebranche will reply, as of the bad habits he has
contracted. There is a means of remedying this ordinary incapacity
of the child.
“If we kept children from fear, from desires, and from hope, if
we did not make them suffer pain, if we removed them as far as
possible from their little pleasures, then we might teach them,
from the moment they knew how to speak, the most difficult and
the most abstract things, or at least the concrete mathematics,
mechanics.”
Does Malebranche hope, then, to suppress, in the life of the child,
pleasure and pain, and triumph over the tendencies which ordinary
education has developed?
“As an ambitious man who had just lost his fortune and his credit
would not be in a condition to resolve questions in metaphysics
or equations in algebra, so children, on whose brains apples and
sugar-plums make as profound impressions as are made on those of
men of forty years by offices and titles, are not in a condition to
hear the abstract truths that are taught them.”
Consequently, we must declare war against the senses, and exclude,
for example, all sorts of sensible rewards. Only, by a singular
contradiction, Malebranche upholds material punishments in the
education of children. The only thing of sense he retains is the
rod.[130]
207. INFLUENCE OF MATERIAL ENVIRONMENT.--Another contradiction more
worthy of note is, that, notwithstanding his idealism, Malebranche
believes in the influence of physical conditions on the development
of the soul. He does not go so far as to say with the materialists
of our time, that “man is what he eats”; but he accords a certain
amount of influence to nourishment. He speaks cheerfully of wine
and of “those wild spirits who do not willingly submit to the
orders of the will.” He never applied himself to work without
having partaken of coffee. The soul, in his view, is not a force
absolutely independent and isolated, which develops through an
internal activity: “we are bound,” he says, “to everything, and
stand in relations to all that surrounds us.”
208. LOCKE (1632-1704).--Locke is above all else a psychologist,
an accomplished master in the art of analyzing the origin of
ideas and the elements of the mental life. He is the head of that
school of empirical psychology that rallies around its standard,
Condillac in France, Herbart in Germany, and in Great Britain Hume
and other Scotchmen, and the most of modern philosophers. But
from psychology to pedagogy the transition is easy, and Locke had
to make no great effort to become an authority in education after
having been an accomplished philosopher.
209. SOME THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION (1693).--The book which he
published towards the close of his life, under the modest title
_Some Thoughts concerning Education_, was the summing up of a
long experience. A studious pupil at Westminster, he conceived
from his early years, as Descartes did at La Flèche, a keen sense
of repugnance for a purely formal classical instruction, and for
language studies in general, in which, nevertheless, he attained
distinction. A model student at the University of Oxford, he there
became an accomplished humanist, notwithstanding the practical and
positive tendency of his mind that was already drawn towards the
natural sciences and researches in physics and in medicine. Made
Bachelor of Arts in 1656, and Master of Arts in 1658, he passed
directly from the student’s bench to the professor’s chair. He was
successively lecturer and tutor in Greek, but this did not prevent
him later from eliminating Hellenism almost completely from his
scheme of liberal education. Then he became lecturer on rhetoric,
and finally on moral philosophy. When, in 1666, he discontinued his
scholastic life to mingle in political and diplomatic affairs, he
at least carried from his studious residence at Oxford, the germs
of the most of his ideas on education. He sought occasion to make
an application of them in the education of private individuals,
of whom he was the inspirer and counsellor, if not the official
director. In the families of friends and hosts that he frequented,
for example, in that of Lord Shaftesbury, he made a close study
of children; and it is in studying them, and in following with
a sagacious eye the successive steps of their improvement in
disposition and mind, that he succeeded in acquiring that
educational experience which has left a trace on each page of the
_Thoughts concerning Education_. This book, in fact, is the issue
of one of Locke’s experiences as an assistant in the education of
the children of his friends. Towards the year 1684-5, he addressed
to his friend Clarke a series of letters which, retouched and
slightly modified, have become a classical work, simple and
familiar in style, a little disconnected, perhaps, and abounding
in repetitions, but the substance of which is excellent, and the
ideas as remarkable, in general, for their originality as for
their justness. Translated into French in 1695 by P. Coste, and
reprinted several times in the lifetime of their author, the
_Thoughts concerning Education_ have had a universal success. They
have exercised an undoubted influence on the educational writings
of Rousseau and Helvetius. They have received the enthusiastic
praise of Leibnitz, who placed this work above that on the _Human
Understanding_. “I am persuaded,” said H. Marion recently, in his
interesting study on Locke, “that if an edition of the _Thoughts_
were to be published to-day in a separate volume, it would have a
marked success.”[131]
210. ANALYSIS OF THE THOUGHTS CONCERNING EDUCATION.--Without
pretending to give in this place a detailed analysis of Locke’s
book, which deserves to be read entire, and which discusses
exhaustively or calls to notice, one after another, almost all
important educational questions, we shall attempt to make known the
essential principles which are to be drawn from it. These are: 1.
in physical education, the _hardening process_; 2. in intellectual
education, practical utility; 3. in moral education, the principle
of honor, set up as a rule for the free self-government of man.
211. PHYSICAL EDUCATION; THE HARDENING PROCESS.--The ideal of
education, according to Locke, is “a sound mind in a sound body.”
A physician like Rabelais, the author of the _Thoughts concerning
Education_ had special competence in questions of physical
education. But a love for the paradoxical, and an excessive
tendency towards the hardening of the body, have marred, on this
point, the reflections of the English philosopher. He has summed up
his precepts on this subject in the following lines:--
“The whole is reduced,” he says, “to a small number of rules, easy
to observe; much air, exercise, and sleep; a simple diet, no wine
or strong liquors; little or no medicine at all; garments that are
neither too tight nor too warm; finally, and above all, the habit
of keeping the head and feet cold, of often bathing the feet in
cold water and exposing them to dampness.”[132] But it is necessary
to enter somewhat into details, and to examine closely some of
these ideas.
Locke is the first educator to write a consecutive and methodical
dissertation on the food, clothing, and sleep of children. It is
he who has stated this principle, afterwards taken up by Rousseau:
“Leave to nature the care of forming the body as she thinks it
ought to be done.” Hence, no close-fitting garments, life in the
open air and in the sun; children brought up like peasants, inured
to heat and cold, playing with head and feet bare. In the matter of
food, Locke forbids sugar, wine, spices, and flesh, up to the age
of three or four. As to fruits, which children often crave with an
inordinate appetite, a fact that is not surprising, he pleasantly
remarks, “since it was for an apple that our first parents lost
paradise,” he makes a singular choice. He authorizes strawberries,
gooseberries, apples, and pears; but he interdicts peaches, plums,
and grapes. To excuse Locke’s prejudice against the grapes, it must
be recollected that he lived in England, a country in which the
vine grows with difficulty, and of which an Italian said, “The only
ripe fruit I have seen in England is a baked apple.” As to meals,
Locke does not think it important to fix them at stated hours.
Fénelon, on the contrary, more judiciously requires that the hour
for repasts be absolutely determined. But this is not the only
instance in which Locke’s wisdom is at fault. What shall be said of
that hygienic fancy which consists in allowing the child “to have
his shoes so thin, that they might leak and let in water, whenever
he comes near it”?
It is certain that Locke treats children with an unheard-of
severity, all the more surprising in the case of one who had an
infirm and delicate constitution that could be kept in repair
only through precaution and management. I do not know whether the
consequences of the treatment which he proposes, applied to the
letter, might not be disastrous. Madame de Sévigné was more nearly
right when she wrote: “If your son is very robust, a rude education
is good; but if he is delicate, I think that in your attempts to
make him robust, you would kill him.” The body, says Locke, may
be accustomed to everything. We may reply to this by quoting an
anecdote of Peter the Great, who one day took it into his head,
it is said, that it would be best for all the sailors to form the
habit of drinking salt water. Immediately he promulgated an edict
which ordered that all naval cadets should henceforth drink only
sea-water. The boys all died, and there the experiment stopped.
Still, without subscribing to Locke’s paradoxes, which have found
no one to approve of them except Rousseau, we should recollect that
in his precepts on physical education as a whole, the author of
the _Thoughts_ deserves our commendation for having recommended a
manly course of discipline, and a frugal diet, for having discarded
fashionable conventionalities and drawn near to nature, and for
having condemned the refinements of an indolent mode of life, and
for being inspired by the simple and manly customs of England.
212. MORAL EDUCATION.--In the thought of Locke, moral education
takes precedence of instruction properly so called:
“That which a gentleman ought to desire for his son, besides the
fortune he leaves him is, 1. virtue; 2. prudence; 3. good manners;
4. instruction.”
Virtue and prudence--that is, moral qualities and practical
qualities--are of first consideration. “Instruction,” says
Locke again, “is but the least part of education.” In the book
of _Thoughts_, where repetitions abound, there is nothing more
frequently repeated than the praise of virtue.
Doubtless it may be thought that Locke, like Herbert Spencer in our
own day, cherishes prejudices with respect to instruction, and that
he does not take sufficient account of the moralizing influence
exercised over the heart and will by intellectual enlightenment;
but, even with this admission, we must thank Locke for having
protested against the teachers who think they have done all when
they have embellished the memory and developed the intelligence.
The grand thing in education is certainly to establish good moral
habits, to cultivate noble sentiments, and, finally, to form
virtuous characters.
213. HONOR, THE PRINCIPLE OF MORAL DISCIPLINE.--But after having
placed moral education in its proper rank, which is the first, it
remains to inquire what shall be the principles and the methods
of this education. Shall it be the maxim of utility, as Rousseau
requires? Must the child, before acting, inquire what is the
good of this? _Cui bono?_ No; utilitarian in instruction and in
intellectual education, as we have just seen, Locke is not so
in moral education. Shall it be fear, shall it be the authority
of the teacher or of parents, founded on punishments, upon the
slavish feeling of terror? Still less. Locke reproves repressive
discipline, and is not inclined to chastisements. Shall it be
affection, the love of parents, the aggregate of tender sentiments?
Locke scarcely speaks of them. Of too little sensibility himself,
he does not seem to think of all that can be done through the
sensibility of the child.
Locke, who perhaps is wrong in treating the child too early, as
though he were a man, who does not take sufficient account of all
the feebleness that is in infant nature, appeals from the first
to the sentiment of honor, and to the fear of shame, that is, to
emotions which, I fear, by their very nobleness, are above the
powers of the child. Honor, which is, in fact, but another name for
duty, and the ordinary synonym of virtue,--honor may assuredly be
the guide of an adult and already trained conscience; but is it not
chimerical to hope that the child, from his earliest years, will
be sensible to the esteem or the contempt of those who surround
him? If it were possible to inspire a child with a regard for his
reputation, I grant with Locke that we might henceforth “make
of him whatever we will, and teach him to love all the forms of
virtue”; but the question is to know whether we can succeed in
this, and I doubt it, notwithstanding the assurances of Locke.
Kant has very justly said:--
“It is labor lost to speak of duty to children. They comprehend it
only as a thing whose transgression is followed by the ferule....
So one ought not to try to call into play with children the feeling
of shame, but to wait for this till the period of youth comes. In
fact, it cannot be developed in them till the idea of honor has
already taken root there.”
Locke is the dupe of the same illusion, both when he expects of the
child enough moral power so that the sense of honor suffices to
govern him, and when he counts enough on his intellectual forces to
desire to reason with him from the moment he knows how to speak.
For forming good habits in the child, and preparing him for a life
of virtue, there is full need of all the resources that nature and
art put at the disposal of the educator,--sensibility under all
its forms, the calculations of self-interest, the lights of the
intelligence. It is only little by little, and with the progress
of age, that an exalted principle, like the sentiment of honor or
the sentiment of duty, will be able to emerge from out the mobile
humors of the child, and dominate his actions like a sovereign law.
The moral pedagogy of Locke is certainly faulty in that it is not
sufficiently addressed to the heart, and to the potency of loving,
which is already so great in the child. I add, that in his haste
to emancipate the child, to treat him as a reasonable creature,
and to develop in him the principles of self-government, Locke was
wrong in proscribing almost absolutely the fear of punishment. It
is good to respect the liberty and the dignity of the man that is
in the child, but it is not necessary that this respect degenerate
into superstition; and it is not sure that to train firm and robust
wills, it is necessary to have them early affranchised from all
fear and all constraint.
214. CONDEMNATION OF CORPORAL PUNISHMENT.--It is undeniable that
Locke has not sufficiently enlarged the bases of his theory of
moral discipline; but if he has rested incomplete in the positive
part of his task, if he has not advised all that should be done,
he has been more successful in the negative part, that which
consists in eliminating all that ought not to be done. The chapters
devoted to punishments in general, and in particular to corporal
punishments, count among the best in the _Thoughts_. Rollin and
Rousseau have often copied from them. It is true that Locke
himself has borrowed the suggestion of them from Montaigne. The
“severe mildness” which is the pedagogical rule of the author
of the _Essays_, is also the rule of Locke. It is in accordance
with this that Locke has brought to bear on the rod the final
judgment of good sense: “The rod is a slavish discipline, which
makes a slavish temper.” He has yielded to the ideas of his time
on only one point, when he admits one exception to the absolute
interdiction of the rod, and tolerates its use in extreme cases
to overcome the obstinate and rebellious resistance of the child.
This is going too far without any doubt; but to do justice to the
boldness of Locke’s views, we must consider how powerful the custom
then was, and still is, in England, in a country where the heads of
institutions think themselves obliged to notify the public, in the
advertisements published in the journals, that the interdiction of
corporal punishment counts among the advantages of their schools.
“It is difficult to conceive the perseverance with which English
teachers cling to the old and degrading customs of corrections by
the rod.... A more astonishing thing is that the scholars seem to
hold to it as much as the teachers.” “In 1818,” relates one of the
former pupils of Charterhouse, “our head master, Doctor Russell,
who had ideas of his own, resolved to abolish corporal punishment
and substitute for it a fine. Everybody resisted the innovation.
The rod seemed to us perfectly consistent with the dignity of a
gentleman; but a fine, for shame! The school rose to the cry: ‘Down
with the fine! Long live the rod!’ The revolt triumphed, and the
rod was solemnly restored. Then we were glad-hearted over the
affair. On the next day after the fine was abolished, we found, on
entering the class-room, a superb forest of birches, and the two
hours of the session were conscientiously employed in making use of
them.”[133][134]
215. INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION.--In what concerns intellectual
education, Locke manifestly belongs to the school, small in his
time, but more and more numerous to-day, of utilitarian teachers.
He would train, not men of letters, or of science, but practical
men, armed for the battle of life, provided with all the knowledge
they will need in order to keep their accounts, administer their
fortune, satisfy the requirements of their profession, and,
finally, to fulfill their duties as men and citizens. In a word, he
wrote for a nation of tradesmen and citizens.
216. UTILITARIAN STUDIES.--An undeniable merit of Locke is that
of having reacted against a purely formal instruction, which
substitutes for the acquisition of positive and real knowledge
a superfluous culture, so to speak, a training in a superficial
rhetoric and an elegant verbiage. Locke disdains and condemns
studies that do not contribute directly to a preparation for
life. Doubtless he goes a little too far in his reaction against
the current formalism and in his predilection for realism. He is
too forgetful of the fact that the old classical studies, if not
useful in the positive sense of the term, and not satisfying the
ordinary needs of existence, have yet a higher utility, in the
sense that they may become, in skillful and discreet hands, an
excellent instrument for intellectual discipline and the education
of the judgment. But Locke spoke to fanatics and pedants, for
whom Latin and Greek were the whole of instruction, and who,
turning letters from their true purpose, wrongly made a knowledge
of the dead languages the sole end, and not, as should be the
case, one of the means of instruction. Locke is by no means a
blind utilitarian, a coarse positivist, who dreams of absolutely
abolishing disinterested studies. He wishes merely to put them in
their place, and to guard against investing them with a sort of
exclusive privilege, and against sacrificing to them other branches
of instruction that are more essential and more immediately useful.
217. PROGRAMME OF STUDIES.--As soon as the child knows how to
read and write, he should be taught to draw. Very disdainful of
painting and of the fine arts in general, whose benign and profound
influence on the souls of children his colder nature has not
sufficiently recognized, Locke, by way of compensation, recommends
drawing, because drawing may be practically useful, and he puts it
on almost the same footing as reading and writing.
These elements once acquired, the child should be drilled in the
mother tongue, first in reading, and afterwards in exercises
in composition, in brief narratives, in familiar letters, etc.
The study of a living language (Locke recommends French to his
countrymen) should immediately follow; and it is only after
this has been acquired that the child shall be put to the study
of Latin. Save the omission of the sciences, Locke’s plan is
singularly like that which for ten years has been in use in the
French lycées.
As to Latin, which follows the living language, Locke requires that
it shall be learned above all through use, through conversation
if a master can be found who speaks it fluently, but if not,
through the reading of authors. As little of grammar as possible,
no memoriter exercises, no Latin composition, either in prose
or verse, but, as soon as possible, the reading of easy Latin
texts,--these are the recommendations of Locke that have been too
little heeded. The purpose is no longer to learn Latin for the
sake of writing it elegantly; the only purpose truly desirable is
to comprehend the authors who have written in that language. The
obstinate partisans of Latin verse and conversation will not read
without chagrin these earnest protests of Locke against exercises
that have been too much abused, and that impose on the learner the
torment of writing in a language which he handles with difficulty,
upon subjects which he but imperfectly understands. As to Greek,
Locke proscribes it absolutely. He does not disparage the beauty
of a language whose masterpieces, he says, are the original source
of our literature and science; but he reserves the knowledge of
it to the learned, to the lettered, to professional scholars, and
he excludes it from secondary instruction, which ought to be but
the school which trains for active life. Thus relieved, classical
instruction will more easily welcome the studies that are of real
use and of practical application,--geography, which Locke places
in the first rank, because it is “an exercise of the eyes and
memory”; arithmetic, which “is of so general use in all parts of
life and business, that scarce anything can be done without it”;
then what he somewhat ambitiously calls astronomy, and which is in
reality an elementary cosmography; the parts of geometry which are
necessary for “a man of business”; chronology and history, “the
most agreeable and the most instructive of studies”; ethics and
common law, which do not yet have a place in French programmes;
finally, natural philosophy, that is, the physical sciences; and,
to crown all, a manual trade and bookkeeping.
218. ATTRACTIVE STUDIES.--Another characteristic of Locke’s
intellectual discipline is, that, utilitarian in its purpose, the
instruction which he organizes shall be attractive in its methods.
After hatred for the pedantry which uselessly spends the powers
of the learner in barren studies, the next strongest antipathy of
Locke is that which is inspired by the rigor of a too didactic
system of instruction, where the methods are repulsive, the
processes painful, and where the teacher appears to his pupils only
as a bugbear and a marplot.
Although he may go to extremes in this, he is partly right in
wishing to bring into favor processes that are inviting and methods
that are attractive. Without hoping, as he does, without desiring
even, that the pupil may come to make no distinction between study
and other diversions, we are disposed to believe that something may
be done to alleviate for him the first difficulties in learning, to
entice and captivate him without constraining him, and, finally, to
spare him the disgust which cannot fail to be inspired by studies
too severely forced upon him, and which are made the subject of
scourges and scoldings. It is especially for reading and the first
exercises of the child that Locke recommends the use of instructive
plays. “They may be taught to read, without perceiving it to be
anything but a sport, and play themselves into that which others
are whipped for.”
Children of every age are jealous of their independence and eager
for pleasure. No one before Locke had so clearly recognized the
need of the activity and liberty which are natural to the child, or
so strongly insisted on the necessity of respecting his independent
disposition and his personal tastes. Here again English pedagogy
of the seventeenth century meets its illustrious successor of the
nineteenth. Herbert Spencer has thoroughly demonstrated the fact
that the mind really appropriates only the knowledge that affords
it pleasure and agreeable exercise. Now, there is pleasure and
agreeable excitation wherever there is the development of a normal
activity corresponding to an instinctive taste and proportioned to
the natural powers of the child; and there is no real instruction
save at the expense of a real display of activity.[135]
219. SHOULD THERE BE LEARNING BY HEART?--To this question, Should
there be learning by heart? Locke gives a resolute reply in the
negative. The conclusion is absolute and false; but the premises
that he assumes to justify his conclusion are, if possible, falser
still. Locke sets out from this psychological idea, that the memory
is not susceptible of progress. He brings into the discussion his
sensualistic prejudices, his peculiar conception of the soul, which
is but a _tabula rasa_, an empty and inert capacity, and not a
congeries of energies and of living forces that are strengthened by
exercise. He does not believe that the faculties, whatever they may
be, can grow and develop, and this for the good reason, according
to his thinking, that the faculties have no existence.
But here let him speak for himself:--
“I hear it is said that children should be employed in getting
things by heart, to exercise and improve their memories. I would
wish this were said with as much authority and reason as it is with
forwardness of assurance, and that this practice were established
upon good observation more than old custom. For it is evident that
strength of memory is owing to an happy constitution, and not to
any habitual improvement got by exercise. ’Tis true what the mind
is intent upon, and, for fear of letting it slip, often imprints
afresh on itself by frequent reflection, that it is apt to retain,
but still according to its own natural strength of retention. An
impression made on beeswax or lead will not last so long as on
brass or steel. Indeed, if it be renewed often, it may last the
longer; but every new reflecting on it is a new impression, and
’tis from thence one is to reckon, if one would know how long the
mind retains it. But the learning pages of Latin by heart no more
fits the memory for retention of anything else, than the graving of
one sentence in lead makes it the more capable of retaining firmly
any other characters.”[136]
If Locke were right, education would become wholly impossible; for,
in case of all the faculties, education supposes the existence of
a natural germ which exercise fertilizes and develops.
220. A TRADE SHOULD BE LEARNED.--Locke, like Rousseau, but for
other reasons, wishes his pupil to learn a trade:
“I can not forbear to say, I would have my gentleman _learn
a trade, a manual trade_; nay, two or three, but one more
particularly.”[137]
Rousseau will say the same: “Recollect that it is not talent that
I require of you; it is a trade, a real trade, a purely mechanical
art, in which the hands work more than the head.”
But Locke, in having his gentleman learn carpentry or agriculture,
especially designed that this physical labor should lend the
mind a diversion, an occasion for relaxation and repose, and
secure to the body a useful exercise. Rousseau is influenced by
totally different ideas. What he wants is, first, that through an
apprenticeship to a trade, Émile may protect himself against need
in case a revolutionary crisis should deprive him of his wealth. In
the second place, Rousseau obeys his social, we might even say his
socialistic, preoccupations. Work, in his view, is a strict duty,
from which no one can exempt himself. “Rich or poor, every idle
citizen is a knave.”
221. WORKING SCHOOLS.--Although Locke is almost exclusively
preoccupied with classical studies and with a gentleman’s
education, nevertheless he has not remained completely a stranger
to questions of primary instruction. In 1697 he addressed to the
English government a remarkable document on the importance of
organizing “working schools” for the children of the poor. All
children over three and under fourteen years of age are to be
collected in homes where they will find labor and food. In this
way Locke thought to contend against immorality and pauperism. He
would find a remedy for the idleness and vagabondage of the child,
and lighten the care of the mother who is absorbed in her work. He
would also, through habits of order and discipline, train up steady
men and industrious workmen. In other terms, he attempted a work
of social regeneration, and the tutor of _gentlemen_ became the
educator of the poor.
222. LOCKE AND ROUSSEAU.--In the _Émile_ we shall frequently find
passages inspired by him whom Rousseau calls “the wise Locke.”
Perhaps we shall admire even more the practical qualities and
the good sense of the English educator when we shall have become
acquainted with the chimeras of his French imitator. In the case
of Locke, we have to do, not with an author who wishes to shine,
but with a man of sense and judgment who expresses his opinions,
and who has no other pretense than to understand himself and to
be comprehended by others. To appreciate the _Thoughts_ at their
full value, they should not be read till after having re-read
the _Émile_, which is so much indebted to them. On coming from
the reading of Rousseau, after the brilliant glare and almost
the giddiness occasioned his reader by a writer of genius whose
imagination is ever on the wing, whose passion urges him on, and
who mingles with so many exalted truths, hasty paradoxes, and noisy
declamations, it is like repose and a delicious unbending to the
spirit to go to the study of Locke, and to find a train of thought
always equable, a style simple and dispassionate, an author always
master of himself, always correct, notwithstanding some errors,
and a book, finally, filled, not with flashes and smoke, but with
a light that is agreeable and pure.
[223. ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.--1. This study illustrates the fact
that the aims and methods of education are determined by
the types of thought, philosophical, political, religious,
scientific, and social, that happen to be in the ascendent; and
also the tendency of the human mind to adopt extreme views.
2. The subjective tendency of human thought is typified by
the Socratic philosophy, and the objective tendency by the
Baconian philosophy; and from these two main sources have issued
two distinctive schools of educators, the formalists and the
realists, the first holding that the main purpose of education
is discipline, training, or formation, and the other, that this
purpose is furnishing instruction or information. This line is
distinctly drawn in the seventeenth century, and the two schools
are typified by Malebranche and Locke.
3. The spirit of reaction is exhibited in the opposition to
classical studies, in the effort to convert study into a
diversion, in the use of milder means of discipline, and in the
importance attached to useful studies. In these particulars the
reaction of the sixteenth century is intensified.]
FOOTNOTES:
[128] Rollin, _Traité des études_, Tome IV. p. 335.
[129] I am in doubt whether M. Compayré intends to sanction this
doctrine or not. This is an anticipation of one of Jacotot’s
paradoxes: “All human beings are equally capable of learning.”
The verdict of actual teachers is undoubtedly to the effect that
there are manifold differences in the ability of pupils to know,
comprehend, and judge. (P.)
[130] Is not the antagonism pointed out by Malebranche more
serious than M. Compayré seems to think? If the current of mental
activity sets strongly towards the feelings, emotions, or senses,
it is thereby diverted from the purely intellectual processes,
such as reflection and judgment. The mind of the savage is an
example of what comes from “following the order of nature” in an
extreme training of the senses. On the nature and extent of this
antagonism, the following authorities may be consulted: Hamilton,
_Metaphysics_, p. 336; Mansel, _Metaphysics_, pp. 68, 70, 77; Bain,
_The Senses and the Intellect_, pp. 392-394; Bain, _Education as a
Science_, pp. 17, 29, 37; Spencer, _Principles of Psychology_, pp.
98-99. (P.)
[131] _John Locke. His Life and his Work._ Paris, 1878.
[132] _Thoughts_, translation by G. Compayré, p. 57.
[133] Demogeot et Montucci, _de l’Enseignement secondaire en
Angleterre_, p. 41.
[134] On the question of corporal punishment in school, is not M.
Compayré too absolute in his assumptions? On what principle does
he base his absolute condemnation of the rod? What is to be done
in those cases of revolt against order and decency that occur from
time to time in most schools? There is no doubt that the very best
teachers can govern without resorting to this hateful expedient;
but what shall be done in extreme cases by the multitude who are
not, and never can be, teachers of this ideal type? Nor does this
question stand alone. Below, it is related to family discipline;
and above, to civil administration. If corporal punishment is
interdicted in the school, should it not be interdicted in the
State? (P.)
[135] It is usually said that a pupil’s distaste for a study
indicates one of two things, either the mode of presenting the
subject is bad, or it is presented at an unseasonable period of
mental development; but this distaste is quite as likely to be due
to the fact that a certain mode of mental activity has not yet been
established; for until fairly established, its exercise cannot be
pleasurable. The assumption that intellectual appetites already
exist and are waiting to be gratified, or that they will invariably
appear at certain periods of mental development, is by no means a
general law of the mental life. In many cases, these appetites must
be created, and it may often be that the studies employed for this
purpose may not at first be relished. And there are cases where,
under the best of skill, this relish may never come; and still, the
knowledge or the discipline is so necessary that the studies may be
enforced contrary to the pupil’s pleasure. (P.)
[136] _Thoughts_, edited by R. H. Quick (Cambridge, 1880), pp.
153-4.
[137] _Thoughts_, p. 177.
CHAPTER X.
THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.--JACQUELINE
PASCAL AND MADAME DE MAINTENON.
THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY; MADAME
DE SÉVIGNÉ; THE ABBÉ FLEURY; EDUCATION IN CONVENTS; PORT
ROYAL AND THE REGULATIONS OF JACQUELINE PASCAL; GENERAL
IMPRESSION; SEVERITY AND AFFECTION; GENERAL CHARACTER OF SAINT
CYR; TWO PERIODS IN THE INSTITUTION OF SAINT CYR; DRAMATIC
REPRESENTATIONS; THE REFORM OF 1692; THE PART PLAYED BY MADAME
DE MAINTENON; HER PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS; INTERIOR ORGANIZATION OF
SAINT CYR; DISTRUST OF READING; THE STUDY OF HISTORY NEGLECTED;
INSTRUCTION INSUFFICIENT; MANUAL LABOR; MORAL EDUCATION; DISCREET
DEVOTION; SIMPLICITY IN ALL THINGS; FÉNELON AND SAINT CYR;
GENERAL JUDGMENT; ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.
224. THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.--The
_Education of Girls_ of Fénelon has shown us how far the spirit
of the seventeenth century was able to go in what concerns the
education of women, as exhibited in the most liberal theories
on the subject; but in practice, save in brilliant exceptions,
even the modest and imperfect ideal of Fénelon was far from being
attained.
Chrysale was not alone of this opinion, when he said in the
_Learned Ladies_:--
“It is not very proper, and for several reasons, that a woman
should study and know so many things. To train the minds of her
children in good morals and manners, to superintend her household,
by keeping an eye on her servants, and to control the expenditures
with economy, ought to be her study and philosophy.”[138] It is
true that Molière himself did not sympathize with the prejudices
whose expression he put in the mouth of his comic character,
and that he concludes that a woman “may be enlightened on every
subject” (“Je consens qu’une femme ait des clartés de tout”). But
in real fact and in practice, it is the opinion of Chrysale that
prevailed. Even in the higher classes, woman held herself aloof
from instruction, and from things intellectual. Madame Racine had
never seen played, and had probably never read, the tragedies of
her husband.
225. MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ.--However, the seventeenth century was
not wanting in women of talent or genius, who might have made an
eloquent plea in behalf of their sex; but they were content to
give personal examples of a high order, without any anxiety to be
imitated. Madame de Lafayette made beautiful translations from
Latin; Madame Dacier was a humanist of the first order; and Madame
de Sévigné knew the modern languages as well as the ancient. No one
has better described the advantage of reading. She recommends the
reading of romances in the following terms:--
“I found that a young man became generous and brave in seeing
my heroes, and that a girl became genteel and wise in reading
_Cleopatra_. There are occasionally some who take things somewhat
amiss, _but they would perhaps do scarcely any better if they could
not read_.”[139]
Madame de Sévigné had her daughter read Descartes, and her
granddaughter Pauline, the tragedies of Corneille.
“For my part,” she said, “if I were to bring up my granddaughter,
I would have her read what is good, but not too simple. I would
reason with her.”[140]
226. THE ABBÉ FLEURY.--But Madame de Sévigné and Madame de Grignan
were but brilliant exceptions. If one were to doubt the ignorance
of the women of this period, it would suffice to read this striking
passage from the Abbé Fleury, the assistant of Fénelon in the
education of the Duke of Bourgogne:--
“This, doubtless, will be a great paradox, that women ought to
learn anything else than their catechism, sewing, and different
little pieces of work, singing, dancing, and dressing in the
fashion, and to make a fine courtesy. As things now go, this
constitutes all their education.”[141]
Fleury desires something else for woman. He demands that she
learn to write correctly in French, and that she study logic and
arithmetic. But we need not fear lest the liberalism of a thinker
of the seventeenth century carry him too far. Fleury admits, for
example, that history is absolutely useless to women.
227. EDUCATION IN THE CONVENTS.--It is almost exclusively in
convents that young girls then received what passed for an
education. The religious congregations that devoted themselves to
female education were numberless; we note, for example, among the
most celebrated, the Ursulines, founded in 1537; the Association of
the Angelics, established in Italy in 1536; and the Order of Saint
Elizabeth. But, notwithstanding the diversity of names, all the
convents for girls resemble one another. In all of them woman was
educated for heaven, or for a life of devotion. Spiritual exercises
formed the only occupation of the pupils, and study was scarcely
taken into account.
228. PORT ROYAL AND THE REGULATIONS OF JACQUELINE PASCAL.--The
best means of penetrating into the inner life of the convents of
the seventeenth century is to read the _Regulations for Children_,
written towards 1657 by Jacqueline Pascal, Sister Saint Euphemia.
The education of girls interested the Jansenists not less than
the education of men; but in this respect, Port Royal is far from
deserving the same encomiums in both cases.
229. GENERAL IMPRESSION.--There is nothing so sombre and sad as the
interior of their institution for girls, and nothing so austere as
the rules of Jacqueline Pascal.
“A strange emotion, even at the distance of centuries, is caused by
the sight of those children keeping silent or speaking in a whisper
from rising till retiring, never walking except between two nuns,
one in front and the other behind, in order to make it impossible,
by slackening their pace on the pretext of some indisposition, for
them to hold any communication; working in such a way as never to
be in companies of two or three; passing from meditation to prayer,
and from prayer to instruction; learning, besides the catechism,
nothing but reading and writing; and, on Sunday, ‘a little
arithmetic, the older from one to two o’clock, and the younger
from two to half past two’; the hands always busy to prevent the
mind from wandering; but without being able to become attached to
their work, which would please God as much the more as it pleased
themselves the less; opposing all their natural inclinations, and
despising the attentions due the body ‘destined to serve as food
for worms’; doing nothing, in a word, except in the spirit of
mortification. Imagine those days of fourteen and sixteen hours,
slowly succeeding one another, and weighing down on the heads of
those poor little sisters, for six or eight years in that dreary
solitude, where there was nothing to bring in the stir of life,
save the sound of the bell announcing a change of exercise or
of penance, and you will comprehend Fénelon’s feeling of sadness
when he speaks of the shadows of that deep cavern in which was
imprisoned and, as it were, buried the youth of girls.”[142]
230. SEVERITY AND LOVE.--The severity of the _Regulations_ is such
that the editor, M. de Pontchartrain, also a Jansenist, allows that
it will be impossible to obtain from all children “so complete a
silence and so formal a life”; and requires that the mistresses
shall try to gain their affections. Love must be united with
severity. Jacqueline Pascal does not seem to be entirely of this
opinion, since she declares that only God must be loved. However,
notwithstanding her habitual severity, human tenderness sometimes
asserts its rights in the rules which she established. We feel
that she loves more than she confesses, those young girls whom she
calls “little doves.” On the one hand, the _Regulations_ incite
the pupils to eat of what is placed before them indifferently,
and to begin with what they like the least, through a spirit of
penitence; but, on the other hand, Jacqueline writes: “They must
be exhorted to take sufficient nourishment so as not to allow
themselves to become weakened, and this is why care is taken that
they have eaten enough.” And so there is a touching solicitude that
is almost maternal in this remark: “As soon as they have retired,
each particular bed must be visited, to see whether all proprieties
have been observed, and whether the children are well covered in
winter.” The mystic sister of the ascetic Pascal has moments of
tenderness. “Nevertheless, we must not cease to feel pity for them,
and to accommodate ourselves to them in every way that we can,
but without letting them know that we have thus condescended.”
However, the dominant conception ever reappearing, is the idea that
human nature is evil; that we have to do with rebellious spirits
which must be conquered, and that they deserve no commiseration.
There is a deal of anxiety to make study agreeable! Jacqueline
directs her pupils to work at the very things that are most
repulsive, because the work that will please God the most is that
which will please them the least. The exterior manifestations of
friendship are forbidden, and possibly friendship itself. “Our
pupils shall shun every sort of familiarity one towards another.”
Instruction is reduced to the catechism, to the application of the
Christian virtues, to reading, and to writing. Arithmetic is not
taught save on holidays. It seems that memory is the only faculty
that Jacqueline wishes to have developed. “This opens their minds,
gives them occupation, and keeps them from evil thoughts.” Have we
not reason to say that at Port Royal women have less value than
men! What a distance between the solid instruction of Lancelot’s
and Nicole’s pupils and the ignorance of Jacqueline Pascal’s! Even
when the men of Port Royal speak of the education of women, they
have more liberal ideas than those which are applied at their side.
Nicole declares that books are necessary even in convents for
girls, because it is necessary “to sustain prayer by reading.”
231. GENERAL CHARACTER OF SAINT CYR.--In leaving Port Royal for
Saint Cyr, we seem, on coming out of a profound night, to perceive
a ray of light. Without doubt, Madame de Maintenon has not yet, as
a teacher, all that breadth of view that could be desired. Her work
is far from being faultless, but the founding of Saint Cyr (1686)
was none the less a considerable innovation. “Saint Cyr,” it has
been said, “is not a convent. It is a great establishment devoted
to the lay education of young women of noble birth; it is a bold
and intelligent secularization of the education of women.” There
is some excess of praise in this statement, and the lay character
of Saint Cyr is very questionable. Lavallée, an admirer, could
write: “The instructions of Madame de Maintenon are doubtless too
religious, too monastic.” Let us grant, however, that Madame de
Maintenon, who, after having founded Saint Cyr, was the director
of it, _extra muros_, and even taught there, at stated times, is
personally the first lay teacher of France. Let us grant, also,
that at least in the beginning, and up to 1692, the women entrusted
with the work of instruction were not nuns in the absolute sense of
the term. They were not bound by solemn and absolute vows.
But this character relatively laic, and this rupture with monastic
traditions, were not maintained during the whole life of the
institution.
232. TWO PERIODS IN THE HISTORY OF SAINT CYR.--Saint Cyr, in
fact, passed, within a few years, through two very different
periods, and Madame de Maintenon followed in succession two almost
opposite currents. For the first years, from 1686 to 1692, the
spirit of the institution is broad and liberal; the education is
brilliant, perhaps too much so; literary exercises and dramatic
representations have an honored place. Saint Cyr is an institution
inclining to worldliness, better fitted to train women of intellect
than good economists and housewives. Madame de Maintenon quickly
saw that she had taken a false route, and, from 1692, she reacted,
not without excess, against the tendencies which she had at first
obeyed. She conceived an extreme distrust of literary studies, and
cut off all she could from the instruction, in order to give her
entire thought to the moral and practical qualities of her pupils.
Saint Cyr became a convent, with a little more liberty, doubtless,
than there was in the other monasteries of the time, but it was a
convent still.
233. DRAMATIC REPRESENTATIONS.--It was the notorious success of the
performance of _Andromaque_ and _Esther_ that caused the overthrow
of the original intentions of Madame de Maintenon. _Esther_, in
particular, was the great event of the first years of Saint Cyr.
Racine distributed the parts; Boileau conducted the training in
elocution; and the entire Court, the king at the head, came to
applaud and entertain the pretty actresses, who left nothing
undone to please their spectators. Heads were a little turned
by all this; dissipation crept into the school. The pupils were
no longer willing to sing in church, for fear of spoiling their
voices. Evidently the route was now over a dangerous declivity. The
institution had been turned from its purpose. Matters were in a way
to establish, under another form, another Hôtel de Rambouillet.[143]
234. REFORM OF 1692.--At the first, as we have seen, the ladies of
Saint Louis, charged with the direction of Saint Cyr, did not found
a monastic order properly so-called; but, when Madame de Maintenon
resolved to reform the general spirit of the house, she thought it
necessary to transform Saint Cyr into a monastery, and she founded
the Order of Saint Augustine.
But what she changed in particular was the moral discipline, and
the programme of studies.
Madame de Maintenon has herself recited, in a memorable
letter,[144] the reasons of that reform which modified so
profoundly the character of Saint Cyr:--
“The sorrow I feel for the girls of Saint Cyr,” she said, “can be
cured only by time and by an _entire change_ in the education that
we have given them up to this hour. It is very just that I should
suffer for this, since I have contributed to it more than any one
else.... The whole establishment has been the object of my pride,
and the ground for this feeling has been so real that it has gone
to extremes that I never intended. God knows that I wished to
establish virtue at Saint Cyr, but I have built upon the sand. Not
having, what alone can make a solid foundation, I wished the girls
to be witty, high-spirited, and trained to think; I have succeeded
in this purpose. They have wit, and they use it against us. They
are high-spirited, and are more heady and haughty than would be
becoming in a royal princess. Speaking after the manner of the
world, we have trained their reason, and have made them talkative,
presumptuous, inquisitive, bold ... witty,--such characters as even
we who have trained them cannot abide.... Let us seek a remedy, for
we must not be discouraged.... As many little things form pride,
many little things will destroy it. Our girls have been treated
with too much consideration, have been petted too much, treated
too gently. We must now leave them more to themselves in their
class-rooms, make them observe the daily regulations, and speak
to them of scarcely anything else.... Pray to God, and ask Him to
change their hearts; and that He may give to all of them humility.
There should not be much conversation with them on the subject.
Everything at Saint Cyr is made a matter of discourse. We often
speak of simplicity, and try to define it correctly ... and yet,
in practice, the girls make merry in saying: ‘Through simplicity
I take the best place; through simplicity I am going to commend
myself.’ Our girls must be cured of that jesting turn of mind which
I have given them.... We have wished to shun the pettiness of
certain convents, and God has punished us for this haughty spirit.
There is no house in the world that has more need of humility
within and without than our own. Its situation near the Court; the
air of favor that pervades it; the favors of a great king; the
offices of a person of consideration,--all these snares, so full of
danger, should lead us to take measures directly contrary to those
we have really taken....”
235. THE PART PLAYED BY MADAME DE MAINTENON.--Whatever may be the
opinion respecting the tone of the educational work at Saint Cyr,
there cannot be the least doubt as to the admirable zeal of Madame
de Maintenon, and her indefatigable devotion to the success of her
favorite undertaking. The vocation of the teacher was evidently
hers. For more than thirty years, from 1686 to 1717, she did
not cease to visit Saint Cyr every day, sometimes at six in the
morning. She wrote for the directresses and for the pupils counsels
and regulations that fill several volumes. Nothing which concerns
“her children” is a matter of indifference to her. She devotes her
attention to their meals, their sleep, their toilet, as well as to
their character and their instruction:--
“The affairs we discuss at Court are bagatelles; those at Saint Cyr
are the more important....” “May that establishment last as long as
France, and France as long as the world. Nothing is dearer to me
than my children of Saint Cyr.”
It is not tenderness, it is well known, that characterizes the soul
of Madame de Maintenon; but, at Saint Cyr, from being formal and
cold, which is her usual state, she becomes loving and tender:--
“Forget nothing that may save the souls of our young girls, that
may fortify their health and preserve their form.”
One day, as she had come to the school, as her custom was, to
consult with the nuns, a company of girls passed by raising a cloud
of dust. The nuns, fearing that Madame de Maintenon was annoyed
by it, requested them to withdraw. “Pray, let the dear girls be,”
replied Madame de Maintenon; “I love them even to the dust they
raise.” Conversely, as it were, the pupils of Pestalozzi, consulted
on the question of knowing whether they were willing always to be
beaten and clawed by their old master, replied affirmatively: they
loved him even to his claws!
236. HER PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS.--It is only in our day that the
works of Madame de Maintenon have been published in the integrity
of their text, thanks to the labors of Théophile Lavallée. For
the most part, these long and interesting letters are devoted to
education and to Saint Cyr. These are, first, the _Letters and
Conversations on the Education of Girls_.[145] These letters were
written from day to day, and are addressed, sometimes to the ladies
of Saint Cyr, and sometimes to the pupils themselves. “We find in
them,” says Lavallée, “for all circumstances and for all times, the
most solid teaching, masterpieces of good sense, of naturalness,
and of truth, and, finally, instructions relative to education
that approach perfection. The _Conversations_ originated in the
consultations that Madame de Maintenon had during the recreations
or the recitations, either with the ladies or with the young
women, who themselves collected and edited the words of their
governess.”
After the _Letters and Conversations_ comes the _Counsels to Young
Women who enter Society_,[146] which contain general advice,
conversations or dialogues, and, finally, proverbs, that is, short
dramatic compositions, designed at once to instruct and amuse the
young ladies of Saint Cyr. These essays are not admirable in all
respects; most often they are lacking in imagination; and Madame
de Maintenon, though an imitation of Fénelon, makes a misuse of
indirect instruction, of artifice, and of amusement, in order to
teach some moral commonplaces by insinuation. Here are the titles
of some of these proverbs: _The occasion makes the rogue_; _Women
make and unmake the home_; _There is no situation more embarrassing
than that of holding the handle of the frying-pan_.
Finally, let us note the third collection, the _Historical and
Instructive Letters addressed to the Ladies of Saint Cyr_.[147]
It is to be regretted that, out of these numerous volumes, where
repetitions abound, there have not been extracted, in a methodical
manner, a few hundred pages which should contain the substance of
Madame de Maintenon’s thinking on educational questions.
237. INTERIOR ORGANIZATION.--The purpose of the founding of Saint
Cyr was to assure to the two hundred and fifty daughters of the
poor nobility, and to the children of officers dead or disabled, an
educational retreat where they would be suitably educated so as to
be prepared for becoming either nuns, if this was their vocation,
or, the more often, good mothers. As M. Gréard has justly observed,
“the very conception of an establishment of this kind, the idea of
making France pay the debt of France, educating the children of
those who had given her their blood, proceeds from a feeling up to
that time unknown.”[148]
Consequently, children of the tenderest years, from six or seven,
were received at Saint Cyr, there to be cared for till the age of
marriage, till eighteen and twenty.
The young girls were divided into four classes,--the reds, the
greens, the yellows, and the blues. The blues were the largest, and
they wore the royal colors. Each class was divided into five or six
_bands_ or _families_, of eight or ten pupils each.
The ladies of Saint Cyr were ordinarily taken from the pupils of
the school. They were forty in number,--the superior, the assistant
who supplied the place of the superior, the mistress of the
novices, the general mistress of the classes, the mistresses of the
classes, etc.
The capital defect of Saint Cyr is, that, as in the colleges of the
Jesuits, the residence is absolute and the sequestration complete.
From her fifth to her twentieth year the young girl belongs
entirely to Saint Cyr. She scarcely knows her parents. It will be
said, perhaps, that in many cases she has lost them, and that in
some cases she could expect only bad examples from them. But no
matter; the general rule, which interrupted family intercourse to
the extent of almost abolishing it, cannot obtain our approbation.
The girl was permitted to see her parents only three or four times
a year, and even then these interviews would last only for a
half an hour each time, and in the presence of a mistress. There
was permission to write family letters from time to time; but as
though she mistrusted the natural impulses of the heart, and the
free outpouring of filial affection, Madame de Maintenon had taken
care to compose some models of these letters. With more of reason
than of feeling, Madame de Maintenon is not exempt from a certain
coldness of heart. It seems that she would impose on her pupils the
extraordinary habits of her own family. She recollected having been
kissed only twice by her mother, on her forehead, and then only
after a long separation.
238. DISTRUST OF READING.--After the reforms of 1692, the
instruction at Saint Cyr became a matter of secondary importance.
Reading, writing, and counting were taught, but scarcely anything
besides. Reading, in general, was viewed with distrust: “Teach
girls to be very sparing as to reading, and always to prefer
manual labor instead.” Books of a secular nature were interdicted;
only works of piety were put in the hands of pupils, such as the
_Introduction to a Devout Life_, by Saint François de Salles,
and the _Confessions_ of Saint Augustine. “Renounce intellectual
culture” is the perpetual injunction of Madame de Maintenon.
“We must educate citizens for citizenship. It is not the question
of giving them intellectual culture. We must preach family duties
to them, obedience to husband, and care for children.... Reading
does more harm than good to young girls.... Books make witlings and
excite an insatiable curiosity.”
239. THE STUDY OF HISTORY NEGLECTED.--To judge of the spirit of
Saint Cyr, from the point of view of intellectual education, it
suffices to note the little importance that was there given to
history. This went so far as to raise the question whether it were
not best to prohibit the study of French history entirely. Madame
de Maintenon consents to have it taught, but only just enough so
that “pupils may not confuse the succession of our kings with the
princes of other countries, and not take a Roman emperor for an
emperor of China or Japan, a king of Spain or of England for a king
of Persia or of Siam.” As to the history of antiquity, it must be
held in mistrust for the very reason--who would believe it?--of
the beautiful examples of virtue that it contains. “I should fear
that those grand examples of generosity and heroism would give
our young girls too much elevation of spirit, and make them vain
and pretentious.” Have we not some right to feel surprised that
Madame de Maintenon is alarmed at the thought of _raising_ the
intelligence of woman? It is true that she doubtless thought of
the romantic exaggerations produced by the reading of the _Cyrus
the Great_ and other writings of Mlle. de Scudéry. Let us add,
besides, to excuse the shortcomings of the programme of Saint Cyr
in the matter of history, that even for boys in the colleges of the
University, the order that introduced the teaching of history into
the classes dates only from 1695.
240. INSUFFICIENT INSTRUCTION.--“Our day,” says Lavallée, “would
not accept that education in which instruction properly so-called
was but a secondary matter, and entirely sacrificed to the manner
of training the heart, the reason, and the character; and an
education, too, that, as a whole and in its details, was wholly
religious.” The error of Madame de Maintenon consists essentially
in the wish to develop the moral virtues in souls scarcely
instructed, scarcely enlightened. There was much moral discoursing
at Saint Cyr. If it did not always bear fruit, it was because the
seed fell into intelligences that were but little cultivated.
“Our young women are not to be made scholarly. Women never know
except by halves, and the little that they know usually makes them
conceited, disdainful, chatty, and disgusted with serious things.”
241. MANUAL LABOR.--If intellectual education was neglected at
Saint Cyr, by way of compensation great attention was paid to
manual education. The girls were there taught to sew, to embroider,
to knit, and to make tapestry; and there was also made there all
the linen for the house, the infirmary, and the chapel, and the
dresses and clothing of the ladies and the pupils:--
“But no exquisite productions,” says Madame de Maintenon, “nor of
very elaborate design; none of those flimsy edgings in embroidery
or tapestry, which are of no use.”
With what good grace Madame de Maintenon ever preaches the gospel
of labor, of which she herself gave the example! In the coaches of
the king, she always had some work in hand. At Saint Cyr, the young
women swept the dormitories, put in order the refectory, and dusted
the class-rooms. “They must be put at every kind of service, and
made to work at what is burdensome, in order to make them robust,
healthy, and intelligent.”
“Manual labor is a moral safeguard, a protection against sin.”
“Work calms the passions, occupies the mind, and does not leave it
time to think of evil.”
242. MORAL EDUCATION.--“The Institute,” said Madame de Maintenon,
“is intended, not for prayer, but for action.” What she wished,
above all else, was to prepare young women for home and family
life. She devoted her thought to the training of wives and mothers.
“What I lack most,” she said, “is sons-in-law!” Hence she was
incessantly preoccupied with moral qualities. One might make a
fine and valuable book of selections out of all the practical
maxims of Madame de Maintenon; as her reflections on talkativeness:
“There is always sin in a multitude of words;” on indolence: “What
can be done in the family of an indolent and fastidious woman?”
on politeness, “which consists, above all else, in giving one’s
thought to others;” on lack of energy, then too common among women
of the world: “The only concern is to eat and to take one’s ease.
Women spend the day in morning-gowns, reclining in easy-chairs,
without any occupation, and without conversation; all is well,
provided one be in a state of repose.”
243. DISCREET DEVOTION.--We must not imagine that Saint Cyr was a
house of prayer, a place of overdone devotion. Madame de Maintenon
held to a reasonable Christianity. Piety, such as was recommended
at Saint Cyr, is a piety that is _steadfast_, _judicious_, and
_simple_; that is, conformed to the state in which one ought to
live, and exempt from refinements.
“The young women are too much at church, considering their
age,” she wrote to Madame de Brinon, the first director of the
institution.... “Consider, I pray you, that this is not to be a
cloister.”[149]
And later, after the reform had begun, this is what she wrote:--
“Let the piety with which our young girls shall be inspired be
cheerful, gentle, and free. Let it consist rather in the innocence
of their lives, and in the simplicity of their occupations, than
in the austerities, the retirements, and the refinements of
devotion.... When a girl comes from a convent, saying that nothing
ought to interfere with vespers, she is laughed at; but when an
educated woman shall say that vespers may be omitted for the sake
of attending her sick husband, everybody will commend her.... When
a girl shall say that a woman does better to educate her children
and instruct her servants than to spend the forenoon in church,
that religion will be heartily accepted, and will make itself
loved and respected.”[150] Excellent advice, perhaps too little
followed! Madame de Maintenon here speaks the language of good
sense, and we are wholly surprised to hear it from the lips of a
politic woman who, not without reason, and for her part in the
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, has the reputation of being an
intolerant fanatic.
244. SIMPLICITY IN ALL THINGS.--The simplicity which she
recommended in religion, Madame de Maintenon demanded in
everything,--in dress and in language: “Young girls,” she says,
“must wear as few ribbons as possible.”
A class-teacher had given a fine lecture, in which she exhorted
her pupils to make an “eternal divorce” with sin. “Very well said,
doubtless,” remarked Madame de Maintenon; “but, pray, who among our
young ladies knows what divorce is?”
245. FÉNELON AND SAINT CYR.--Michelet, speaking of Saint Cyr, which
he does not love, said: “Its cold governess was much more a man
than Fénelon.” The fact is, that the author of the _Education of
Girls_ gives a larger place to sensibility and intelligence. It is
not Madame de Maintenon who said: “As much as possible, tenderness
of heart must be excused in young girls.” It is not at Saint Cyr
that these maxims were practised. “Pray let them have Greek and
Roman histories. They will find in them prodigies of courage and
disinterestedness. Let them not be ignorant of the history of
France, which also has its beauty.... All this serves to give
dignity to the mind, and to lift the soul to noble sentiments.”
Nevertheless, Fénelon’s work was highly esteemed at Saint Cyr.
It appeared in 1687, and Saint Cyr was founded in 1686. A great
number of its precepts were there observed, such as the following:
“Frequent leaves of absence should be avoided;” “Young girls should
not be accustomed to talk much.”
246. GENERAL JUDGMENT.--In a word, if the ideal proposed to the
young women of Saint Cyr by Madame de Maintenon cannot satisfy
those who, in our day, conceive “an education broader in its scheme
and more liberal in its spirit,” at least we must do justice
to an institution which was, as its foundress said, “a kind of
college,” a first attempt at enfranchisement in the education of
women. Without demanding of Madame de Maintenon what was not in
her age to give, let us be inspired by her in what concerns the
changeless education in moral virtues, and in the qualities of
discretion, reserve, goodness, and submission. “However severe that
education may appear,” says Lavallée, “I believe it will suggest
better reflections to those who observe the way in which women are
educated to-day, and the results of that education in luxury and
pleasure, not only on the fireside, but still more on society and
political life, and on the future of the men that it is preparing
for France. I believe they will prefer that manly education, so
to speak, which purified private morals and begot public virtues;
and that they will esteem and regret that work of Madame de
Maintenon, which for a century prevented the corruption of the
Court from extending to the provinces, and maintained in the old
country-seats, from which came the greater part of the nobility,
the substantial virtues and the simple manners of the olden time.”
[247. ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.--1. The education of women in the
seventeenth century reflects the sentiment of the age as to their
relative position in society, their rights, and their destiny.
Woman was still regarded as the inferior of man, in the lower
classes as a drudge, in the higher as an ornament; in her case,
intellectual culture was regarded as either useless or dangerous;
and the education that was given her was to fit her for a life
of devotion or a life of seclusion from society.
2. The rules of Jacqueline Pascal exhibit the effects of an
ascetic belief on education,--human nature is corrupt; all its
likes are to be thwarted, and all its dislikes fostered under
compulsion.
3. The education directed by Madame de Maintenon is the beginning
of a rupture with tradition. It was a movement towards the
secularization of woman’s education, and towards the recognition
of her equality with man, with respect to her grade of
intellectual endowments, her intellectual culture, and to her
participation in the duties of real life.
4. The type of the higher education was still monastic, both for
men and women. No one was able to conceive that both sexes might
be educated together with mutual advantage.]
FOOTNOTES:
[138] _Les Femmes Savantes_, Act II. Scene VII., Van Laun’s
translation.
[139] Letter of Nov. 16, 1689.
[140] Letter of June 1, 1680.
[141] _Traité du choix et de la méthode des études_, Chap. XXXVIII.
[142] Gréard, _Mémoire sur l’enseignement secondaire des filles_,
p. 55.
[143] “The name generally given to a social circle, which for
more than half a century gathered around Catherine de Vivonne,
marquise de Rambouillet, and her daughter, Julie d’Angennes,
duchess de Montausier, and which exercised a very conspicuous
influence on French language, literature, and civilization....
Her house soon became the place where all who had genius, wit,
learning, talent, or taste, assembled, and from these reunions
originated the French Academy, the highest authority of French
literature, and the salons, the most prominent feature of French
civilization.”--Johnson’s _Cyclopædia_.
[144] See the Letter to Madame de Fontaine, general mistress of the
school, Sept. 20, 1691.
[145] Two volumes, 2d edition, 1861.
[146] Two volumes, 1857.
[147] Two volumes, 1860.
[148] M. Gréard, _Mémoire sur l’enseignement secondaire des
filles_, 1882, p. 59.
[149] _Lettres historiques_, Tome I. p. 48.
[150] _Lettres historiques_, Tome I. p. 89.
CHAPTER XI.
ROLLIN.
THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS; STATUTES OF 1598 AND OF 1600;
ORGANIZATION OF THE DIFFERENT FACULTIES; DECADENCE OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF PARIS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY; THE RESTORATION
OF STUDIES AND ROLLIN (1661-1741); THE TREATISE ON STUDIES;
DIFFERENT OPINIONS; DIVISION OF THE TREATISE ON STUDIES; GENERAL
REFLECTIONS ON EDUCATION; STUDIES FOR THE FIRST YEARS; THE
EDUCATION OF GIRLS; THE STUDY OF FRENCH; GREEK AND LATIN; ROLLIN
THE HISTORIAN; THE TEACHING OF HISTORY; PHILOSOPHY; SCIENTIFIC
INSTRUCTION; EDUCATIONAL CHARACTER OF ROLLIN’S PEDAGOGY; INTERIOR
DISCIPLINE OF COLLEGES; PUBLIC EDUCATION; THE ROD; PUNISHMENTS IN
GENERAL; CONCLUSION; ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.
248. THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS.--Since the thirteenth century, the
University of Paris had been a centre of light and a resort for
students. Ramus could say: “This University is not the university
of one city only, but of the entire world.” But even in the time
of Ramus, in consequence of the civil discords, and by reason
also of the progress in the colleges organized by the Company of
Jesus, the University of Paris declined; she saw the number of her
pupils diminish. She persisted, however, in the full light of the
Renaissance, in following the superannuated regulations which the
Cardinal d’Estouteville had imposed on her in 1452; she fell behind
in the routine of the scholastic methods. A reform was necessary,
and in 1600 it was accomplished by Henry IV.
249. STATUTES OF 1600.--The statutes of the new university were
promulgated “by the order and the will of the most Christian and
most invincible king of France and Navarre, Henry IV.” This was the
first time that the State directly intervened in the control of
education, and that secular power was set up in opposition to the
absolute authority of the Church.
In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries a reform had been made
in the University, by the Popes Innocent III. and Urban V. The
reformer of 1452, the Cardinal d’Estouteville, acted as the legate
of the pontifical power. On the contrary, the statutes of 1600 were
the work of a commission named by the king, and there sat at its
deliberations, by the side of a few ecclesiastics, magistrates, and
even professors.
250. ORGANIZATION OF THE DIFFERENT FACULTIES.--The University of
Paris comprised four Faculties: the Faculties of Theology, of
Law, and of Medicine, which corresponded to what we to-day call
superior instruction, and the Faculty of Arts, which was almost the
equivalent of our secondary instruction.[151]
It would take too long to enumerate in this place the different
innovations introduced by the statutes of 1600. Let us merely say
a word of the Faculty of Arts.
In the Faculty of Arts the door was finally opened to the classical
authors. In a certain degree the tendencies of the Renaissance
were obeyed. Nevertheless, the methods and the general spirit
were scarcely changed. Catholicism was obligatory, and the French
language remained under ban. Frequent exercises in repetition
and declamation were maintained. The liberal arts were always
considered “the foundation of all the sciences.” Instruction in
philosophy was always reduced to the interpretation of the texts of
Aristotle. As to history, and the sciences in general, no account
whatever was taken of them.
251. DECADENCE OF THE UNIVERSITY IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.--The
reform, then, was insufficient, and the results were bad. While the
colleges of the Jesuits attracted pupils in crowds, and while the
Oratorians and the Jansenists reformed secondary instruction, the
colleges of the University[152] remained mediocre and obscure. Save
in rare exceptions, there were no professors of distinction; the
education was formal, in humble imitation of that of the Company
of Jesus; there was an abuse of abstract rules, of grammatical
exercises, of written tasks, and of Latin composition; there was no
disposition to take an advance step; but an obstinate resistance
to the new spirit, which was indicated either by the interdiction
of the philosophy of Descartes, or by the refusal to teach in
the French language; in a word, there was complete isolation in
immovable routine, and in consequence, decadence,--such is a
summary history of the University of Paris up to the last quarter
of the seventeenth century.
252. THE RESTORATION OF STUDIES AND ROLLIN (1661-1741).--We must
go forward to the time when Rollin taught, to observe a revival in
the studies of the University. Several distinguished professors, as
his master Hersan, Pourchot, and still others, had prepared the way
for him. There was then, from 1680 to 1700, a real rejuvenescence
of studies, which was initiated in part by Rollin.
Latin lost a little ground in consequence of a growing recognition
of the rights of the French language and the national literature,
which had just been made illustrious by so many masterpieces. The
spirit of the Jansenist methods penetrated the colleges of the
University. The Cartesian philosophy was taught in them, and a
little more attention was given to the explication of authors, and
a little less to the verbal repetition of lessons. New ideas began
to infiltrate into the old citadel of scholasticism. The question
came to be asked if celibacy was indeed an indispensable condition
of the teaching office. Men began to comprehend that at least
marriage was not a reason for exclusion. Finally, real progress was
made in discipline as well as in methods, and the indubitable proof
of this is the _Treatise on Studies_, by Rollin.
253. THE TREATISE ON STUDIES.--Rollin has summed up his educational
experience, an experience of fifty years, in a book which has
become celebrated under the title of _Treatise on Studies_.
The full title of this work was: _De la manière d’enseigner et
d’étudier les belles-lettres par rapport à l’esprit et au cœur_.
The first two volumes appeared in 1726, and the other two in 1728.
The _Treatise on Studies_ is not like the _Émile_, which was
published twenty years later, a work of venturesome inquiry and
original novelties; but is a faithful exposition of the methods in
use, and a discreet commentary on them. While this treatise belongs
by its date to the eighteenth century, it is the pedagogy of the
seventeenth century, and the traditions of the University under the
reign of Louis XIV. that Rollin has collected, and of which he has
simply wished to be the reporter. In the Latin dedication, which
he addresses to the Rector of the University of Paris, he clearly
defines his intentions and his purpose:--
“My first design was to put in writing and define the method of
teaching which has long been in use among you, and which, up to
this time, has been transmitted only by word of mouth, and through
a sort of tradition; and to erect, so far as I am able to do it, a
durable monument of the rules and practice which you have followed
in the instruction of youth, for the purpose of preserving, in all
its integrity, the taste for _belles-lettres_, and to preserve it,
if possible, from the injuries and the alterations of time.”
254. DIFFERENT OPINIONS.--Rollin has always had warm admirers.
Voltaire called the _Treatise_ a book “forever useful,” and
whatever may be our reservations on the deficiences, and on the
short and narrow views of certain parts of the pedagogy of Rollin,
we must subscribe to this judgment. But we shall not go so far as
to accept the enthusiastic declarations of Villemain, who complains
that the study of the _Treatise_ is neglected in our time, “as
if new methods had been discovered for training the intelligence
and the heart”; and he adds, “Since the _Treatise on Studies, not
a forward step has been taken_.” This is to undervalue all the
earnest efforts that have been made for two centuries by educators
just as profound as was the ever timid and cautious Rollin. When
we compare the precepts of the _Treatise_ with the reforms which
the spirit of progress has already effected, and particularly with
those which it will effect, we are astonished to hear Nisard say:
“In educational matters, the _Treatise on Studies_ is the unique
book, or better still, the book.”
To put such a burden of pompous praise on Rollin is to compromise
his real worth; and without ceasing to do justice to his wise
and judicious spirit, we wish to employ more discretion in our
admiration.
255. DIVISION OF THE TREATISE ON STUDIES.--Before calling attention
to the most interesting parts of the _Treatise on Studies_, let us
briefly state the object of the eight books of which it is composed.
The _Treatise_ opens with a _Preliminary Discourse_ which recites
the advantages of instruction.
The title of the first book is: _Exercises which are proper
for very young children; of the education of girls_. Rollin
acknowledges that he treats only very superficially “this double
subject,” which is foreign to his original plan. In fact, the first
edition of his _Treatise on Studies_ contained but seven books,
and it is only in 1734 that he wrote, “at the urgent requests and
prayers of several persons,” that short essay on the education of
boys and girls which first appeared under the form of a supplement,
and which became the first book of the work only in the subsequent
editions.
The different subjects proper for training the youth in the public
schools, that is, in the colleges,--such is the object of the six
books which follow: Book II. _Of the learning of the languages_;
that is, the study of Greek and Latin; Book III. _Of poetry_; Book
IV. _Of rhetoric_; Book V. _Of the three kinds of eloquence_; Book
VI. _Of history_; Book VII. _Of philosophy_.
Book VIII., the last, entitled _Of the interior government of
schools and colleges_, has a particular character. It does not
treat of studies and intellectual exercises, but of discipline and
moral education. It is, on all accounts, the most original and
interesting part of Rollin’s work, and it opens to us the treasures
of his experience. This eighth book has been justly called the
“Memoirs of Rollin.” That which constitutes its merit and its charm
is that the author here at last decides to be himself. He does not
quote the ancients so much; but he speaks in his own name, and
relates what he has done, or what he has seen done.
256. GENERAL REFLECTIONS ON EDUCATION.--There is little to be
gathered out of the _Preliminary Discourse_ of Rollin. He is but
slightly successful in general reflections. When he ventures
to philosophize, Rollin easily falls into platitudes. He has a
dissertation to prove that “study gives the mind more breadth and
elevation; and that study gives capacity for business.”
On the purpose of education, Rollin, who copies the moderns when he
does not translate from the ancients, is content with reproducing
the preamble of the regulations of Henry IV., which assigned to
studies three purposes: learning, morals and manners, and religion.
“The happiness of kingdoms and peoples, and particularly of a
Christian State, depends on the good education of the youth, where
the purpose is to cultivate and to polish, by the study of the
sciences, the intelligence, still rude, of the young, and thus to
fit them for filling worthily the different vocations to which they
are destined, without which they will be useless to the State;
and finally, to teach them the sincere religious practices which
God requires of them, the inviolable attachment they owe to their
fathers and mothers and to their country, and the respect and
obedience which they are bound to render princes and magistrates.”
257. PRIMARY STUDIES.--Rollin is original when he introduces us to
the classes of the great colleges where he has lived; but is much
less so when he speaks to us of little children, whom he has never
seen near at hand. He has never known family life, and scarcely
ever visited public schools; and it is through his recollections of
Quintilian that he speaks to us of children.
There is, then, but little to note in the few pages that he has
devoted to the studies of the first years, from three to six or
seven.
One of the most interesting things we find here, perhaps, is the
method which he recommends for learning to read,--“the typographic
cabinet of du Mas.” “It is a novelty,” says the wise Rollin, “and
it is quite common and natural that we should be suspicious of this
word _novelty_.” But after the examination, he decides in favor of
the system in question, which consists in making of instruction in
reading, something analogous to the work of an apprentice who is
learning to print. The pupil has before him a table, and on this
table is placed a set of pigeon-holes, “logettes,” which contain
the letters of the alphabet, printed on cards. The pupil is to
arrange on the table the different letters needed to construct
the words required of him. The reasons that Rollin gives for
recommending this method, successful tests of which he had seen
made, prove that he had taken into account the nature of the child
and his need of activity:--
“This method of learning to read, besides several other advantages,
has one which seems to me very considerable,--it is that of being
amusing and agreeable, and of not having the appearance of study.
Nothing is more wearisome or tedious in infancy than severe mental
effort while the body is in a state of repose. With this device,
the mind of the child is not wearied. He need not make a painful
effort at recollection, because the distinction and the name of the
boxes strike his senses. He is not constrained to a posture that is
oppressive by being always tied to the place where he is made to
read. There is free activity for eyes, hands, and feet. The child
looks for his letters, takes them out, arranges them, overturns
them, separates them, and finally replaces them in their boxes.
This movement is very much to his taste, and is exactly adapted to
the active and restless disposition of that age.”
Rollin seems really to believe that there “is no danger in
beginning with the reading of Latin.” However, “for the schools of
the poor, and for those in the country, it is better,” he says, “to
fall in with the opinion of those who believe that it is necessary
to begin with the reading of French.”
It may be thought that Rollin puts a little too much into the
first years of the child’s course of study. Before the age of
six or seven he ought to have learned to read, to write, to be
nourished on the _Historical Catechism_ of Fleury, to know some
of the fables of La Fontaine by heart, and to have studied French
grammar, and geography. At least, Rollin requires that “no thought,
no expression, which is within the child’s range,” shall be allowed
to be passed by. He requires that the teacher speak little, and
that he make the child speak much, “which is one of the most
essential duties and one of those that are the least practised.”
He demands, above all else, clearness of statement, and commends
the use of illustrations and pictures in reading books. “They are
very suitable,” he says, “for striking the attention of children,
and for fixing their memory; this is properly the writing of the
ignorant.”[154]
258. THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS.--The same reasons explain the
shortcomings of Rollin’s views on the education of women, and the
relative mediocrity of his ideas on the education of children.
Living in solitude and in the celibate state, he had no personal
information on these subjects, and so he goes back to Fénelon for
his ideas on the education of women, and to Quintilian in the case
of children.
Is the study of Latin fit for girls? Such is the first question
which he raises; but he has the wisdom to answer it in the
negative, save for “nuns, and also for Christian virgins and
widows.” “There is no difference in minds,” Rollin emphatically
says, “that is due to sex.” But he does not extend the consequences
of this excellent principle very far. He is content to require
of women the four rules of arithmetic; orthography, in which he
is not over exacting, for “their ignorance of orthography should
not be imputed to them as a crime, since it is almost universal
in their sex;” ancient history and the history of France, “which
it is disgraceful to every good Frenchman not to know.”[155] As
to reading, Rollin is quite as severe as Madame de Maintenon:
“The reading of comedies and tragedies may be very dangerous for
young ladies.” He sanctions only _Esther_ and _Athalie_. Music
and dancing are allowed, but without enthusiasm and with endless
precautions:--
“An almost universal experience shows that the study of music is an
extraordinary dissipation.”
“I do not know how the custom of having girls learn to sing and
play on instruments at such great expense has become so common....
I hear it said that as soon as they enter on life’s duties, they
make no farther use of it.”
259. THE STUDY OF FRENCH.--Rollin is chiefly preoccupied with
the study of the ancient languages; but he has the merit,
notwithstanding his predilection for exercises in Latin, of having
followed the example of the Jansenists so far as the importance
accorded to the French language is concerned.
“It is a disgrace,” he says, “that we are ignorant of our own
language; and if we are willing to confess the truth, we will
almost all acknowledge that we have never studied it.”
Rollin admitted that he was “much more proficient in the study of
Latin than in that of French.” In the opening of his _Treatise_,
which he wrote in French only that he might place himself within
the reach of his young readers and their parents, he excuses
himself for making a trial _in a kind of writing which is almost
new to him_. And in congratulating him on his work, d’Aguesseau
wrote, “You speak French as if it were your native tongue.” Such
was the Rector of the University in France at the commencement of
the eighteenth century.
Let us think well of him, therefore, for having so overcome his own
habits of mind as to recommend the study of French. He would have
it learned, not only through use, but also “through principles,”
and would have “the genius of the language understood, and all its
beauties studied.”
Rollin has a high opinion of grammar, but would not encourage a
misuse of it:--
“Long-continued lessons on such dry matter might become very
tedious to pupils. Short questions, regularly proposed each day
after the manner of an ordinary conversation, in which they
themselves would be consulted, and in which the teacher would
employ the art of having them tell what he wished to make them
learn, would teach them in the way of amusement, and, by an
insensible progress, continued for several years, they would
acquire a profound knowledge of the language.”
It is in the _Treatise on Studies_ that we find for the first
time a formal list of classical French authors. Some of these
are now obscure and forgotten, as the _Remarkable Lives_ written
by Marsolier, and the _History of the Academy of Inscriptions
and Belles-Lettres_, by de Boze; but the most of them have held
their place in our programmes, and the judgments of Rollin have
been followed for two centuries, on the _Discourse on Universal
History_, by Bossuet, on the works of Boileau and Racine, and on
the _Logic_ of Port Royal.
Like all his contemporaries, Rollin particularly recommends Latin
composition to his pupils. However, he has spoken a word for French
composition, which should bear, first, on fables and historical
narratives, then on exercises in epistolary style, and finally, on
common things, descriptions, and short speeches.
260. GREEK AND LATIN.--But it is in the teaching of the ancient
languages that Rollin has especially tried the resources of
his pedagogic art. For two centuries, in the colleges of the
University, his recommendations have been followed. In Greek,
he censures the study of themes, and reduces the study of this
language to the understanding of authors. More of a Latinist than
of a Hellenist, of all the arguments he offers to justify the study
of Greek, the best is, that, since the Renaissance, Greek has
always been taught; but, without great success, he admits:--
“Parents,” he says, “are but little inclined in favor of Greek.
They also learned Greek, they claim, in their youth, and they
have retained nothing of it; this is the ordinary language which
indicates that one has not forgotten much of it.”
But Latin, which it does not suffice to learn to read, but which
must be written and spoken, is the object of all Rollin’s care,
who, on this point, gives proof of consummate experience. Like the
teachers of Port Royal, he demands that there shall be no abuse of
themes in the lower classes, and recommends the use of oral themes,
but he holds firmly to version, and to the explication of authors:--
“Authors are like a living dictionary, and a speaking grammar,
whereby we learn, through experience, the very force and the true
use of words, of phrases, and of the rules of syntax.”
This is not the place to analyze the parts of the _Treatise on
Studies_ which relate to poetics and rhetoric, and which are the
code, now somewhat antiquated, of Latin verse and prose. Rollin
brings to bear on this theme great professional sagacity, but
also a spirit of narrowness. He condemns ancient mythology,
and excludes, as dangerous, the French poets, save some rare
exceptions. He claims that the true use of poetry belongs to
religion. He has no conception of the salutary and wholesome
influence which the beauties of poetry and eloquence can exercise
over the spirit.
261. ROLLIN THE HISTORIAN.--Rollin has made a reputation as
an historian. Frederick II. compares him to Thucydides, and
Chateaubriand has emphatically called him the “Fénelon of History.”
Montesquieu himself has pleasantly said: “A noble man has enchanted
the public through his works on history; it is heart which speaks
to heart; we feel a secret satisfaction in hearing virtue speak; he
is the bee of France.”
Modern criticism has dealt justly with these exaggerations. The
thirteen volumes of his _Ancient History_, which Rollin published,
from 1730 to 1738, are scarcely read to-day. His great defect as an
historian is his lack of erudition and of the critical spirit; he
accepts with credulity every fable and every legend.
We are to recollect, however, that as professor of history--and
in truth he pretended to be only this--Rollin has greater worth
than as an historian. He knew how to introduce into the exposition
of facts great simplicity and great facility. And especially he
attempted to draw from events their moral lesson. “We ought not to
forget,” says a German of our time, “that Rollin has never made
any personal claim to be considered an investigator in historical
study, but that the purpose he had chiefly in view was educational.
As he was the first to introduce the study of history into French
colleges (this is true only of the colleges of the University), he
sought to remedy the complete absence of historical reading adapted
to the needs of the young. This is a great educational feat; for
it is undeniable that his works are of a nature to give to the
young of all nations a real taste for the study of history, and at
the same time a vivid conception of the different epochs, and of
the life of nations.”[156]
262. THE TEACHING OF HISTORY.--However, considered simply as a
professor of history, Rollin is far from being irreproachable.
Doubtless it is good to moralize on history, and to make of it, as
he says, “a school of enduring glory and real grandeur.” But is
not historical accuracy necessarily compromised, and is there not
danger of making the subject puerile, when the teacher is guided
exclusively by the idea of moral edification?
Another graver fault in Rollin is that he systematically omits
the history of France, and with it, all modern history. In this
respect, he falls below the Oratory, Port Royal, Bossuet, Fénelon,
and Madame de Maintenon. It is interesting to observe, moreover,
that Rollin recognizes the utility of the study of national
history, but his excuse for omitting it is the lack of time:--
“I do not speak of the history of France.... I do not think it
possible to find time, during the regular course of instruction, to
make a place for this study; but I am far from considering it as of
no importance, and I observe with regret that it is neglected by
many persons to whom, nevertheless, it would be very useful, not
to say necessary. When I say this, it is myself that I criticise
first, for I acknowledge that I have not given sufficient attention
to it, and I am ashamed of being in some sort a stranger in my own
country after having traversed so many others.”
263. PHILOSOPHY.--It is moral edification that Rollin seeks in
philosophical studies, as in historical studies. With but little
competence in these matters, he admits that he has applied himself
only very superficially to the study of philosophy. He knows,
however, the value of ethics and logic, which govern the morals
and perfect the mind; of physics, which furnishes us a mass of
interesting knowledge; and finally, of metaphysics, which fortifies
the religious sentiment. The ethics of antiquity seems to him
worthy of attention; it is, in his view, the introduction to
Christian ethics.
264. SCIENTIFIC INSTRUCTION.--Rollin has given us a compendium
of astronomy, of physics, and of natural history. Without doubt
his essays have but a moderate value. Rollin’s knowledge is often
inexact, and his general ideas are narrow. He is capable of
believing that “nature entire is made for man.” But yet he deserves
some credit for having comprehended the part that the observation
of the sensible world ought to play in education:--
“I call _children’s physics_ a study of nature which requires
scarcely anything but eyes, and which, for this reason, is within
the reach of all sorts of persons, and even of children. It
consists in making ourselves attentive to the objects which nature
presents to us, to consider them with care, and to admire their
different beauties; but without searching into their secret causes,
which comes within the province of the physics of the scientist.
“I say that even children are capable of this, for they have eyes,
and are not wanting in curiosity. They wish to know; they are
inquisitive. It is only necessary to awaken and nourish in them
the desire to learn and to know, which is natural to all men. This
study, moreover, if it may be so called, far from being painful
and tedious, affords only pleasure and amusement; it may take the
place of recreation, and ordinarily ought not to take place save in
playing. It is inconceivable how much knowledge of things children
might gain, if we knew how to take advantage of all the occasions
which they furnish for the purpose.”
265. THE EDUCATIVE CHARACTER OF ROLLIN’S PEDAGOGY.--It should not
be supposed that Rollin’s exclusive purpose was to make Latinists
and literary men. I know very well that he himself has said
that “to form the taste was his principal aim.” Nevertheless,
he has thought of other things,--moral qualities not less than
intellectual endowments. He wished to train at once “the heart
and the intellect.” With him, instruction in all its phases takes
an educative turn. He esteems knowledge only because it leads to
virtue. In the explication of authors, attention should be directed
to the morality of their thoughts, at least as much as to their
literary beauty. The maxims and examples which their writings
contain should be skillfully put in relief, so that these readings
may become moral lessons not less than studies in rhetoric. To sum
up in a word, Rollin follows the tradition of the Jansenists, and
not that of the Company of Jesus.
266. CHRISTIANITY OF ROLLIN.--Rollin, though persecuted for
his Jansenist tendencies, was a fervent Christian. “A Roman
probity” did not suffice for him; he desired a Christian virtue.
Consequently, he requires that religious instruction should form a
part of every lesson. A regulation which dates from his rectorship
required that the scholar in each class should learn and recite
each day one or more maxims drawn from the Holy Scriptures. This
custom has been maintained to this day. Rollin knew, moreover,
that the best means of inspiring piety is to preach by example,
and to be pious one’s self:--
“To make true Christians,--this is the end and purpose of the
education of children; all the rest but fulfills the purpose of
means.... When a teacher has received this spirit, there is nothing
more to say to him....”
The religious spirit of Rollin comes to view on each page of his
book:--
“It remains for me,” he says, in concluding his preface, “to pray
God, in whose hands we all are, we and our discourses, to deign to
bless my good intentions.”
267. INTERIOR DISCIPLINE OF THE COLLEGES.--The part of the
_Treatise on Studies_ which has preserved the most interest, and
which will be studied with the most profit, is certainly that which
treats of _the interior government of schools and colleges_. Here,
though he does not completely divest himself of his method of
borrowings, and references to the authority of others, and though
he is especially under the influence of Locke, whose wise advice
on rewards and punishments he reproduces almost verbatim, Rollin
makes use of a long personal experience. We have charged him with
not knowing the little child. On the other hand, he knows exactly
what scholars a little older are,--children from ten to sixteen
years old. And he not only knows them, but he loves them tenderly.
He gives them this testimony, which affection alone can explain,
that he has always found them reasonable.
268. ENUMERATION OF THE QUESTIONS TREATED BY ROLLIN.--To give an
idea of this part of the _Treatise_, the best way is to reproduce
the titles of the thirteen articles composing the chapter entitled
_General Counsels on the Education of the Young_:--
I. What end should be proposed in education? II. How to study the
character of children in order to become able to instruct them
properly. III. How at once to gain authority over children. IV. How
to become loved and feared. V. Punishments: 1. Difficulties and
dangers in punishments; 2. Rules to be observed in punishments.
VI. Reprimands: 1. Occasion for reprimanding; 2. Time for making
the reprimand; 3. Manner of reprimanding. VII. Reasoning with
children. Stimulating them with the sense of honor. Making use of
commendation, rewards, and caresses. VIII. How to train children
to be truthful. IX. How to train children to politeness, to
cleanliness, and to exactness. X. How to make study attractive.
XI. How to give rest and recreation to children. XII. How to train
the young to goodness by instruction and example. XIII. Piety,
religion, zeal for the salvation of children.
269. PUBLIC EDUCATION.--Rollin does not definitely express himself
on the superiority of public education. He does not dare give
formal advice to parents; but he brings forward the advantages of
the common life of colleges with so much force, that it is very
evident that he prefers it to a private education. Let it be noted,
besides, that he accepts on his own account “the capital maxim of
the ancients, that children belong more to the State than to their
parents.”
270. THE ROD.--In the matter of discipline, Rollin leans rather to
the side of mildness. However, he does not dare pronounce himself
absolutely against the use of the rod. That which in particular
causes him to hesitate, which gives him scruples, which prevents
him from expressing a censure which is at the bottom of his heart,
but which never rises to his lips, is that there are certain
texts of the Bible whose interpretation is favorable to the use
of the rod. It is interesting to notice how, in a strait between
his sentiments as a docile Christian and his instincts towards
mildness, the good and timid Rollin tries to find a less rigorous
meaning in the sacred text, and to convince himself that the Bible
does not say what it seems to say. After many hesitations, he
finally comes to the conclusion that corporal chastisements are
permitted, but that they are not to be employed save in extreme and
desperate cases; and this is also the conclusion of Locke.
271. PUNISHMENTS IN GENERAL.--But how many wise counsels on
punishments, and on the precautions that must be taken when we
punish or reprimand! One should refrain from punishing a child at
the moment he commits his fault, because this might then exasperate
him and provoke him to new breaches of duty. Let the master be
cool when he punishes, and avoid the anger which discredits
his authority. The whole of this excellent code of scholastic
discipline might be quoted with profit. Rollin is reason and good
sense itself when he guides and instructs the teacher as to his
relations with the pupil. Doubtless the most of these precepts are
not new; but when they come from the mouth of Rollin, there is
something added to them which I cannot describe, but which gives to
the most threadbare advice the authority of personal experience.
272. CONCLUSION.--We shall not dwell on the other precepts of
Rollin. The text must be consulted for his reflections on plays,
recreations, the means of making study attractive, and on the
necessity of appealing to the child’s reason betimes, and of
explaining to him why one does this or that. In this last part of
the _Treatise on Studies_ there is a complete infant psychology
which is lacking neither in keenness nor in penetration. In
particular, there is a code of moral discipline which cannot be too
highly commended to educators, and to all those who desire, in the
words of Rollin, “to train at once the heart and the mind” of the
young. Rollin has worked for virtue even more than for science. His
works are less literary productions than works on morals, and the
author himself is the perfect expression of what can be done for
the education of the young by the Christian spirit allied to the
university spirit.
[273. ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.--1. The characteristic fact disclosed
by this study is the very slow rate at which progress in
education takes place. There is also an enforcement of the lesson
which has reappeared from time to time, that education follows in
the wake of new and general movements in human thought.
2. A more specific fact is the extreme conservatism of
universities, or the tenacity with which they hold to traditions.
The question is suggested whether, after all, the conservative
habit of the university does not best befit its judicial
functions.
3. In the elbowing of the classics by history and French, we see
the rise of innovations which have become embodied in the modern
university.
4. A new factor in the higher education is the intervention of
the State, as opposed to the historical domination of the Church.
In the reform of the University of Paris the State became an
educator.
5. There is evidence of some progress in the historical struggle
towards the conception that woman has equal rights with man in
the benefits of education.]
FOOTNOTES:
[151] “Formerly secondary schools were schools in which was given
a more advanced instruction then in the primary schools; and they
were distinguished into communal secondary schools, or communal
colleges, and into private secondary schools or institutions....
To-day, secondary instruction includes the colleges and lycées
in which are taught the ancient languages, modern languages,
history, mathematics, physics, chemistry, and philosophy. Public
instruction is divided into primary, secondary, and superior
instruction.”--LITTRÉ.
[152] This refers to the University of Paris, which must be
distinguished from the Napoleonic University. “The latter was
founded by a decree of Napoleon I., March 17, 1808. It was first
called the Imperial University, and then the University of France.
It comprises: 1. The faculties;[153] 2. the lycées or colleges of
the State; 3. the communal colleges; 4. the primary schools. All
these are under the direction of a central administration.”--LITTRÉ.
[153] There are now five Faculties or institutions for special
instruction,--the Faculties of the Sciences, of Letters, of
Medicine, of Law, and of Theology. (P.)
[154] Save once, Rollin has scarcely made an allusion to primary
instruction proper. We quote this passage on account of its
singularity: “Several years ago there was introduced into most of
the schools for the poor in Paris a method which is very useful
to scholars, and which spares much trouble to the teachers. The
school is divided into several classes. I select only one of
them, that composed of children who already know how to write
syllables; the others must be judged by this one. I suppose that
the subject of the reading lesson is _Dixit Dominus Domino meo:
Sede a dextris meis_. Each child pronounces one syllable, as _Di_.
His competitor, who stands opposite, takes up the next, _xit_,
and so on. The whole class is attentive; for the teacher, without
warning, passes at once from the head of the line to the middle, or
to the foot, and the recitation must continue without interruption.
If a pupil makes a mistake in some syllable, the teacher, without
speaking, raps upon the table with his stick, and the competitor
is obliged to repeat as it should be the syllable that has been
wrongly pronounced. If he fail also, the next, upon a second rap of
the stick, goes back to the same syllable, and so on till it has
been pronounced correctly. More than thirty years ago, I saw with
unusual pleasure this method in successful operation at Orleans,
where it originated through the care and industry of M. Garot, who
presided over the schools of that city.”
[155] Rollin does not require it, however, of young men.
[156] Doctor Wolker, quoted by Cadet, in his edition of Rollin,
Paris, 1882.
CHAPTER XII.
CATHOLICISM AND PRIMARY INSTRUCTION.--LA SALLE AND THE BRETHREN OF
THE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS.
STATE OF PRIMARY INSTRUCTION IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY; DÉMIA
AND THE INFANT SCHOOLS OF LYONS; CLAUDE JOLY, DIRECTOR OF THE
PRIMARY SCHOOLS OF PARIS; THE BOOK OF THE PARISH SCHOOL; LA
SALLE (1651-1719) AND THE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS; LIFE AND CHARACTER
OF LA SALLE; ASCETIC TENDENCIES; FOUNDATION OF THE INSTITUTE OF
THE BRETHREN (1684); THE IDEA OF NORMAL SCHOOLS; THE IDEA OF
GRATUITOUS AND COMPULSORY INSTRUCTION; PROFESSIONAL INSTRUCTION;
CONDUCT OF THE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS; SUCCESSIVE EDITIONS; ABUSE
OF SCHOOL REGULATIONS; DIVISION OF THE CONDUCT; INTERIOR
ORGANIZATION OF THE SCHOOLS; SIMULTANEOUS INSTRUCTION; WHAT
WAS LEARNED IN THE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS; METHOD OF TEACHING;
THE CHRISTIAN CIVILITY; CORPORAL CHASTISEMENTS; REPRIMANDS;
PENANCES; THE FERULE; THE ROD; REWARDS; MUTUAL ESPIONAGE; GENERAL
CONCLUSION; ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.
274. THE STATE OF PRIMARY INSTRUCTION IN THE SEVENTEENTH
CENTURY.--It does not form a part of our plan to follow from day to
day the small increments of progress and the slow development of
the primary schools of France; but we must confine ourselves to the
essential facts and to the important dates.
The Catholic Church, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
did not altogether renounce her interest in popular instruction.
She took measures, without doubt, to evangelize the poor
people, and sometimes “even to teach them how to read and
write.” Nevertheless, up to the organization of the Christian
schools, by La Salle, no serious effort was made. Some religious
foundations establish gratuitous schools in many places,--_charity
schools_,--but no comprehensive purpose directs these
establishments. Conflicts of prerogative among certain independent
colleagues, as that between the writing-masters and the masters
of the infant schools placed under the direct authority of the
precentor, or among the rectors and the tutors (_écolâtres_), that
is, the assistants of the bishops charged with the supervision
of the schools,--such dissensions came still further to defeat
the good intentions of individuals, and to embarrass the feeble
movement that was exerted in favor of popular instruction. For
example, towards 1680, the writing-masters attempted to prevent the
masters of the primary schools[157] from giving writing lessons, at
least, _from giving their pupils any copies except monosyllables_;
and a decree of Parliament is necessary to re-establish the
liberty--and then under certain restrictions--of teaching to write.
“Christian instruction was neglected, not to say dishonored,” is
the statement of contemporaries. The children who attended the
schools of the poor were subjected to public contempt. They were
obliged to wear on their caps a distinctive badge. In brief, far
from progressing, primary instruction was rather in a state of
decadence.
275. DÉMIA AND THE PRIMARY SCHOOLS OF LYONS.--Among the progressive
men who struggled against this unhappy state of affairs, and who
tried to develop the Catholic schools, we must mention, before
La Salle, Démia, a priest of Lyons, who, in 1666, founded the
Congregation of the Brethren of Saint Charles, for the instruction
of poor children. The Institute of La Salle was not organized
till eighteen years later, in 1684. In 1668, having addressed to
the provosts of the merchants of the city of Lyons a warm appeal,
his _Proposals for the establishment of Christian schools for the
instruction of the poor_, Démia obtained an annual grant of two
hundred livres. In 1675 he was charged by “express command” of
the archbishop of Lyons “with the management and direction of the
schools of that city and diocese,” and drew up a body of school
regulations which was quoted as a model.[158] For the method
of “teaching to read, of learning the catechism, of correcting
children, and similar things,” Démia conformed to the book known
as the _Parish School_ (_École paroissiale_), of which we shall
presently say a word. He took it upon himself to proceed “to the
examination of the religion, the ability, and the good morals, of
the persons who proposed to teach school.” But, what was of greater
moment, he established, for preparing and training them, a sort of
seminary.
A few quotations will give an idea of Démia’s zeal in the
establishment of Christian schools.
“This establishment is of such importance and of so great utility,
that there is nothing in our political organization which is
more worthy of the care and the watchfulness of the magistrates,
since on it depend our peace and public tranquillity. The poor,
not having the means of educating their children, leave them
in ignorance of their obligations.... Thus we see, with keen
displeasure, that such an education of the children of the poor
is totally neglected, although it is the most important interest
of the State, of which they comprise the largest part; and,
although it is quite as necessary, and even more so, to maintain
public schools for them, as to support colleges for the children of
families in good circumstances....”
276. CLAUDE JOLY.--In 1676, Claude Joly, precentor of Notre Dame,
“collator, director, and judge of the primary schools of the city,
the suburbs, and the outskirts of Paris,” published his _Christian
and Moral Counsels for the Instruction of Children_. There is but
little to gather from this work, where the author is so forgetful
of elementary instruction as to speak only of secondary instruction
and of the education of princes. What most concerns Claude Joly
is to put in force the regulations which forbid the association
of boys and girls in the schools. The separation of the sexes was
for a long time an absolute principle in France. Démia, in article
nine of his regulations, restores the ordinance of the archbishop
of Lyons, “which forbids school-masters to admit girls, and
school-mistresses to admit boys.” Rollin was of the same opinion.
Claude Joly, in the capacity of chief precentor, bluntly claimed
his sovereign rights in the matter of primary instruction:--
“We shall contest the power claimed by the rectors of Paris to
control the schools, under the name and pretext of charity, without
the permission of the chief precentor, to whom alone belongs this
power. To him, also, belongs the right of nomination to the schools
of the religious and secular communities. We shall disclose,
besides, the attempts of writers to interfere with the teaching of
orthography, which belongs only to good grammarians, that is, to
the masters of the little schools.”
We see to what petty questions of prerogative was sacrificed, in
the seventeenth century, the great cause of popular instruction.
277. THE BOOK OF THE PARISH SCHOOL.--Under the title, _The Parish
School, or the Manner of Properly Instructing the Children in the
Little Schools_, a priest of the diocese of Paris had written,
in 1655, a school manual, often reprinted,[159] which became the
general standard of the schools during the years that followed, and
which gives an exact idea of what was narrow and poorly defined in
the primary instruction of that period.
The author of the _Parish School_ does not have a high opinion
of the office of the teacher, which he regards as an employment
_without lustre, without pleasure, and without interest_. He does
not expect great results from instruction, of which he is pleased
to say, that _it is not completely useless_. It is true that
instruction is reduced to a very few things,--reading, writing, and
counting. To this the author adds religion and politeness.
Let us observe in particular, that the programme of the parish
school also comprises the _principles of the Latin language_. The
primary school of that period was still confounded with the college
of secondary instruction; the ancient languages and rhetoric were
taught in it. In the catalogue of the master’s books, drawn up by
the author of the _Parish School_, we find a Greek grammar. In the
classes, the reading of Latin precedes the reading of French.
Some good advice in practical pedagogy might be extracted from
the first part of the work, especially on the duties of a
school-master, on the power of example, and on the necessity of
knowing the disposition of pupils. But how many artless assertions
and mischievous precepts, in that school code of the city of Paris,
in the near presence of the grand century! The _Parish School_
complains that the scholars eat too much bread:--
“The children of Paris, as a rule, eat a great deal of bread. This
food stupefies the mind, and very often makes them, at the age of
nine or ten, incapable of learning. _Omnis repletio mala, panis
vero pessima._” A serious matter is that espionage is not only
authorized, but is encouraged and organized:--
“The master will select two of the most reliable and intelligent to
be on the lookout for the disorders and the improprieties of the
school and the church. They shall write the names of the offenders,
and of those guilty of improprieties, on pieces of paper or on
tablets, to be given to the master. These officers shall be called
_observers_.”
278. LA SALLE (1651-1719) AND THE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS.--The reading
of the _Parish School_ prepares us the better to comprehend the
work of La Salle. If one were in any degree tempted to depreciate
the Institute of the Brethren of the Christian Schools, it would
suffice, to counteract this disposition, to contrast the reforms
of La Salle, however insufficient they may be, with the real state
of the schools of that period. To be equitably judged, human
institutions ought to be replaced in their setting and in their
environment. It is easy to-day to formulate charges against the
pedagogy of the Brethren of the Christian Schools. But considered
in their time, and compared with what existed, or rather with what
did _not_ exist, the establishments of La Salle deserve the esteem
and the gratitude of the friends of instruction. They represent the
first systematic effort of the Catholic Church to organize popular
instruction. What the Jesuits did in the matter of secondary
instruction, with immense resources and for pupils who paid them
for their efforts, La Salle attempted in primary instruction,
through a thousand obstacles and for pupils who did not pay.
279. LIFE AND CHARACTER OF LA SALLE.--We shall have to criticise
in the most of its principles and in many details of its practice,
the educational institute of La Salle. But that which merits
an admiration without reserve is the professional zeal of the
founder of the order, the dauntless spirit of improvement which
he displayed in the organization of his schools, and in the
recruitment of his teachers; it is also his tenacious zeal which
was discouraged neither by the jealous opposition of corporations,
the writing-masters for example, nor by the inexplicable opposition
of the clergy; and, finally, it is the indefatigable devotion of a
beautiful life consecrated to the cause of instruction, which was
a long series of efforts and sacrifices.
At an early hour, La Salle had given proofs of the energy of his
character. Weak and sickly, he was obliged to struggle against the
infirmities of his constitution. To overcome sleep, and to prolong
his studious vigils, he sometimes kneeled on sharp stones, and
sometimes he placed in front of him, upon his study-table, a board
fitted with iron points, against which his head would strike as
soon as fatigue made him doze and he leaned forward. Canon of the
chapter of Reims in 1667, ordained priest in 1678, he resigned his
prebendship in 1683, and, voluntarily making himself poor, in order
to approach those whose souls he would save, he renounced his whole
patrimony, to the great disgust of his friends, who treated him as
a madman.
280. ASCETIC TENDENCIES.--But it is not a disinterested love of
the people, it is not the thought of their moral regeneration, and
of their intellectual progress, which animated and sustained the
efforts of La Salle. His purpose was above all else religious. He
pushed devotion even to asceticism. In his childhood, while he
still lived at home, he came to have a sense of unrest in the
parlors of his mother; and one evening, as his biographers relate,
while those about him were engaged in music, or were talking on
worldly matters, he threw himself into the arms of one of his
aunts, and said to her, “Madam, relate to me the life of one of
the saints.” He himself was a saint, though the Church did not
think him worthy of this venerable title. In his youth he passed
whole nights in prayer, and slept on boards. All his life he was
severe to himself and also to others, considering abstinence and
privations as the regimen of the Christian. His adversaries, at
different times, imputed this to him as a crime. He was represented
as a hardened man, pushing his ascetic requirements to the extreme
of cruelty. To appease their anger, he removed penances and bodily
inflictions from his institution, but he maintained them for
himself, and continued his life of voluntary suffering. Heroic
virtues, it may be; but it may be added also, an unfortunate
disposition for a teacher of children. We distrust, in advance,
a system of teaching whose beginning was so sad, whose founder
inclosed his life within so narrow an horizon, and which, at first,
was illuminated by no rays of gladness and good humor.
281. FOUNDATIONS OF THE INSTITUTE.--The Institute of the Brethren
was founded in 1684, but it was not sanctioned by pontifical
authority and royal power till forty years later, in 1724.
We shall not recite at full length the vicissitudes of the first
years of the Institute. We simply state that La Salle inaugurated
his work by offering hospitality in his own house to several poor
teachers. In 1679 he opened at Reims a school for boys. In 1684
he imposed on his disciples vows of _stability_ and _obedience_,
and prescribed their costume. In 1688 he went to Paris in order to
found schools there, and it was here in particular, as he himself
says, that “he saw himself persecuted by the men from whom he
expected help.” In spite of all these difficulties his enterprise
prospered, and when he died, in 1720, the Institute of the Brethren
already counted a large number of establishments for primary
instruction.
282. THE IDEA OF NORMAL SCHOOLS.--We know how the teaching force
was then recruited. In Paris, if we may believe Pourchot, the
chief precentor, Claude Joly, was obliged to employ, for the
direction of schools, old-clothes-men, innkeepers, cooks, masons,
wig-makers, puppet-players--the list might be continued. In 1682
Marie Moreau, a teacher, was sent by Bossuet to keep the school at
Ferté-Gaucher. The rector of the place, in his capacity as tutor
(_écolâtre_), wishing to ascertain her competence, subjected her to
an examination, of which the following is an account:--
“1. He asked her if she could read, and she replied that she read
passably well, but not well enough to teach.
“2. He gave her a pen to mend, and she declared that she could not
do it.
“3. He handed her a Latin book and requested her to read it, but
she was prevented from making the attempt by sister Remy, who had
just prevented her from exhibiting her writing.”[160]
Ignorance, and often moral unfitness, was the general character
of the teachers of that period. They often entered upon their
duties without the least preparation. La Salle had too great an
anxiety for the good condition of his schools to accept improvised
teachers. So in 1685 he opened at Reims, under the name of
_Seminary for Schoolmasters_, a real normal school, in which
teachers were to be trained for the rural districts. Only Démia had
preceded him in this work. Later he founded an establishment of
the same kind in Paris, and--a thing worthy of note--he annexed to
this normal school a primary school, in which the teaching was done
by the students in training under the direction of an experienced
teacher.
In the third part of his _Conduct of Schools_ La Salle has drawn up
the rules for what he calls the _training of new masters_. Here are
the faults that he notices in young teachers:--
1. An itching to talk; 2. too great activity, which degenerates
into petulance; 3. indifference; 4. preoccupation and
embarrassment; 5. harshness; 6. spite; 7. partiality; 8. slowness
and negligence; 9. pusillanimity and lack of force; 10. despondency
and fretfulness; 11. familiarity and trifling; 12. distractions and
loss of time; 13. fickleness; 14. giddiness; 15. exclusiveness; 16.
lack of attention to the different characters and dispositions of
children.
283. THE IDEA OF GRATUITOUS AND OBLIGATORY INSTRUCTION.--The
Institute of the Brethren of the Christian Schools, say the
statutes of the order in so many words, is a society whose members
make a profession to conduct schools _gratuitously_. “La Salle
thought only of the children of artisans and of the poor, who,
he said, being occupied during the whole day in earning their
own livelihood and that of their families, could not give their
children the instruction they need, and a respectable and Christian
education.” In 1694, the founder of the Institute and his first
twelve disciples went and kneeled at the foot of the altar, and
pledged themselves to “conduct collectively and through organized
effort schools of gratuitous instruction, even when, in order to
do this, they might be obliged to ask alms and to live on bread
alone.”
But a thing still more remarkable than to have popularized
gratuitous instruction, already realized in many places through
charity schools, is to have formed the conception of obligatory
instruction. La Salle, who did not believe that this was any
encroachment on the liberty of parents, proposes, in this _Conduct
of Schools_, a means for affecting their will:--
“If among the poor there are certain ones who are unwilling to take
advantage of the opportunities for instruction, they should be
reported to the rectors. The latter will be able to cure them of
their indifference by threatening to give them no more assistance
till they send their children to school.”
284. PROFESSIONAL INSTRUCTION.--Besides primary schools proper,
La Salle, who is truly an innovator, inaugurated the organization
of a technical and professional instruction. At Saint Yon, near
Rouen, he organized a sort of college where was taught “all that
a young man can learn, with the exception of Latin, and whose
purpose was to prepare the student for commercial, industrial, and
administrative occupations.”
285. CONDUCT OF THE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS: SUCCESSIVE EDITIONS.--La
Salle took the trouble to draw up for his Institute a very minute
code of rules, with this title: _The Conduct of Schools_. The first
edition bears the date of 1720. It appeared at Avignon a year after
the author’s death.[161] Two other editions have since appeared, in
1811 and in 1870, with some important modifications. The substance
has not been changed, but certain passages relative to discipline,
and to the use of the rod, have been suppressed.
“With the view to adapt our education to the mildness of the
present state of manners,” says the preface of 1811, “we have
suppressed or modified whatever includes corporal correction, and
have advantageously (_sic_) replaced this, on the one hand, by good
marks, by promises and rewards, and on the other by bad marks, by
deprivations and tasks.”
On the other hand, some additions have been made. The Institute of
the Brethren had to yield in part to the demands of the times, and
to subtract something from the inflexibility of its government.
“The Brethren,” it is said in the preface to the edition of 1870,
written by the Frère Philip, “the Brethren have little by little
enlarged the original _Conduct_, in proportion as they have
perfected their methods.... It is plain that a book of this kind
cannot receive a final form. New experiments, progress in methods,
legislative enactments, new needs, etc., require that it receive
divers modifications from time to time.”
286. ABUSE OF REGULATIONS.--A feature common to the pedagogy of
the Jesuits, and to that of the Brethren of the Christian Schools,
is, that everything is regulated in advance with extraordinary
exactness. No discretion is left to the teachers. The instruction
is but a rule in action. All novelty is interdicted.
“It has been necessary,” says the _Preface_ of La Salle, to prepare
this _Conduct_ of the Christian schools, “to the end that there may
be uniformity in all the schools, and in all the places where there
are Brethren of the Institute, and that the methods employed may
always be the same. Man is so subject to slackness, and even to
changeableness, that there must be written rules for him, in order
to keep him within the bounds of his duty, and to prevent him from
introducing something new, or from destroying that which has been
wisely established.”
Need we be astonished, after this, that the teaching of the
Brethren often became a useless routine?
287. DIVISION OF THE CONDUCT.--The _Conduct of the Christian
Schools_ is divided into three parts. The first treats of all the
exercises of the school, and of what is done in it from the time
the pupils enter till they leave. The second describes the means
for establishing and maintaining order; in a word, the discipline.
The third treats of the duties of the inspector of schools, of the
qualities of the teachers, and of the rules to be followed in the
education of the teachers themselves. This may be called, so to
speak, the manual of the normal schools of the Institute.
288. INTERIOR ORGANIZATION OF THE SCHOOLS.--That which first
strikes the attention in the Christian Schools, such as La Salle
organized, is the complete silence that reigns in them. Nothing is
better than silence on the part of pupils, when it can be obtained,
but La Salle enjoins silence on teachers as well. The Frère is a
professor who does not talk.
“He will watch carefully over himself, to speak very rarely, and
very low.” “It would be of but little use for the teacher to try
to make his pupils keep silence if he does not do this himself.”
“When necessity obliges him to speak--and he is careful that this
necessity is rare--he will always speak in a moderate tone.”
It might be said that La Salle fears a strong and sonorous voice.
How, then, shall the teacher communicate with his pupils, since he
is almost debarred from the use of speech? La Salle has invented,
to supersede language, a complete system of signs, a sort of
scholastic telegraphy, a long account of which will be found in
several chapters of the _Conduct_. To have prayers repeated, the
teacher will fold his hands; to have the catechism repeated, he
will make the sign of the cross. In other cases he will strike his
breast, will look at the pupil steadily, etc. Besides, he will
employ an instrument of iron named a _signal_, which he will raise
or lower, and handle in a hundred ways, to indicate his wish, or to
announce the beginning or the close of such or such an exercise.
What is the meaning of this distrust of speech? And what are we to
think of these schools of mutes where teachers and pupils proceed
only by signs? When a scholar asks permission to speak, he will
stand erect in his place, with hands crossed and eyes modestly
lowered. Doubtless, to attempt to excuse these practices, we must
consider the annoyances of a noisy school, and the advantages of a
silent school where everything is done discreetly and noiselessly.
Is there not, however, in these odd regulations, something besides
the desire for order and good conduct,--the revelation of a
complete system of pedagogy which is afraid of life and liberty,
and which, under the pretext of making the school quiet, deadens
the school, and, in the end, reduces teachers and pupils to mere
machines?
289. SIMULTANEOUS INSTRUCTION.--By the side of the evil we must
note the good. Up to the time of La Salle, the individual method
was almost alone in use in primary instruction; but he substituted
for this the simultaneous method, that is, teaching given to all
the pupils at the same time. For this purpose, La Salle divided
each school into three divisions: “The division of the weakest,
that of the mediocres, and that of the more intelligent or the more
capable.”
“All the scholars of the same order will receive the same lesson
together. The instructor will see that all are attentive, and that,
in reading for example, all read in a low voice what the teacher
reads in a loud voice.”
To aid the instructor, La Salle gives him one or two of the better
pupils of each division, who become his assistants, and whom he
calls _inspectors_. “The more children have taught,” said La Salle,
“the more they will learn.”
To be just, however, we must recognize, in certain recommendations
of La Salle, some desire to appeal to the judgment and the reason
of the child:--
“The teacher will not speak to the scholars during the catechism,
as in preaching, but he will interrogate them almost continually
by questions, direct or indirect, in order to make them comprehend
that which he is teaching them.”
The Frère Luccard, in his _Life of the Venerable J. B. de La
Salle_,[162] quotes this still more expressive passage, borrowed
from his manuscript _Counsels_:--
“Let the teacher be careful not to lend his pupils too much help
in resolving the questions that have been proposed to them. He
ought, on the contrary, to invite them not to be discouraged, but
to seek with ardor what he knows they will be able to find for
themselves. He will convince them that they will the better retain
the knowledge they have acquired by a personal and persevering
effort.”
290. WHAT WAS LEARNED IN THE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS.--Reading, writing,
orthography, arithmetic, and the catechism,--this is the programme
of La Salle.
In reading, La Salle, agreeing in this respect with Port Royal,
requires that French books be used in the beginning.
“The book in which the pupil will begin to learn Latin is the
Psalter; but this lesson will be given only to those who can
readily read in French.”
La Salle requires that the pupil shall not be exercised in writing
till “he can read perfectly.” He attaches, moreover, an extreme
importance to calligraphy, and it is known that the Brethren have
remained masters in this art. La Salle does not weary in giving
advice on this subject: the pens, the knife for mending them, the
ink, the paper, the tracing-papers and blotters, round letters
and italic letters (a bastard script),--everything is passed in
review.[163] The _Conduct_ also insists “on the manner of teaching
the proper posture of the body” and “on the manner of teaching how
to hold the pen and the paper.”
“It will be useful and timely in the beginning to give the pupil a
stick of the bigness of a pen, on which there are three notches,
two on the right and one on the left, to mark the places where his
fingers should be put.”
The exercises in writing are to be followed by exercises in
orthography and in composition:--
“The teacher will require the pupils to compose and write for
themselves notes, receipts, bills, etc. He will also require them
to write out what they remember of the catechism, and of the
lectures that they have heard.”[164]
As to arithmetic, reduced to the four rules, we must commend La
Salle’s attempt to have it learned by reason and not by routine.
Thus, he requires the teacher to interrogate the pupil, in order
to make him the better comprehend and retain the rule, or to
make sure that he is attentive. He “will give him a complete
understanding” of what he teaches; and, finally, he will require
him “to produce a certain number of rules that he has discovered
for himself.”
Prayers and religious exercises naturally hold a large place in the
schools organized by La Salle:--
“There shall always be two or three scholars kneeling, one from
each class, who will tell their beads one after another.”
“Care will everywhere be taken that the scholars hear the holy mass
every day.”
“A half hour each day shall be devoted to the catechism.”
291. METHOD OF TEACHING.--The Institute of the Brethren has often
been criticised for the mechanical character of its instruction.
The Frère Philip, in the edition of the _Conduct_ published in
1870, implicitly acknowledges the justice of this criticism when he
writes: “Elementary instruction has assumed a particular character
in these last days, _of which we must take account_. Proposing for
its chief end to train the judgment of the pupil, it gives less
importance than heretofore to the culture of the memory; it makes
especial use of methods which call into activity the intelligence,
and lead the child to reflect, to take account of facts, to
withdraw from the domain of words to enter into that of ideas.” Do
not these wise cautions unmistakably betray the existence of an
evil tradition which should be corrected, but which tends to hold
its ground? He who has read the _Conduct_ is not left in doubt that
the general character of the pedagogy of the Christian Schools, at
the first, was a mechanical and routine exercise of the memory, and
the absence of life.
292. CHRISTIAN POLITENESS.--Under the title of _Rules of Decorum
and Christian Civility_, La Salle had composed a reading book,
intended for pupils already somewhat advanced, and printed in
Gothic characters.[165] It was not only a manual of politeness,
but was, the _Conduct_ claims, a treatise on ethics, “containing
all the duties of children, both towards God and towards
their parents.” But we would examine the work in vain for the
justification of this remark. In it are discussed only the puerile
details of outward behavior and of worldly bearing. It would,
however, be in bad taste to criticise at this day a book of
another age, whose artlessness makes us smile. La Salle’s purpose
was certainly praiseworthy, though attempting a little too much.
It is said in the _Preface_ that “there is not a single one of
our actions which ought not to be regulated by motives purely
Christian.” Hence an infinite number of minute prescriptions upon
the simplest acts of daily life.[166]
But here are a few specimens of this pretended elementary ethics:--
“It is not proper to talk when one has retired, the bed being made
for rest.”
“One should try to make no noise and not to snore while asleep;
nor should one often turn from side to side in bed as if he were
restless and did not know on which side to lie.”
“It is not becoming, when one is in company, to take off one’s
shoes.”
“It is impolite to play with a stick or a cane, and to use it to
strike the ground or pebbles, etc., etc.”
How many mistakes in politeness we should make every day of our
lives if the rules of La Salle were infallible!
293. CORPORAL CHASTISEMENTS.--The Brethren, within two centuries,
have singularly ameliorated their system of correction.
“_Imperative circumstances_,” said the Frère Philip in 1870, “no
longer permit us to tolerate corporal punishment in our schools.”
Already, in 1811, there was talk of suppressing entirely, or at
least modifying, the use of these punishments. The instruments
of torture were perfected. “We reduce the heavy ferule, the
inconvenience of which has been only too often felt, to a simple
piece of leather, about a foot long and an inch wide, and slit
in two at one end; still we hope that by divine help and by the
mildness of our very dear and dearly beloved colleagues, they will
make use of it only in cases of unavoidable necessity, and only to
give a stroke with it on the hand, without the permission ever to
make any other use of it.”
But at first, and in the original _Conduct_,[167] corporal
punishment is freely permitted and regulated with exactness.
La Salle distinguished five sorts of corrections,--reprimand,
penances, the ferule, the rod, expulsion from school.
294. REPRIMANDS.--Silence, we have seen, is the fundamental rule of
La Salle’s schools: “There must be as little speaking as possible.
Consequently, corrections by word of mouth are very rarely to be
employed.” It even seems, adds the _Conduct_, that “it is much
better not to use them at all”!
A curious system of discipline, verily, where it is as good as
forbidden to resort to admonitions, to severe reprimands, to an
appeal through speech to the reason and the feelings of the child;
where, consequently, there is no place for the moral authority of
the teacher, but where there is at once invoked the _ultima ratio_
of constraint and violence, of the ferule and the rod!
295. PENANCES.--La Salle recommends penances as well as corporal
corrections. By this term he means punishments like the following:
maintaining a kneeling posture in the school; learning a few pages
of the catechism by heart; “holding his book before his eyes for
the space of half an hour without looking off;” keeping motionless,
with clasped hands and downcast eyes, etc.
296. THE FERULE.--We have not to discuss in this place the use
of material means of correction. The Brethren themselves have
repudiated them. Only it is provoking that they bow to what they
call “imperative circumstances,” and not to considerations based on
principles. But it is interesting, were it only from an historical
point of view, to recall the minute prescriptions of the founder of
the Order.
The _Conduct_ first describes the ferule, “an instrument formed
of two pieces of leather sewed together; it shall be from ten to
twelve inches long, including the handle; the palm shall be oval,
and two inches in diameter; the palm shall be lined on the inside
so as not to be wholly flat, but rounded to fit the hand.” Nothing
is overlooked, we observe; the form of the ferule is officially
defined. But what shocks us still more is the nature of the faults
that provoke the application of the ferule: “1. for not having
attended to the lesson, or for having played; 2. for being tardy
at school; 3. for not having obeyed the first signal.” It is true
that La Salle, always preoccupied with writing, orders the ferule
to be applied only to the left hand; the right hand shall always be
spared. The child, moreover, is not to cry while he receives the
ferule; if he does, he is to be punished and corrected anew.
297. THE ROD.--In the penal code of La Salle, the categories of
faults worthy of punishment are sharply defined. The rod shall be
employed for the following faults: 1. refusal to obey; 2. when the
pupil has formed the habit of not giving heed to the lesson; 3.
when he has made blots upon his paper instead of writing; 4. when
he has had a fight with his comrades; 5. when he has neglected his
prayers in church; 6. when he has been wanting in “modesty” at mass
or during the catechism; 7. when he has been absent from school,
from mass, or from the catechism.
Even supposing that the principle of the rod is admissible, we must
still condemn the wrong use which La Salle makes of it, for faults
manifestly out of proportion to such a chastisement.
I very well know that the author of the _Conduct_ requires that
corrections shall be rare; but could he be obeyed, when he put into
the hands of his teachers scarcely any other means of discipline?
But to comprehend to what extent La Salle forgot what is due to the
dignity of the child, and considered him as a machine, without any
regard to the delicacy of his feelings, with no respect for his
person, we must read to the end the strange prescriptions of this
manual of the rod. The precautions that La Salle exacts make still
more evident the impropriety of such punishments:--
“When the teacher would punish a scholar with the rod, he will
make the ordinary sign to summon the attention of the school; next
he will indicate by means of the _signal_ the decree which the
pupil has violated, and then show him the place where correction
is ordinarily administered; and he will at once go there, and will
prepare to receive the punishment, standing in such a way as not to
be seen indecently by any one. This practice of having the scholar
prepare himself for receiving the correction, without any need on
the part of the teacher of putting his hand upon him, shall be very
exactly observed.
“While the scholar is preparing himself to receive the correction,
the teacher shall be making an inward preparation to give it in a
spirit of love, and in a clear view of God. Then he will go from
his desk with dignity and gravity.
“And when he shall have reached the place where the scholar is” (it
is stated, moreover, that this place should be in one of the most
remote and most obscure parts of the school, where the nakedness of
the victim cannot be seen), “he will speak a few words to him to
prepare him to receive the correction with humility, submission,
and a purpose of amendment; then he will strike three blows as is
usual; to go beyond five blows, there would be needed a special
order of the director.
“He shall be careful not to put his hand on the scholar. If the
scholar is not ready, he shall return to his desk without saying
a word; and when he returns, he shall give him the most severe
punishment allowed without special permission, that is, five blows.
“When a teacher shall have thus been obliged to compel a scholar
to receive correction, he shall attempt in some way a little
time afterwards to make him see and acknowledge his fault, and
shall make him come to himself, and give him a strong and sincere
resolution never to allow himself again to fall into such a
revolt.”
The moment is perhaps not well chosen to preach a sermon and
to violate the rule which forbids the Brethren the use of the
reprimand.
“After the scholar has been corrected, he will modestly kneel in
the middle of the room before the teacher, with arms crossed, to
thank him for having corrected him, and will then turn towards the
crucifix to thank God for it, and to promise Him at the same time
not again to commit the fault for which he had just been corrected.
This he will do without speaking aloud; after which the teacher
will give him the sign to go to his place.”
Is it possible to have a higher misconception of human nature, to
trifle more ingeniously with the pride of the child, and with his
most legitimate feelings, and to mingle, in the most repulsive
manner, indiscreet and infamous practices with the exhibition of
religious sentiments?
“It is absurd,” says Kant, “to require the children whom we punish
to thank us, to kiss our hands, etc. This is to try to make servile
creatures of them.”
To justify La Salle, some quotations from his works have been
invoked.
“For the love of God, do not use blows of the hand. Be very careful
never to give children a blow.”
But it is necessary to know the exact thought of the author of the
_Conduct_, and this explains the following passage:--
“No corrections should be employed save those which are in use in
the schools; and so scholars should never be struck with the hand
or the foot.”
In other words, the teacher should never strike except with the
authorized instruments, and according to the official regulations.
298. MUTUAL ESPIONAGE.--We may say without exaggeration that the
_Conduct_ recommends mutual espionage:--
“The inspector of schools shall be careful to appoint one of the
most prudent scholars to observe those who make a noise while they
assemble, and this scholar shall then report to the teacher what
has occurred, without allowing the others to know of it.”
299. REWARDS.--While La Salle devotes more than forty pages to
corrections, the chapter on rewards comprises two small pages.
Rewards shall be given “from time to time.” They shall be of three
kinds: rewards for piety, for ability, and for diligence. They
shall consist of books, pictures, plaster casts, crucifix and
virgin, chaplets, engraved texts, etc.
300. CONCLUSION.--We have said enough to give an exact idea
of the Institute of the Christian Brethren in its primitive
form. Its faults were certainly grave, and we cannot approve
the general spirit of those establishments for education where
pupils are forbidden “to joke while they are at meals”; to give
anything whatsoever to one another; where children are to enter
the school-room so deliberately and quietly that the noise of
their footsteps is not heard; where teachers are forbidden “to
be familiar” with the pupils, “to allow themselves to descend to
anything common, as it would be to laugh ...” But whatever the
distance which separates those gloomy schools from our modern
ideal,--from the pleasant, active, animated school, such as we
conceive it to-day,--there is none the less obligation to do
justice to La Salle, to pardon him for the practices which were
those of his time, and to admire him for the good qualities that
were peculiarly his own. The criticism that is truly fruitful, is
that which is especially directed to the good, without caviling at
the bad.[168]
[301. ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.--1. This study exhibits the zeal of the
Catholic Church in the education of the children of the poor. The
motive was not the spirit of domination, as in the case of the
Jesuits, but a sincere desire to engage in a humane work.
2. A proof of the multiplication of schools, and so of the
diffusion of the new educational spirit, is the wretched quality
of those who were allowed to teach. There must be schools even if
they are poor ones.
3. The need of competent teachers led to the establishment of the
_Teachers’ Seminary_, the parent of the modern normal school.
The two elements in this professional instruction seem to have
been a knowledge of the subjects to be taught and of methods of
organization and discipline.
4. The severe discipline and enforced silence of La Salle’s
schools permit the inference that the school of the period was
the scene of lawlessness and disorder. The reaction went to an
extreme; but considering the times, this excess was a virtue.
5. The scarcity of teachers and the abundance of pupils led to
the expedient of mutual and simultaneous instruction. While this
method is absolutely bad, it was relatively good.
6. To the benevolent and inventive spirit of La Salle is due the
organization of industrial schools.]
FOOTNOTES:
[157] _Petites écoles._ This is the term commonly applied to
primary schools at this period. By the Jansenists this term was
used in a more distinctive sense, and for this reason I have
translated it “Little Schools” in Chap. VII. (P.)
[158] See the _Lectures pédagogiques_. Hachette, 1883, p. 420.
[159] We have before us the edition of 1722.
[160] _Histoire d’une école gratuite_, par V. Plessier, p. 15.
[161] We have before us a copy of this Avignon edition: J. Charles
Chastanier, printer and bookseller, near the College of the Jesuits.
[162] Two volumes, Paris, 1876.
[163] The use of the round script was in fashion. La Salle
introduced the bastard hand.
[164] See Chap. II. of the Second Part.
[165] We have before us the sixth edition of this work: Rouen,
1729. La Salle had written it towards the year 1703.
[166] See, for example, the following chapters: upon the nose
and the manner of using the handkerchief and of sneezing (chap.
vii.); upon the back, the shoulders, the arms, and the elbow (chap.
viii.); on the manner in which one ought to behave with respect
to the bones, the sauce, and the fruit (chap. vi., of the second
part); on the manner of behaving while walking in the streets, on
journeys, in carriages, and on horseback (chap. x.).
[167] See the edition of 1720, from page 140 to page 180.
[168] The influence of the teaching congregations in general, and
of this one in particular, on public education as administered by
the State, is very strikingly exhibited by Meunier in his _Lutte
du Principe Clérical et du Principe Laïque dans l’Enseignement_
(Paris: 1861). There is also interesting information concerning La
Salle. See particularly the introductory _Letter_ and Chaps. I. and
II. (P.)
CHAPTER XIII.
ROUSSEAU AND THE ÉMILE.
THE PEDAGOGY OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY; THE PRECURSORS OF
ROUSSEAU; THE ABBÉ DE SAINT PIERRE; OTHER INSPIRERS OF ROUSSEAU;
PUBLICATION OF THE ÉMILE (1762); ROUSSEAU AS A TEACHER; GENERAL
PRINCIPLES OF THE ÉMILE; ITS ROMANTIC AND UTOPIAN CHARACTER;
DIVISION OF THE WORK; THE FIRST TWO BOOKS; EDUCATION OF THE BODY
AND OF THE SENSES; LET NATURE ACT; THE MOTHER TO NURSE HER OWN
CHILDREN; NEGATIVE EDUCATION; THE CHILD’S RIGHT TO HAPPINESS; THE
THIRD BOOK OF THE ÉMILE; CHOICE IN THE THINGS TO BE TAUGHT; THE
ABBÉ DE SAINT PIERRE AND ROUSSEAU; ÉMILE AT FIFTEEN; EDUCATION OF
THE SENSIBILITIES; THE FOURTH BOOK OF THE ÉMILE; GENESIS OF THE
AFFECTIONS; MORAL EDUCATION; RELIGIOUS EDUCATION; THE PROFESSION
OF FAITH OF THE SAVOYARD VICAR; SOPHIE AND THE EDUCATION OF
WOMEN; GENERAL CONCLUSION; INFLUENCE OF ROUSSEAU; ANALYTICAL
SUMMARY.
302. THE PEDAGOGY OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.--The most striking
of the general characteristics of French pedagogy in the
eighteenth century, is that in it the lay spirit comes into
mortal collision with the ecclesiastical spirit. What a contrast
between the clerical preceptors of the seventeenth century and
the philosophical educators of the eighteenth! The Jesuits,
all-powerful under Louis XIV., are to be decried, condemned, and
finally expelled in 1762. The first place in the theory and in
the practice of education, will belong to laymen. Rousseau is to
write the _Émile_. D’Alembert and Diderot will be the educational
advisers of the Empress of Russia. The parliamentarians, La
Chalotais and Rolland, will attempt to substitute for the action
of the Jesuits the action of the State, or, at least, one of the
powers of the State. Finally, with the Revolution, the lay spirit
will succeed in triumphing.
Again, the pedagogy of the eighteenth century is distinguished by
its critical and reformatory tendencies. The century of Louis XIV.
is, in general, a century of content; the century of Voltaire, a
century of discontent.
Besides, the philosophical spirit, which associates the theory
of education with the laws of the human spirit, which is not
content to modify routine by a few ameliorations of detail,
which establishes general principles and aspires to an ideal
perfection,--the philosophical spirit, with its excellencies and
with its defects,--will come to the light in the _Émile_, and in
some other writings of the same period.
Finally, and this last characteristic is but the consequence of the
others, education tends to become national, and at the same time
humane. Preparation for life replaces preparation for death. During
the whole of the eighteenth century, a conception is in process of
elaboration which the men of the Revolution will exhibit in its
true light,--that of an education, public and national, which makes
citizens, which works for country and for real life.
303. PRECURSORS OF ROUSSEAU.--The greatest educational event of the
eighteenth century, before the expulsion of the Jesuits and the
events of the French Revolution, is the publication of the _Émile_.
Rousseau is undeniably the first in rank among the founders of
French pedagogy, and his influence will be felt abroad, especially
in Germany. But whatever may be the originality of the author of
the _Émile_, his system is not a stroke of genius for which no
preparation had been made. He had his precursors, and he profited
by their works. A Benedictine, who might have spent his strength
to better advantage, has written a book on the _Plagiarisms of J.
J. Rousseau_.[169]
We do not propose to treat Rousseau as a plagiarist, for he surely
has inspiration of his own, and his own boldness in invention;
but however much of an innovator he may be, he was inspired by
Montaigne, by Locke, and without speaking of those great masters
whom he often imitated, he had his immediate predecessors, whose
ideas on certain points are in conformity with his own.
304. THE ABBÉ DE SAINT PIERRE (1658-1743).--Among the precursors
of Rousseau, a place among the first must be assigned to the
Abbé de Saint Pierre, a dreamy, fantastic spirit, fitted more to
excite curiosity than to deserve admiration, whom Rousseau himself
called “a man of great projects and petty views.” His projects in
fact were great, at least in number. Between “a _project_ to make
sermons more useful, and a _project_ to make roads more passable,”
there came, in his incoherent and varied work, several projects
for perfecting education in general, and the education of girls in
particular.
The dominant idea of the Abbé de Saint Pierre is his anxiety in
behalf of moral education. In proportion as we advance towards
the era of liberty, we shall notice a growing interest in the
development of the moral virtues.
The Abbé de Saint Pierre requires of man four essential qualities:
justice, benevolence, the discernment of virtue or judgment, and,
lastly, instruction, which holds but the lowest rank. Virtue is of
more worth than the knowledge of Latin.
“It cannot be said that a great knowledge of Latin is not an
excellent attainment; but in order to acquire this knowledge,
it is necessary to give to it an amount of time that would be
incomparably better employed in acquiring great skill in the
observation of prudence. Those who direct education make a very
great mistake in employing tenfold too much time in making us
scholarly in the Latin tongue, and in employing tenfold too little
of it in giving us a confirmed use of prudence.”[170]
But what are the means proposed by the Abbé de Saint Pierre?
All that he has devised for organizing the teaching of the
social virtues is reduced to the requirement of reading edifying
narratives, of playing moral pieces, and of accustoming young
people to do meritorious acts in the daily intercourse of the
school. When the lessons have been recited and the written
exercises corrected, the teacher will say to the pupil: “Do for
me an act of prudence, or of justice, or of benevolence.” This is
easier to say than to do. College life scarcely furnishes occasion
for the application of the social virtues.
But the Abbé de Saint Pierre should be credited with his good
intentions. He is the first in France to give his thought to this
matter of professional instruction. The mechanic arts, the positive
sciences, the apprenticeship to trades,--these things he places
above the study of languages. Around his college, and even in his
college, there are to be mills, printing offices, agricultural
implements, garden tools, etc.
Was it not also an idea at once new and wise, to establish a
_continuous department_ of public instruction, a sort of permanent
council, charged with the reformation of methods and with
establishing, as far as possible, uniformity in all the colleges of
the kingdom?
Finally, we shall commend the Abbé de Saint Pierre for having
persistently urged the necessity of the education of women.
From Fénelon to the Abbé de Saint Pierre, from 1680 to 1730,
great progress was made in this question. We seem already to hear
Condorcet when we read the following passage:--
“The purpose should be to instruct girls in the elements of all
the sciences and of all the arts which can enter into ordinary
conversation, and even in several things which relate to the
different employments of men, such as the history of their country,
geography, police regulations, and the principal civil laws, _to
the end that they can listen with pleasure to what men shall say to
them_, ask relevant questions, and easily keep up a conversation
with their husbands on the daily occurrences in their occupations.”
For the purpose of sooner attaining his end, the Abbé de Saint
Pierre, anticipating the centuries, demanded for women national
establishments, colleges of secondary instruction. He did not
hesitate to cloister young girls in boarding-schools, and in
boarding-schools without vacations; and he entreated the State
to organize public courses for those who, he said, “constitute
one-half of the families in society.”
305. OTHER INSPIRERS OF ROUSSEAU.--With the eighteenth century
there begins for modern thought, in education as in everything
else, an era of international relations, of mutual imitation, of
the action and reaction of people on people. The Frenchman of
the seventeenth century had almost absolutely ignored Comenius.
Rousseau knows Locke, and also the Hollander Crousaz,[171] whom, by
the way, he treats rather shabbily, speaking of him as “the pedant
Crousaz.”
Crousaz, however, had some good ideas. He criticised the old
methods, which make “of the knowledge of Latin and Greek
the principal part of education”; and he preached scientific
instruction and moral education.
In the _Spectacle of Nature_, which was so popular in its day, the
Abbé Pluche also demanded that the study of the dead languages
should be abridged[172]:--
“Experience with the pitiable Latinity which reigns in the colleges
of Germany, Flanders, Holland, and in all places where the habit
of always speaking Latin is current, suffices to make us renounce
this custom which prevents a young man from speaking his own tongue
correctly.”
The Abbé Pluche demanded that the time saved from Latin be devoted
to the living languages. On the other hand, he insisted on early
education, and on this point he was the complement to his master,
Rollin, who, he said, wrote rather “for the _perfection_ of studies
than for their beginning.”
Still other writers were able to suggest to Rousseau some of
the ideas which he developed in the _Émile_. Before him, La
Condamine declared that the _Fables_ of La Fontaine are above the
capacity of children.[173] Before him, Bonneval, much interested
in physical education, violently criticised the use of long
clothes, and claimed for children an education of the senses. He
demanded, besides, that in early instruction, the effort of the
teacher should be limited to the keeping of evil impressions from
the childish imagination, and that instruction in the truths of
religion should be held in abeyance.
We shall discover in the _Émile_ all these ideas in outline revived
and developed with the power and with the brilliancy of genius,
sometimes transformed into boisterous paradoxes, but sometimes,
also, transformed into solid and lasting truths.
306. PUBLICATION OF THE ÉMILE (1762).--Rousseau has made striking
statements of nearly all the problems of education, and he has
sometimes resolved them with wisdom, and always with originality.
Appearing in 1762, at the moment when the Parliament was excluding
the Jesuits from France, the _Émile_ came at the right moment in
that grand overthrow of routine and tradition to disclose new hopes
to humanity, and to announce the advent of philosophic reason in
the art of educating men. But Rousseau, in writing his book, did
not think of the Jesuits, of whom he scarcely speaks; he wrote,
not for the man of the present, but for the future of humanity;
he composed a book endowed with endless vitality, half romance,
half essay, the grandest monument of human thought on the subject
of education. The _Émile_, in fact, is not a work of ephemeral
polemics, nor simply a practical manual of pedagogy, but is a
general system of education, a treatise on psychology and moral
training, a profound analysis of human nature.
307. WAS ROUSSEAU PREPARED TO BECOME A TEACHER?--Before entering
upon the study of the _Émile_, it is well to inquire how the
author had been prepared by his character and by his mode of life
to become a teacher. The history of French literature offers
nothing more extraordinary than the life of Jean Jacques Rousseau.
Everything is strange in the destiny of that unfortunate great man.
Rousseau committed great faults, especially in his youth; but at
other moments of his life he is almost a sage, a hero of private
virtues and civic courage. He traversed all adventures and all
trades. Workman, servant, charlatan, preceptor, all in turn; he
lodged in garrets at a sou, and experienced days when he complained
that bread was too dear. Through all these miseries and these
humiliations a soul was in process of formation made up, above all
else, of sensibility and imagination.
Rousseau’s sensibility was extreme. The child who, unjustly
treated, experienced one of those violent fits of passion which he
has so well described in his _Confessions_, and who writhed a whole
night in his bed, crying “_Carnifex, carnifex!_” was surely not
an ordinary child. “I had no idea of things, but all varieties of
feeling were already known to me. I had conceived nothing; I had
felt everything.” Even a mediocre representation of _Alzire_ made
him beside himself, and he refused witnessing the play of tragedies
for fear of becoming ill.
The sentiment of nature early inspired him with a passion which
was not to be quenched. His philosophic optimism and his faith in
providence were never forgotten. Other pure and generous emotions
filled his soul. The study of Plutarch had inspired him with a
taste for republican virtues and with an enthusiasm for liberty.
Falsehood caused him a veritable horror. He had the feeling of
equity in a high degree. Later, to the hatred of injustice there
was joined in his heart an implacable resentment against the
oppressors of the people. He had doubtless received the first germ
of this hate when, making the journey afoot from Paris to Lyons,
he entered the cabin of a poor peasant, and there found, as in a
picture, the affecting summary of the miseries of the people.
At the same time he was an insatiable reader. He nourished himself
on the poets, historians, and philosophers of antiquity, and he
studied the mathematics and astronomy. As some one has said, “That
life of reading and toil, interrupted by so many romantic incidents
and adventurous undertakings, had vivified his imagination as
a regular course of study in the College of Plessis could not
possibly have done.”
It is in this way that his literary genius was formed, and, in due
order, his genius for pedagogy. We need not seek in the life of
Rousseau any direct preparation for the composition of the _Émile_.
It is true that for a time he had been preceptor, in 1739, in the
family of Mably, but he soon resigned duties in which he was not
successful. A little essay which he composed in 1740[174] does not
yet give proof of any great originality. On the other hand, if he
loved to observe children, he observed, alas, only the children of
others. There is nothing sadder than that page of the _Confessions_
in which he relates how he often placed himself at the window
to observe the dismission of school, in order to listen to the
conversations of children as a furtive and unseen observer!
The _Émile_ is thus less the result of a patient induction and
of a real experience than a work of inspiration or a brilliant
improvisation of genius.
308. GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF THE ÉMILE.--A certain number of general
principles run through the entire work, and give it a systematic
form and a positive character.
The first of these is the idea of the innocence and of the
perfect goodness of the child. The _Émile_ opens with this solemn
declaration:--
“Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Author
of nature; everything degenerates in the hands of man.” And in
another place, “Let us assume as an incontestable maxim that the
first movements of nature are always right; there is no original
perversity in the human heart.”
Without doubt Rousseau was right in opposing the pessimism of
those who see in the child a being thoroughly wicked and degraded
before birth; he is deceived in turn when he affirms that there is
no germ of evil in human nature.
Society is wicked and corrupt, he says, and it is from society
that all the evil comes; it is from its pernicious influence that
the soul of the child must be preserved! But, we reply, how did
society itself happen to be spoiled and vitiated? It is nothing but
a collection of men; and if the individuals are innocent, how can
the aggregate of individuals be wicked and perverse? But let the
contradictions of Rousseau pass; the important thing to note is
that from his optimism are derived the essential characteristics of
the education which he devises for Émile. This education will be at
once natural and negative:--
“Émile,” says Gréard, “is a child of nature, brought up by nature,
according to the rules of nature, for the satisfaction of the needs
of nature. This sophism is not merely inscribed at random on the
frontispiece of the book, but is its very soul; and it is by reason
of this sophistry that, separated from the body of reflections and
maxims that give it so powerful an interest, Rousseau’s plan of
education is but a dangerous chimera.”
Everything that society has established, Rousseau condemns in a
lump as fictitious and artificial. Conventional usages he despises;
and he places Émile at the school of nature, and brings him up
almost like a savage.
On the other hand, the education of Émile is negative, at least
till his twelfth year; that is, Rousseau lets nature have her way
till then. For those who think nature evil, education ought to be a
work of compression and of repression. But nature is good; and so
education consists simply in letting her have free course. To guard
the child from the shock of opinions, to form betimes a defence
about his soul, to assure against every exterior influence the
free development of his faculties--such is the end that he proposes
to himself.
Another general principle of the _Émile_, another truth which
Rousseau’s spirit of paradox quickly transforms into error, is the
idea of the distinction of ages:--
“Each age, each state of life, has its proper perfection, and a
sort of maturity which is its own. We have often heard of a man
grown; but let us think of a child grown. That sight will be newer
to us, and perhaps not less agreeable.”
“We do not know infancy. With the false ideas we have, the further
we go, the more we are astray. The most learned give their
attention to that which it is important for men to know without
considering what children are in a condition to comprehend. They
always look for the man in the child, without thinking of what he
was before he became a man.”
“Everything is right so far, and from these observations there
proceeds a progressive education, exactly conforming in its
successive requirements to the progress of the faculties.
But Rousseau does not stop in his course, and he goes beyond
progressive education to recommend an education in fragments, so to
speak, which isolates the faculties in order to develop them one
after another, which establishes an absolute line of demarkation
between the different ages, and which ends in distinguishing three
stages of progress in the soul. Rousseau’s error on this point is
in forgetting that the education of the child ought to prepare
for the education of the young man. Instead of considering the
different ages as the several rings of one and the same chain, he
separates them sharply from one another. He does not admit that
marvellous unity of the human soul, which seems so strong in man
only because God has, so to speak, woven its bands into the child
and there fastened them.” (Gréard).
309. ROMANTIC CHARACTER OF THE ÉMILE.--A final observation is
necessary before entering into an analysis of the _Émile_; it is
that in this, as in his other works, Rousseau is not averse to
affecting singularities, and with deliberation and effrontery to
break with received opinions. Doubtless we should not go so far
as to say with certain critics that the _Émile_ is rather the
feat of a wit than the serious expression of a grave and serious
thought; but what it is impossible not to grant is that which
Rousseau himself admits in his preface: “One will believe that he
is reading, not so much a book on education as the reveries of a
visionary.” Émile, in fact, is an imaginary being whom Rousseau
places in strange conditions. He does not give him parents, but has
him brought up by a preceptor in the country, far from all society.
Émile is a character in a romance rather than a real man.
310. DIVISION OF THE WORK.--Without doubt, there are in the _Émile_
long passages and digressions that make the reading of it more
agreeable and its analysis more difficult. But, notwithstanding
all this, the author confines himself to a methodical plan, at
least to a chronological order. The different ages of Émile serve
as a principle for the division of the work. The first two books
treat especially of the infant and of the earliest period of life
up to the age of twelve. The only question here discussed is the
education of the body and the exercise of the senses. The third
book corresponds to the period of intellectual education, from the
twelfth to the fifteenth year. In the fourth book, Rousseau studies
moral education, from the fifteenth to the twentieth year.
Finally, the fifth book, in which the romantic spirit is still
rampant, is devoted to the education of woman.
311. THE FIRST TWO BOOKS OF THE ÉMILE.--It would be useless to
search this first part of the _Émile_ for precepts relative to
the education of the mind and the heart. Rousseau has purposely
eliminated from the first twelve years of the child’s life
everything which concerns instruction and moral discipline. At
the age of twelve, Émile will know how to run, jump, and judge of
distances; but he will be perfectly ignorant. The idea would be
that he has studied nothing at all, and “that he has not learned to
distinguish his right hand from his left.”
The exclusive characteristic of Émile’s education, during this
first period, is, then, the preoccupation with physical development
and with the training of the senses.
Out of many errors, we shall see displayed some admirable flashes
of good sense, and grand truths inspired by the principle of nature.
312. LET NATURE HAVE HER WAY.--What does nature demand? She demands
that the child have liberty of movement, and that nothing interfere
with the nascent activities of his limbs. What do we do, on the
contrary? We put him in swaddling clothes; we imprison him. He
is deformed by his over-tight garments,--the first chains that
are imposed on a being who is destined to have so many others to
bear! On this subject, the bad humor of Rousseau does not tire.
He is prodigal in outbreaks of spirit, often witty, and sometimes
ridiculous.
“It seems,” he says, “as though we fear that the child may appear
to be alive.” “Man is born, lives, and dies, in a state of slavery;
at his birth he is stitched into swaddling-clothes; at his death he
is nailed in his coffin; and as long as he preserves the human form
he is held captive by our institutions.”
We shall not dwell on these extravagances of language
which transforms a coffin and a child’s long-clothes into
_institutions_. The protests of Rousseau have contributed towards
a reformation of usages; but, even on this point, with his great
principle that everything must be referred to nature, because
whatever nature does she does well, the author of _Émile_ is on
the point of going astray. No more for the body than for the mind
is nature sufficient in herself; she must have help and watchful
assistance. Strong supports are needed to prevent too active
movements and dangerous strains of the body; just as, later on,
there will be needed a vigorous moral authority to moderate and
curb the passions of the soul.
313. THE MOTHER TO NURSE HER OWN CHILDREN.--But there is another
point where it has become trite to praise Rousseau, and where
his teaching should be accepted without reserve. This is when
he strongly protests against the use of hired nurses, and when
he eloquently summons mothers to the duties of nursing their
own children. Where there is no mother, there is no child, says
Rousseau, and he adds, where there is no mother, there is no
family! “Would you recall each one to his first duties? Begin
with the mothers. You will be astonished at the changes you will
produce!” It would be to fall into platitudes to set forth, after
Rousseau, and after so many others, the reasons which recommend
nursing by the mother. We merely observe that Rousseau insists on
this, especially on moral grounds. It is not merely the health of
the child; it is the virtue and the morality of the family; it is
the dignity of the home, that he wishes to defend and preserve.
And, in fact, how many other duties are provided for and made
easier by the performance of a primal duty.
314. HARDENING OF THE BODY.--So far, the lessons of nature have
instructed Rousseau. He is still right when he wishes Émile to
grow hardy, to become inured to privations, to become accustomed at
an early hour to pain, and to learn how to suffer; but from being a
stoic, Rousseau soon becomes a cynic. Contempt for pain gives place
to a contempt for proprieties. Émile shall be a barefoot, like
Diogenes. Locke gives his pupil thin shoes; Rousseau, surpassing
him, completely abolishes shoes. He would also like to suppress
all the inventions of civilization. Thus Émile, accustomed to
walk in the dark, will do without candles. “I would rather have
Émile with eyes at the ends of his fingers than in the shop of a
candle-maker.” All this tempts us to laugh; but here are graver
errors. Rousseau objects to vaccination, and proscribes medicine.
Émile is forehanded. He is in duty bound to be well. A physician
will be summoned only when he is in danger of death. Again,
Rousseau forbids the washing of the new-born child in wine, because
wine is a fermented liquor, and nature produces nothing that is
fermented. And so there must be no playthings made by the hand
of man. A twig of a tree or a poppy-head will suffice. Rousseau,
as we see, by reason of his wish to make of his pupil a man of
nature, brings him into singular likeness with the wild man, and
assimilates him almost to the brute.
315. NEGATIVE EDUCATION.--It is evident that the first period
of life is that in which the use of negative education is both
the least dangerous and the most acceptable. Ordinarily, Émile’s
preceptor will be but the inactive witness, the passive spectator
of the work done by nature. Had Rousseau gone to the full length
of his system, he ought to have abolished the preceptor himself,
in order to allow the child to make his way all alone. But if the
preceptor is tolerated, it is not to act directly on Émile, it is
not to perform the duties of a professor, in teaching him what
it is important for a child to know; but it is simply to put him
in the way of the discoveries which he ought to make for himself
in the wide domain of nature, and to arrange and to combine,
artificially and laboriously, those complicated scenes which are
intended to replace the lessons of ordinary education. Such, for
example, is the scene of the juggler, where Émile is to acquire at
the same time notions on physics and on ethics. Such, again, is the
conversation with the gardener, Robert, who reveals to him the idea
of property. The preceptor is no longer a teacher, but a mechanic.
The true educator is nature, but nature prepared and skillfully
adjusted to serve the ends that we propose to attain. Rousseau
admits only the teaching of things:--
“Do not give your pupil any kind of verbal lesson; he should
receive none save from experience.” “The most important, the most
useful rule in all education, is not to gain time, but to lose it.”
The preceptor will interfere at most only by a few timid and
guarded words, to aid the child in interpreting the lessons of
nature. “State questions within his comprehension, and leave him
to resolve them for himself. Let him not know anything because
you have told it to him, but because he has comprehended it for
himself.”
“For the body as for the mind, the child must be left to himself.”
“Let him run, and frolic, and fall a hundred times a day. So much
the better; for he will learn from this the sooner to help himself
up. The welfare of liberty atones for many bruises.”
In his horror for what he calls “the teaching and pedantic mania,”
Rousseau goes so far as to proscribe an education in habits:--
“The only habit that a child should be allowed to form is to
contract no habit.”
316. THE CHILD’S RIGHT TO HAPPINESS.--Rousseau did not tire of
demanding that we should respect the infancy that is in the child,
and take into account his tastes and his aptitudes. With what
eloquence he claims for him the right of being happy!
“Love childhood. Encourage its sports, its pleasures, and its
instinct for happiness. Who of you has not sometimes regretted that
period when a laugh was always on the lips, and the soul always
in peace? Why will you deny those little innocents the enjoyment
of that brief period which is so soon to escape them, and of that
precious good which they cannot abuse? Why will you fill with
bitterness and sorrow those first years so quickly passing which
will no more return to them than they can return to you? Fathers,
do you know the moment when death awaits your children? Do not lay
up for yourselves regrets by depriving them of the few moments
that nature gives them. As soon as they can feel the pleasure of
existence, try to have them enjoy it, and act in such a way that
at whatever hour God summons them they may not die without having
tasted the sweetness of living.”
317. PROSCRIPTION OF INTELLECTUAL EXERCISES.--Rousseau rejects from
the education of Émile all the intellectual exercises ordinarily
employed. He proscribes history on the pretext that Émile cannot
comprehend the relations of events. He takes as an example the
disgust of a child who had been told the anecdote of Alexander and
his physician:--
“I found that he had an unusual admiration for the courage, so much
lauded, of Alexander. But do you know in what he saw that courage?
Simply in the fact that he swallowed a drink that had a bad taste.”
And from this Rousseau concludes that the child’s intelligence is
not sufficiently open to comprehend history, and that he ought not
to learn it. The paradox is evident. Because Émile is sometimes
exposed to the danger of falling into errors of judgment, must he
be denied the opportunity of judging? Similarly, Rousseau does not
permit the study of the languages. Up to the age of twelve, Émile
shall know but one language, because, till then, incapable of
judging and comprehending, he cannot make the comparison between
other languages and his own. Later, from twelve to fifteen,
Rousseau will find still other reasons for excluding the study
of the ancient languages. And it is not only history and the
languages; it is literature in general from which Émile is excluded
by Rousseau. No book shall be put into his hands, not even the
_Fables_ of La Fontaine. It is well known with what resolution
Rousseau criticises _The Crow and the Fox_.
318. EDUCATION OF THE SENSES.--The grand preoccupation of Rousseau
is the exercise and development of the senses of his pupil. The
whole theory of object lessons, and even all the exaggerations of
what is now called the intuitive method, are contained in germ in
the _Émile_:--
“The first faculties which are formed and perfected in us are the
senses. These, then, are the first which should be cultivated; but
these are the very ones that we forget or that we neglect the most.”
Rousseau does not consider the senses as wholly formed by nature;
but he makes a special search for the means of forming them and of
perfecting them through education.
“To call into exercise the senses, is, so to speak, to learn to
feel; for we can neither touch, nor see, nor hear, except as we
have been taught.”
Only, Rousseau is wrong in sacrificing everything to this
education of the senses. He sharply criticises this favorite maxim
of Locke, “We must reason with children.” Rousseau retards the
education of the judgment and the reason, and declares that “he
would as soon require that a child be five feet high as that he
reason at the age of eight.”
319. THE THIRD BOOK OF THE ÉMILE.--From the twelfth to the
fifteenth year is the length of time that Rousseau has devoted
to study and to intellectual development proper. It is necessary
that the robust animal, “the roe-buck,” as he calls Émile, after a
negative and temporizing education of twelve years, become in three
years an enlightened intelligence. As the period is short, Rousseau
disposes of the time for instruction with a miser’s hand. Moreover,
Émile is very poorly prepared for the rapid studies which are to be
imposed on him. Not having acquired in his earlier years the habit
of thinking, having lived a purely physical existence, he will have
great difficulty in bringing to life, within a few months, his
intellectual faculties.
But without dwelling on the unfavorable conditions of Émile’s
intellectual education, let us see in what it will consist.
320. CHOICE IN THE THINGS TO BE TAUGHT.--The principle which guides
Rousseau in the choice of Émile’s studies is no other than the
principle of utility:--
“There is a choice in the things which ought to be taught as well
as in the time fit for learning them. Of the knowledges within our
reach, some are false, others are useless, and still others serve
to nourish the pride of him who has them. Only the small number of
those which really contribute to our good are worthy the care of a
wise man, and consequently of a child whom we wish to render such.
It is not a question of knowing what is, but only what is useful.”
321. ROUSSEAU AND THE ABBÉ DE SAINT PIERRE.--Among educators, some
wish to teach everything, while others demand a choice, and would
retain only what is necessary. The Abbé de Saint Pierre follows
the first tendency. He would have the scholar learn everything at
college; a little medicine towards the seventh or eighth year,
and in the other classes, arithmetic and blazonry, jurisprudence,
German, Italian, dancing, declamation, politics, ethics, astronomy,
anatomy, chemistry, without counting drawing and the violin, and
twenty other things besides. Rousseau is wiser. He is dismayed at
such an accumulation, at such an obstruction of studies, and so
yields too much to the opposite tendency, and restricts beyond
measure the list of necessary studies.
322. ÉMILE’S STUDIES.--These, in fact, are the studies to which
Émile is limited: first, the physical sciences, and, at the head of
the list, astronomy, then geography, geography taught without maps
and by means of travel:--
“You are looking for globes, spheres, maps. What machines! Why all
these representations? Why not begin by showing him the object
itself?”
Here, as in other places, Rousseau prefers what would be best, but
what is impossible, to that which is worth less, but which alone is
practicable.
But Rousseau does not wish that his pupil, like the pupil of
Rabelais, become an “abyss of knowledge.”
“When I see a man, enamored of knowledge, allow himself to yield to
its charms, and run from one kind to another without knowing where
to stop, I think I see a child on the sea-shore collecting shells,
beginning by loading himself with them; then, tempted by those he
still sees, throwing them aside, picking them up, until, weighed
down by their number, and no longer knowing which to choose, he
ends by rejecting everything, and returns empty-handed.”
No account is made of grammar and the ancient languages in the
plan of Émile’s studies. Graver still, history is proscribed. This
rejection of historical studies, moreover, is systematically done.
Rousseau has placed Émile in the country, and has made him an
orphan, the better to isolate him; to teach him history would be to
throw him back into society that he abominates.
323. NO BOOKS SAVE ROBINSON CRUSOE.--One of the consequences of an
education that is natural and negative is the suppression of books.
Always going to extremes, Rousseau is not content to criticise the
abuse of books. He determines that up to his fifth year Émile shall
not know what a book is:--
“I hate books,” he exclaims; “they teach us merely to speak of
things that we do not know.”
Besides the fact that this raving is rather ridiculous in the
case of a man who is a writer by profession, it is evident that
Rousseau is roving at random when he condemns the use of books in
instruction.
One book, however, one single book, has found favor in his sight.
_Robinson Crusoe_ will constitute by itself for a long time
the whole of Émile’s library. We understand without difficulty
Rousseau’s kindly feeling for a work which, under the form of a
romance, is, like the _Émile_, a treatise on natural education.
Émile and Robinson strongly resemble each other, since they are
self-sufficient and dispense with society.
324. EXCELLENT PRECEPTS ON METHOD.--At least in the general method
which he commends, Rousseau makes amends for the errors in his plan
of study:--
“Do not treat the child to discourses which he cannot understand.
No descriptions, no eloquence, no figures of speech. Be content to
present to him appropriate objects. Let us transform our sensations
into ideas. But let us not jump at once from sensible objects
to intellectual objects. Let us always proceed slowly from one
sensible notion to another. In general, let us never substitute the
sign for the thing, except when it is impossible for us to show the
thing.”
“I have no love whatever for explanations and talk. Things! things!
I shall never tire of saying that we ascribe too much importance to
words. With our babbling education we make only babblers.”
But the whole would bear quoting. Almost all of Rousseau’s
recommendations, in the way of method, contain an element of truth,
and need only to be modified in order to become excellent.
325. EXCLUSIVE MOTIVES OF ACTION.--A great question in the
education of children is to know to what motive we shall address
ourselves. Here again, Rousseau is exclusive and absolute. Up to
the age of twelve, Émile will have been guided by necessity; he
will have been made dependent on things, not on men. It is through
the possible and the impossible that he will have been conducted,
by treating him, not as a sensible and intelligent being, but as
a force of nature against which other forces are made to act. Not
till the age of twelve must this system be changed. Émile has now
acquired some judgment; and it is upon an intellectual motive that
one ought now to count in regulating his conduct. This motive is
utility. The feeling of emulation cannot be employed in a solitary
education. Finally, at the age of fifteen, it will be possible to
appeal to the heart, to feeling, and to recommend to the young man
the acts we set before him, no longer as necessary or useful, but
as noble, good, and generous. The error of Rousseau is in cutting
up the life of man to his twentieth year into three sharply defined
parts, into three moments, each subordinated to a single governing
principle. The truth is that at every age an appeal must be made to
all the motives that act on our will, that at every age, necessity,
interest, sentiment, and finally, the idea of duty, an idea too
often overlooked by Rousseau, as all else that is derived from
reason,--all these motives can effectively intervene, in different
degrees, in the education of man.
326. ÉMILE LEARNS A TRADE.--At the age of fifteen, Émile will
know nothing of history, nothing of humanity, nothing of art and
literature, nothing of God; but he will know a trade, a manual
trade. By this means, he will be sheltered from need in advance, in
case a revolution should strip him of his fortune.
“We are approaching,” says Rousseau, with an astonishing
perspicacity, “a century of revolutions. Who can give you assurance
of what will then become of you? I hold it to be impossible for the
great monarchies of Europe to last much longer. They have all had
their day of glory, and every State that dazzles is in its decline.”
We have previously noticed, in studying analogous ideas in the
case of Locke, for what other reasons Rousseau made of Émile an
apprentice to a cabinet-maker or a carpenter.
327. ÉMILE AT THE AGE OF FIFTEEN.--Rousseau takes comfort in the
contemplation of his work, and he pauses from time to time in his
analyses and deductions, to trace the portrait of his pupil. This
is how he represents him at the age of fifteen:--
“Émile has but little knowledge, but that which he has is really
his own; he knows nothing by halves. In the small number of things
that he knows, and knows well, the most important is that there
are many things which he does not know, but which he can some day
learn; that there are many more things which other men know, but
which he will never know; and that there is an infinity of other
things which no man will ever know. He has a universal mind, not
through actual knowledge, but through the ability to acquire it. He
has a mind that is open, intelligent, prepared for everything, and,
as Montaigne says, if not instructed, at least capable of being
instructed. It is sufficient for me that he knows how to find the
_of what good is it?_ with reference to all that he does, and the
_why?_ of all that he believes. Once more, my object is not at all
to give him knowledge, but to teach him how to acquire it as he may
need it, to make him estimate it at its exact worth, and to make
him love truth above everything else. With this method, progress is
slow; but there are no false steps, and no danger of being obliged
to retrace one’s course.”
All this is well; but it is necessary to add that even Émile has
faults, great faults. To mention but one of them, but one which
dominates all the others, he sees things only from the point of
view of utility, and he would not hesitate, for example, “to give
the Academy of Sciences for the smallest bit of pastry.”
328. EDUCATION OF THE SENSIBILITIES.--It is true that Rousseau
finally decides to make of Émile an affectionate and reasonable
being. “We have formed,” he says, “his body, his senses, his
judgment; it remains to give him a heart.” Rousseau, who proceeds
like a magician, by wave of wand and clever tricks, flatters
himself that within a day’s time Émile is going to become the most
affectionate, the most moral, and the most religious of men.
329. THE FOURTH BOOK OF THE ÉMILE.--The development of the
affectionate sentiments, the culture of the moral sentiment, and
that of the religious sentiment, such is the triple subject of
the fourth book,--vast and exalted questions that lend themselves
to eloquence in such a way that the fourth book of the _Émile_ is
perhaps the most brilliant of the whole work.
330. GENESIS OF THE AFFECTIONATE SENTIMENTS.--Here Rousseau is
wholly in the land of chimeras. Émile, who lives in isolation,
who has neither family, friends, nor companions, is necessarily
condemned to selfishness, and everything Rousseau can do to warm
his heart will be useless. Do we wish to develop the feelings of
tenderness and affection? Let us begin by placing the child under
family or social influences which alone can furnish his affections
the occasion for development. For fifteen years Rousseau leaves
the heart of Émile unoccupied. What an illusion to think he will
be able to fill it all at once! When we suppress the mother in the
education of a child, all the means that we can invent to excite in
his soul emotions of gentleness and affection are but palliatives.
Rousseau made the mistake of thinking that a child can be taught
to love as he is taught to read and write, and that lessons could
be given to Émile in feeling just as lessons are given to him in
geometry.
331. MORAL EDUCATION.--Rousseau is more worthy of being followed
when he demands that the moral notions of right and wrong have
their first source in the feelings of sympathy and social
benevolence, on the supposition that according to his system he can
inspire Émile with such feelings.
“We enter, finally, the domain of morals,” he says. “If this were
the place for it, I would show how from the first emotions of the
heart arise the first utterances of the conscience, and how, from
the first feelings of love and hate arise the first notions of good
and evil. I would make it appear that _justice_ and _goodness_ are
not merely abstract terms, conceived by the understanding, but real
affections of the soul enlightened by the reason.”
Yes; let the child be made to make his way gradually towards a
severe morality, sanctioned by the reason, in having him pass
through the gentle emotions of the heart. Nothing can be better.
But this is to be done on one condition: this is, that we shall
not stop on the way, and that the vague inspirations of the
sensibilities shall be succeeded by the exact prescriptions of the
reason. Now Rousseau, as we know, was never willing to admit that
virtue was anything else than an affair of the heart. His ethics is
wholly an ethics of sentiment.
332. RELIGIOUS EDUCATION.--We know the reasons which determined
Rousseau to delay till the sixteenth or eighteenth year the
revelation of religion. It is that the child, with his sensitive
imagination, is necessarily an idolater. If we speak to him of God,
he can form but a superstitious idea of him. “Now,” says Rousseau,
pithily, “when the imagination has once seen God, it is very rare
that the understanding conceives him.” In other terms, once plunged
in superstition, the mind of the child can never extricate itself
from it. We must then wait, in the interest of religion itself,
till the child have sufficient maturity of reason and sufficient
power of thought to seize in its truth, divested of every veil of
sense, the idea of God, whose existence is announced to him for the
first time.
It is difficult to justify Rousseau. First, is it not to be feared
that the child, if he has reached his eighteenth year in ignorance
of God, may find it wholly natural to be ignorant of him still,
and that he reason and dispute at random with his teacher, and
that he doubt instead of believe? And if he allows himself to be
convinced, is it not at least evident that the religious idea,
tardily inculcated, will have no profound hold on his mind? On the
other hand, will the child, with his instinctive curiosity, wait
till his eighteenth year to inquire the cause of the universe? Will
he not form the notion of a God in his own way?
“One might have read, a few years ago,” says Villemain, “the
account, or rather the psychological confession, of a writer
(Sentenis), a German philosopher, whom his father had submitted
to the experiment advised by the author of _Émile_. Left alone
by the loss of a tenderly loved wife, this father, a learned and
thoughtful man, had taken his infant son to a retired place in
the country; and not allowing him communication with any one, he
had cultivated the child’s intelligence through the sight of the
natural objects placed near him, and by the study of the languages,
almost without books, and in carefully concealing from him all idea
of God. The child had reached his tenth year without having either
read or heard that great name. But then his mind found what had
been denied it. The sun which he saw rise each morning seemed the
all-powerful benefactor of whom he felt the need. He soon formed
the habit of going at dawn to the garden to pay homage to that
god that he had made for himself. His father surprised him one
day, and showed him his error by teaching him that all the fixed
stars are so many suns distributed in space. But such was then the
disappointment and the grief of the child deprived of his worship,
that the father, overcome, acknowledged to him that there was a
God, the Creator of the heavens and the earth.”[175]
333. THE SAVOYARD VICAR’S PROFESSION OF FAITH.--Rousseau has at
least attempted to retrieve, by stately language and an impassioned
demonstration of the existence of God, the delay which he has
spontaneously imposed on his pupil.
The _Savoyard Vicar’s Profession of Faith_ is an eloquent catechism
on natural religion, and the honest expression of a sincere and
profound deism. The religion of nature is evidently the only one
which, in Rousseau’s system, can be taught, and ought to be taught,
to the child, since the child is exactly the pupil of nature. If
Émile wishes to go beyond this, if he needs a positive religion,
this shall be for himself to choose.
334. SOPHIE AND THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN.--The weakest part of the
_Émile_ is that which treats of the education of woman. This is
not merely because Rousseau, with his decided leaning towards the
romantic, leads Émile and his companion into odd and extraordinary
adventures, but it is especially because he misconceives the proper
dignity of woman. Sophie, the perfect woman, has been educated
only to complete the happiness of Émile. Her education is wholly
relative to her destiny as a wife.
“The whole education of women should be relative to men; to please
them, to be useful to them, to make themselves honored and loved by
them, to educate the young, to care for the older, to advise them,
to console them, to make life agreeable and sweet to them,--these
are the duties of women in every age.”
“Sophie,” says Gréard, “has but virtues of the second order,
virtues of conjugal education.” It has been said that marriage
is a second birth for man, that he rises or falls according to
the choice which he makes. For woman, according to the theory
of Rousseau, it is the true advent into life. According to the
expressive formula of Michelet, who, in a sentence, has given a
marvellous summary of the doctrine, but in attaching to it a sense
which poetizes it, “the husband creates the wife.” Sophie, up to
the day of her marriage, did not exist. She had learned nothing
and read nothing “except a _Barême_ and a _Télémaque_ which
have chanced to fall into her hands.” She has been definitely
admonished, “that were men sensible, every lettered girl will
remain a girl.” It is Émile alone who is to instruct her, and
he will instruct her and mould her into his own ideal, and in
conformity to his individual interest.
While it was only in his youth that he received the first
principles of the religious feeling, Sophie must be penetrated
with it from infancy, in order that she may early form the habit
of submission. He commands and she obeys, the first duty of the
wife being meekness. If, during her youth, she has freely attended
banquets, amusements, balls, the theatre, it is not so much to be
initiated into the vain pleasures of the world, under the tutelage
of a vigilant mother, as to belong, once married, more fully to her
home and to her husband. She is nothing except as she is by his
side, or as dependent on him, or as acting through him. Strange
and brutal paradox, which Rousseau, it is true, corrects and
repairs in detail, at every moment by the most happy and charming
inconsistencies.
Sophie, briefly, is an incomplete person whom Rousseau is not
careful enough to educate for herself.
In her subordinate and inferior position, the cares of the
household occupy the largest place. She cuts and makes her own
dresses:--
“What Sophie knows best, and what was taught her with most care,
is the work of her sex. There is no needle-work which she does not
know how to make.”
It is not forbidden her, but is even recommended that she introduce
a certain coquetry into her employments:--
“The work she loves the best is lace-making, because there is no
other that gives her a more agreeable attitude, and in which the
fingers are used with more grace and deftness.”
She carries daintiness a little too far:--
“She does not love cooking; its details have some disgust for her.
She would sooner let the whole dinner go into the fire than to soil
her cuffs.”
Truly this is fine housewifery! We feel that we have here to do
with a character in a romance who has no need to dine. Sophie would
not have been well received at Saint Cyr, where Madame de Maintenon
so severely scolded the girls who were too fastidious, “fearing
smoke, dust, and disagreeable odors, even to making complaints and
grimaces on their account as though all were lost.”
335. GENERAL CONCLUSION.--In order to form a just estimate of the
_Émile_, it is necessary to put aside the impressions left by the
reading of the last pages. We must consider as a whole, and without
taking details into account, that work, which, notwithstanding
all, is very admirable and profound. It is injured by analysis.
To esteem the _Émile_ at its real worth, it must be read entire.
In reading it, in fact, we are warmed by contact with the passion
which Rousseau puts into whatever he writes. We pardon his errors
and chimeras by reason of the grand sentiments and the grand truths
which we meet at every step. We must also take into account the
time when Rousseau lived, and the conditions under which he wrote.
We have not a doubt that had it been written thirty years later,
in the dawn of the Revolution, for a people who were free, or who
desired to be free, the _Émile_ would have been wholly different
from what it is. Had he been working for a republican society, or
for a society that wished to become such, Rousseau would not have
thrown himself, out of hatred for the reality, into the absurdities
of an over-specialized and exceptional education. We can judge of
what he would have done as legislator of public instruction in the
time of the Revolution, by what he wrote in his _Considerations on
the Government of Poland_:--
“National education belongs only to people who are free.... It
is education which is to give to men the national mould, and so
to direct their opinions and their tastes that they will become
patriots by inclination, by passion, and by necessity” (we would
only add, by duty). “A child, in opening his eyes, ought to see
his country and nothing but his country. Every true republican,
along with his mother’s milk, will imbibe love of country, that
is, of law and liberty. This love constitutes his whole existence.
He sees but his country, he lives but for her. So soon as he is
alone, he is nothing; so soon as there is no more of country, he is
no more.... While learning to read, I would have a child of Poland
read what relates to his country; at the age of ten, I would have
him know all its productions; at twelve, all its provinces, all its
roads, all its cities; at fifteen, the whole of its history; and
at sixteen, all its laws; and there should not be in all Poland a
notable deed or an illustrious man, of which his memory and his
heart were not full.”
336. INFLUENCE OF THE ÉMILE.--That which proves better than any
commentary can the high standing of the _Émile_, is the success
which it has obtained, the influence which it has exerted, both
in France and abroad, and the durable renown attested by so many
works designed, either to contradict it, to correct it, or to
approve it and to disseminate its doctrines. During the twenty-five
years that followed the publication of the _Émile_, there appeared
in the French language twice as many books on education as during
the first sixty years of the century. Rousseau, besides all that
he said personally which was just and new, had the merit of
stimulating minds and of preparing through his impulsion the rich
educational harvest of this last one hundred years.
To be convinced of this, it suffices to read this judgment of
Kant:--
“The first impression which a reader who does not read for vanity
or for killing time derives from the writings of Rousseau, is that
this writer unites to an admirable penetration of genius a noble
inspiration and a soul full of sensibility, such as has never been
met with in any other writer, in any other time, or in any other
country. The impression which immediately follows this, is that of
astonishment caused by the extraordinary and paradoxical thoughts
which he develops.... I ought to read and re-read Rousseau, till
the beauty of his style no more affects me. It is only then that I
can adjust my reason to judge of him.”
[337. ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.--1. The study of the _Émile_ exhibits,
in a very striking manner, the contrast between the respective
agencies of art and nature in the work of education, and also the
power of sentiment as a motor to ideas.
2. What Monsieur Compayré has happily called Rousseau’s “misuse
of the principle of nature” marks a recoil against the artificial
and fictitious state of society and opinion in France in the
eighteenth century. In politics, in religion, and in philosophy,
there was the domination of authority, and but a small margin
was left for the exercise of freedom, versatility, and individual
initiative; while education was administered rather as a process
of manufacture, than of regulated growth.
3. The conception that the child, by his very constitution,
is predetermined, like plants and animals, to a progressive
development quite independent of artificial aid, easily
degenerates into the hypothesis that the typical education is a
process of spontaneous growth.
4. The error in this hypothesis is that of exaggeration or of
disproportion. Education is neither a work of nature alone, nor
of art alone, but is a natural process, supplemented, controlled,
and perfected by human art. What education would become when
abandoned wholly to “nature” may be seen in the state of a
perfected fruit which has been allowed to revert to its primitive
or natural condition.
5. Man is distinguished from all other creatures by the fact that
he is not the victim of his environment, but is endowed with the
power to control his environment, almost to re-create it, and so
to rise superior to it. This ability gives rise to human art,
which is a coördinate factor with nature in the work of education.
6. This convenient fiction of “Nature,” conceived as an
infallible and incomparable guide in education, has introduced
countless errors into educational theory; and Miss E. R. Sill
is amply justified in saying that “probably nine-tenths of the
popular sophistries on the subject of education, would be cleared
away by clarifying the word Nature.”[176]
7. In spite of its paradoxes, its exaggerations, its overwrought
sentiment, and florid declamation, the _Émile_, in its general
spirit, is a work of incomparable power and of perennial value.]
FOOTNOTES:
[169] Dom Joseph Cajet, _Les Plagiats de J. J. R. de Genève sur
l’éducation_, 1768.
[170] _Œuvres diverses_, Tome I. p. 12.
[171] _De l’éducation des enfants_, La Haye, 1722; _Pensées libres
sur les instructions publiques des bas collèges_, Amsterdam, 1727.
[172] _Spectacle de la nature_, Paris, 1732, Vol. VI. _Entretien
sur l’éducation_.
[173] _Lettre critique sur l’éducation_, Paris, 1751.
[174] _Projet pour l’éducation de M. de Ste-Marie._
[175] Report of Villemain on the work of the Père Girard (1844).
[176] _Atlantic Monthly_, February, 1883, p. 178.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE PHILOSOPHERS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.--CONDILLAC, DIDEROT,
HELVETIUS, AND KANT.
THE PHILOSOPHERS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY; CONDILLAC
(1715-1780); ABUSE OF THE PHILOSOPHIC SPIRIT; MUST WE REASON
WITH CHILDREN? PRELIMINARY LESSONS; THE ART OF THINKING; OTHER
PARTS OF THE COURSE OF STUDY; PERSONAL REFLECTION; EXCESSES OF
DEVOTION CRITICISED; DIDEROT (1713-1784); HIS PEDAGOGICAL WORKS;
HIS QUALITIES AS AN EDUCATOR; NECESSITY OF INSTRUCTION; IDEA OF
A SYSTEM OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION; CRITICISM OF FRENCH COLLEGES;
PROPOSED REFORMS; PREFERENCE FOR THE SCIENCES; INCOMPLETE
VIEWS ON THE PROVINCE OF LETTERS; OPINION OF MARMONTEL; OTHER
NOVELTIES OF DIDEROT’S PLAN; HELVETIUS (1715-1771); PARADOXES
OF THE TREATISE ON MAN; REFUTATION OF HELVETIUS BY DIDEROT;
INSTRUCTION SECULARIZED; THE ENCYCLOPÆDISTS; KANT (1724-1804);
HIGH CONCEPTION OF EDUCATION; PSYCHOLOGICAL OPTIMISM; RESPECT
FOR THE LIBERTY OF THE CHILD; CULTURE OF THE FACULTIES; STORIES
INTERDICTED; DIFFERENT KINDS OF PUNISHMENT; RELIGIOUS EDUCATION;
ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.
338. THE PHILOSOPHERS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.--If there has been
considerable progress made in education in the eighteenth century,
it is due, in great part, to the efforts of the philosophers of
that age. It is no longer alone the men who are actually engaged
in the schools that are preoccupied with education; but nearly all
the illustrious thinkers of the eighteenth century have discussed
these great questions with more or less thoroughness. The subject
is far from being exhausted by the study of Rousseau. Besides the
educational current set in movement by the _Émile_, the other
philosophers of that period, in their isolated and independent
march, left original routes which it remains to follow. From out
their errors and conceptions of systems there emerge some new
outlooks and some definite truths.
339. CONDILLAC (1715-1780).--An acute and ingenious psychologist, a
competitor and rival of Locke in philosophy, Condillac is far from
having the same authority in matters pertaining to education; but
still there is profit to be derived from the reading of his _Course
of Study_, which includes not less than thirteen volumes. This
important work is a collection of the lessons which he had composed
for the education of the infant Ferdinand, the grandson of Louis
XV., and heir of the dukedom of Parma, whose preceptor he became in
1757.
340. ABUSE OF THE PHILOSOPHIC SPIRIT.--It is certainly a matter
of congratulation that the philosophical spirit is entering more
and more largely into the theories of education, and there would
be only words of commendation for Condillac had he restricted
himself to this excellent declaration, that pedagogy is nothing if
it is not a deduction from psychology. But he does not stop there,
but with an indiscretion that is to be regretted, he arbitrarily
transports into education certain philosophical principles which
it is not proper to apply to the art of educating men, whatever
may be their theoretical truth; thus Condillac, having established
the natural order of the development of the sciences and the arts
in the history of humanity, presumes to impose the same law of
progress upon the child.
“The method which I have followed does not resemble the usual
manner of teaching; but it is the very way in which men were led to
create the arts and the sciences.”[177]
In other terms, the child must do over again, on his own account,
“that which the race has done.” He must be compelled to follow,
step by step, in its long gropings, the slow progress made by the
race.[178]
There is, doubtless, an element of truth in the error of
Condillac. The sciences and the arts began with the observation
of particulars, and thence slowly rose to general principles; and
to-day no one thinks of denying the necessity of proceeding in the
same manner in education, so far as this is possible. It is well
at the first to present facts to the child, and to lead him step
by step, from observation to observation, to the law which governs
them and includes them; but there is a wide distance between the
discreet use of the inductive and experimental method, and the
exaggerations of Condillac. No one should seriously think of
absolutely suppressing the synthetic method of exposition, which,
taking advantage of the work accomplished through the centuries,
teaches at the outset the truths that have been already acquired.
It would be absurd to compel the child painfully to recommence the
toil of the race.[179]
Graver still, Condillac, led astray by his love for philosophizing,
presumes to initiate the child, from the very beginning of his
studies, into psychological analysis.
“The first thing to be done is to make the child acquainted with
the faculties of his soul, and to make him feel the need of making
use of them.”
In other terms, the analysis of the soul shall be the first object
proposed to the reflection of the child. It is not proposed to make
him attentive, but to teach him what attention is.
How can one seriously think of making of the child a little
psychologist, and of choosing as the first element of his education
the very science that is the most difficult of all, the one which
can be but the coronation of his studies?
341. MUST WE REASON WITH CHILDREN?--Rousseau had sharply criticised
the famous maxim of Locke: “We must reason with children.”
Condillac tries to restore it to credit, and for this purpose he
invokes the pretended demonstrations of a superficial and inexact
psychology.
“It has been proved,” he says, “that the faculty of reasoning
begins as soon as the senses commence to develop; and we have the
early use of our senses only because we early began to reason.”
Strange assertions, which are disproved by the most elementary
observation of the facts in the case. Condillac here allows himself
to be imposed upon by his sensational psychology, the tendency
of which is to efface the peculiar character of the different
intellectual faculties, to derive them all from the senses, and,
consequently, to suppress the distance which separates a simple
sensation from the subtile, reflective, and abstract process which
is called reasoning. It cannot be admitted for a single instant
that the faculties of the understanding are, as he says, “the same
in the child as in the mature man.” There is, doubtless, in the
child a beginning of reasoning, a sort of instinctive logic; but
this infantile reasoning can be applied only to familiar objects,
such as are sensible and concrete. It were absurd to employ it on
general and abstract ideas.
342. PRELIMINARY LESSONS.--We shall quote, without comment, the
first subjects of instruction which, under the title of _Leçons
préliminaires_, Condillac proposes to his pupil: 1. the nature
of ideas; 2. the operations of the soul; 3. the habits; 4. the
difference between the soul and the body; 5. the knowledge of God.
How are we to conceive that Condillac had the pretension to place
these high philosophical speculations within the reach of a child
of seven years who has not yet studied the grammar of his native
language! How much better some fables or historical narratives
would answer his purpose!
But Condillac does not stop there. When his pupil has a systematic
knowledge of the operations of the soul, when he has comprehended
the genesis of ideas; in a word, when, towards the age of eight or
ten, he is as proficient in philosophy as his master, and almost as
capable of writing the _Treatise on Sensations_, what do you think
he is invited to study? Something which very much resembles the
philosophy of history:--
“After having made him reflect on his own infancy, I thought that
the infancy of the world would be the most interesting subject for
him, and the easiest to study.”
343. THE ART OF THINKING.--It is only when he judges that the mind
of his pupil is sufficiently prepared by psychological analysis and
by general reflections on the progress of humanity, that Condillac
decides to have him enter upon the ordinary course of study. Here
the spirit of system disappears, and gives place to more judicious
and more practical ideas. Thus Condillac thinks that “the study of
grammar would be more wearisome than useful if it come too early.”
Would that he had applied this principle to psychology! Before
studying grammar, then, Condillac’s pupil reads the poets,--the
French poets, of course,--and preferably the dramatic authors,
Racine especially, whom he reads for the twelfth time. The real
knowledge of the language precedes the abstract study of the
rules. Condillac himself composed a grammar entitled the _Art of
Speaking_. In this he imitates the authors of Port Royal, “who,” he
says, “were the first to write elementary books on an intelligent
plan.” After the _Art of Speaking_ he calls the attention of
his pupil to three other treatises in succession,--the _Art of
Writing_, or rhetoric, the _Art of Reasoning_, or logic, and the
_Art of Thinking_. We shall not attempt an analysis of these works,
which have gone out of date, notwithstanding the value of certain
portions of them. The general characteristic of these treatises
on intellectual education is that the author is pre-occupied with
the relations of ideas more than with the exterior elegancies of
style, with the development of thought more than with the beauties
of language:--
“Especially must the intelligence be nourished, even as the body is
nourished. We must present to it knowledge, which is the wholesome
aliment of spirit, opinions and errors being aliment that is
poisonous. It is also necessary that the intelligence be active,
for the thought remains imbecile as long as, passive rather than
active, it moves at random.”
344. OTHER PARTS OF THE COURSE OF STUDY.--It seems that Condillac
is in pursuit of but one single purpose,--to make of his pupil a
thinking being. The study of Latin is postponed till the time when
the intelligence, being completely formed, will find in the study
of that language only the difficulty of learning words. Condillac
has but little taste for the study of the ancient languages. He
relegates the study of Latin to the second place, and omits Greek
entirely. But he accords a great importance to historical studies.
“After having learned to think, the Prince made the study of
history his principal object for six years.”
Twelve volumes of the _Course of Study_ have transmitted to us
Condillac’s lessons in history. In this he does not take delight,
as Rollin does, in long narrations; but he analyzes, multiplies
his reflections, and abridges facts; he philosophizes more than he
recites the facts of history.
345. PERSONAL REFLECTION.--What we have said of Condillac’s _Course
of Study_ suffices to justify the judgment expressed of his
pedagogy by one of his disciples, Gérando, when he wrote: “He who
had so thoroughly studied the manner in which ideas are formed in
the human mind, had but little skill in calling them into being in
the intelligence of his pupil.”
But we would judge our author unjustly if, after the criticisms we
have made of him, we were not to accord him the praise he deserves,
especially for having comprehended, as he has done, the value of
personal reflection, and the superiority of judgment over memory. A
few quotations will rehabilitate the pedagogy of Condillac in the
minds of our readers.
Above all else there must be an exercise in personal reflection:--
“I grant that the education which cultivates only the memory may
make prodigies, and that it has done so; but these prodigies last
only during the time of infancy.... He who knows only by heart,
knows nothing.... He who has not learned to reflect has not been
instructed, or, what is still worse, has been poorly instructed.”
“True knowledge is in the reflection, which has acquired it, much
more than in the memory, which holds it in keeping; and the things
which we are capable of recovering are better known than those of
which we have a recollection. It does not suffice, then, to give
a child knowledge. It is necessary that he instruct himself by
seeking knowledge on his own account, and the essential point is
to guide him properly. If he is led in an orderly way, he will
acquire exact ideas, and will seize their succession and relation.
Then, able to call them up for review, he will be able to compare
them with others that are more remote, and to make a final choice
of those which he wishes to study. Reflection can always recover
the things it has known, because it knows how it originally found
them; but the memory does not so recover the things it has learned,
because it does not know how it learns.”
This is why Condillac places far above the education we receive,
the education that we give ourselves:--
“Henceforth, Sir, it remains for you alone to instruct yourself.
Perhaps you imagine you have finished; but it is I who have
finished. You are to begin anew!”
346. EXCESSIVE DEVOTION CRITICISED.--What beautiful lessons
Condillac also addresses to his pupil to induce him to enfranchise
himself from ecclesiastical tutelage! Written by an abbot, the
eloquent page we are about to read proves how the lay spirit tended
to pronounce itself in the eighteenth century.
“You cannot be too pious, Sir; but if your piety is not
enlightened, you will so far forget your duties as to be engrossed
in the little things of devotion. Because prayer is necessary, you
will think you ought always to be praying, not considering that
true devotion consists first of all in fulfilling the duties of
your station in life: it will not be your fault that you do not
live in your heart as in a cloister. Hypocrites will swarm around
you, the monks will issue from their cells. The priests will
abandon the service of the altar in order to be edified with the
sight of your holy works. Blind prince! you will not perceive how
their conduct is in contradiction with their language. You will
not even observe that the men who praise you for always being at
the foot of the altar, themselves forget that it is their own duty
to be there. You will unconsciously take their place and leave to
them your own. You will be continually at prayer, and you will
believe that you assure your salvation. They will cease to pray,
and you will believe that they assure their salvation. Strange
contradiction, which turns aside ministers from the Church to give
bad ministers to the State.”[180]
347. DIDEROT (1713-1784).--To him who knows nothing of Diderot save
his works of imagination, often so licentious, it will doubtless be
a surprise to see the name of this fantastic writer inscribed in
the catalogue of educators. But this astonishment will disappear if
we will take the trouble to recollect with what versatility this
mighty spirit could vary the subject of his reflections, and pass
from the gay to the solemn, and especially with what ardor, in
conjunction with D’Alembert, he was the principal founder of the
_Encyclopédie_, and the indefatigable contributor to it.
348. HIS PEDAGOGICAL WORKS.--But there is no room for doubt.
Diderot has written at least two treatises that belong to the
history of education: first, about 1773, _The Systematic Refutation
of the Book of Helvetius on Man_, an incisive and eloquent
criticism of the paradoxes and errors of Helvetius; and, in the
second place, about 1776, a complete scheme of education, composed
at the request of Catherine II., under the title, _Plan of a
University_.[181]
349. HIS MERITS AS AN EDUCATOR.--Doubtless Diderot did not have
sufficient gravity of character or sufficiently definite ideas
to be a perfect educator; but, by way of compensation, the
natural and acquired qualities of his mind made him worthy of
the confidence placed in him by Catherine II. in entrusting him
with the organization, at least in theory, of the instruction of
the Russian people. First of all, he had the merit of being a
universal thinker, “sufficiently versed in all the sciences to
know their value, and not sufficiently profound in any one to
give it a preference inspired by predilection.” Engaged in the
scientific movement, of which the _Encyclopédie_ was the centre,
he at the same time cherished an enthusiastic passion for letters.
He worshipped Shakespeare and modern poetry, but he was not less
enamored of classical antiquity, and for several years, he says,
“he thought it as much a religious duty to read a song of Homer as
a good priest would to recite his breviary.”
350. NECESSITY OF INSTRUCTION.--Diderot, and this is to his
praise, is distinguished from the most of his contemporaries, and
especially from Rousseau, by his ardent faith in the moral efficacy
of instruction:--
“Far from corrupting,” he exclaims, “instruction sweetens
character, throws light on duty, makes vice less gross, and either
chokes it or conceals it.... I dare assert that purity of morals
has followed the progress of dress, from the skin of animals to
fabrics of silk.”
Hence he decides on the necessity of instruction for all:--
“From the prime minister to the lowest peasant, it is good for
every one to know how to read, write, and count.”
And he proposes to all people the example of Germany, with her
strongly organized system of primary instruction. He demands
schools open to all children, “schools of reading, writing,
arithmetic, and religion,” in which will be studied both a moral
and a political catechism. Attendance on these schools shall be
obligatory, and to make compulsion possible, Diderot demands
gratuity. He goes even farther, and would have the child fed at
school, and with his books would have him find bread.
351. THE CONCEPTION OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION.--Like all who sincerely
desire a strong organization of instruction, Diderot assigns the
direction of it to the State. His ideal of a Russian university
bears a strong resemblance to the French University of 1808. He
would have at its head a politician, a statesman, to whom should be
submitted all the affairs of public instruction. He even went so
far as to entrust to this general master of the university the duty
of presiding over the examinations, of appointing the presidents of
colleges, of excluding bad pupils, and of deposing professors and
tutors.
352. CRITICISM OF FRENCH COLLEGES.--Secondary instruction, what
was then called the _Faculty of Arts_, is the principal object
of Diderot’s reflections. He criticises the traditional system
with extreme severity, and his charge, thought sometimes unjust,
deserves to be quoted:--
“It is in the Faculty of Arts that there are still taught to-day,
under the name of belles-lettres, two dead languages which are of
use only to a small number of citizens; it is there that they are
studied for six or seven years without being learned; under the
name of rhetoric, the art of speaking is taught before the art
of thinking, and that of speaking elegantly before having ideas;
under the name of logic, the head is filled with the subtilties of
Aristotle, and of his very sublime and very useless theory of the
syllogism, and there is spread over a hundred obscure pages what
might have been clearly stated in four; under the name of ethics,
I do not know what is said, but I know that there is not a word
said either of the qualities of mind or heart; under the name of
metaphysics, there are discussed theses as trifling as they are
knotty, the first elements of scepticism and bigotry, and the germ
of the unfortunate gift of replying to everything; under the name
of physics, there is endless dispute about the elements of matter
and the system of the world; but not a word on natural history, not
a word on real chemistry, very little on the movement and fall of
bodies; very few experiments, less still of anatomy, and nothing of
geography.”[182]
353. PROPOSED REFORMS.--After such a spirited criticism, it was
Diderot’s duty to propose earnest and radical reforms; but all of
those which he suggests are not equally commendable.
Let us first note the idea revived in our day by Auguste Comte and
the school of positivists, of a connection and a subordination of
the sciences, classified in a certain order, according as they
presuppose the science which has preceded, or as they facilitate
the study of the science which follows, and also according to
the measure of their utility.[183] It is according to this last
principle in particular, that Diderot distributes the work of the
school, after having called attention to the fact that the order
of the sciences, as determined by the needs of the school, is not
their logical order:--
“The natural connection of one science with the others designates
for it a place, and the principle of utility, more or less general,
determines for it another place.”
But Diderot forgets that we must take into account, not alone the
principle of utility in the distribution of studies, but that the
essential thing of all others is to adapt the order of studies to
the progress of the child in age and aptitudes.
354. PREFERENCES FOR THE SCIENCES.--Although equally enamored
of letters and the sciences, Diderot did not know how to hold
a just balance between a literary and a scientific education.
Anticipating Condorcet and Auguste Comte, he displaces the centre
of instruction, and gives a preponderance to the sciences. Of the
eight classes comprised in his Faculty of Arts, the first five are
devoted to the mathematics, to mechanics, to astronomy, to physics,
and to chemistry. Grammar and the ancient languages are relegated
to the last three years, which nearly correspond to what are called
in our colleges the “second” and “rhetoric.”[184]
The charge that must be brought against Diderot in this place, is
not merely that he puts an unreasonable restriction on literary
studies, but also that he makes a bad distribution of scientific
studies in placing the mathematics before physics. It is useless
for him to assert that “it is easier to learn geometry than to
learn to read.” He does not convince us of this. It is a grave
error to begin by keeping the child’s attention on numerical
abstractions, by leaving his senses unemployed, by postponing so
long the study of natural history and experimental physics, those
sciences expressly adapted to children, because, as Diderot himself
expresses it, “they involve a continuous exercise of sight, smell,
taste, and memory.”
To excuse Diderot’s error, it does not suffice to state that his
pupil does not enter the Faculty of Arts till his twelfth year.
Till that period, he will learn only reading, writing, and
orthography. There is ground for thinking that these first years
will be rather poorly employed; but besides this, it is evident
that even at the age of twelve the mind is not sufficiently mature
to be plunged into the cold deductions of mathematics.
355. INCOMPLETE VIEWS AS TO THE SCOPE OF LITERARY
STUDIES.--Diderot’s attitude with respect to classical studies is
a matter of surprise. On the one hand, he postpones their study
till the pupil’s nineteenth and twentieth year. On the other, with
what enthusiasm this eloquent scholar speaks of the ancients,
particularly of Homer!
“Homer is the master to whom I am indebted for whatever merit I
have, if indeed I have any at all. It is difficult to attain to
excellence in taste without a knowledge of the Greek and Latin
languages. I early drew my intellectual nourishment from Homer,
Virgil, Horace, Terence, Anacreon, Plato, and Euripides on the one
hand, and from Moses and the Prophets on the other.”
How are we to explain this contradiction of an inconsistent and
ungrateful humanist who extols the humanities to the skies, and
at the same time puts such restrictions on the teaching of them
as almost to annihilate them? The reason for this is, that, in
his opinion, the belles-lettres are useful only for the training
of orators and poets, but are not serviceable in the general
development of the mind. Consequently, being fancy studies, so to
speak, they are fit only for a small minority of pupils, and have
no right to the first place in a common education, destined for
men in general. Diderot is not able to discern what, in pedagogy,
is their true title to nobility,--that they are an admirable
instrument of intellectual gymnastics, and the surest and also the
most convenient means of acquiring those qualities of justness, of
precision, and of clearness, which are needed by all conditions of
men, and are applicable to all the special employments of life.[185]
356. OPINION OF MARMONTEL.--Diderot seems to reduce the office of
letters to a study of words, and to an exercise of memory. He might
have learned a lesson from one of his contemporaries, Marmontel,
whose intellect, though less brilliant, was sometimes more just, an
advantage which the intelligence gains from early discipline in the
study of the languages:--
“The choice and use of words, in translating from one language to
another, and even then some degree of elegance in the construction
of sentences, began to interest me; and this work, which did not
proceed without the analysis of ideas, fortified my memory. I
perceived that it was the idea attached to the word which made it
take root, and reflection soon made me feel that the study of the
languages was also the study of the art of distinguishing shades of
thought, of decomposing it, of forming its texture, and of catching
with precision its spirit and its relations; and that along with
words, an equal number of new ideas were introduced and developed
in the heads of the young,[186] and that in this way the early
classes were a course in elementary philosophy, much more rich,
more extended, and of greater real utility than we think, when we
complain that in our colleges nothing is learned but Latin.”[187]
357. OTHER NOVELTIES IN DIDEROT’S PLAN.--Without entering into the
details of the very elaborate organization of Diderot’s _Russian
University_, we shall call attention to some other novelties of his
system:--
1. The division of the classes into several series of parallel
courses: first, the series of scientific and literary courses;
then, the series of lectures devoted to religion, to ethics, and to
history; and finally, courses in drawing, music, etc.
2. The whimsical idea of teaching history in an inverted order, so
to speak, in beginning with the most recent events, and little by
little going back to antiquity.
3. His extreme estimate of the art of reading: “Let a teacher of
reading be associated with a professor of drawing; there are so
few men, even the most enlightened, who know how to read well, a
gift always so agreeable, and often so necessary.”
4. A special regard for the study of art and for æsthetic
education, which could not be a matter of indifference to the great
art critic who wrote the _Salons_.
5. A reform in the system of ushers.[188] Diderot would have for
supervising assistants in colleges, educated men, capable on
occasion of supplying the places of the professors themselves. To
attach them to their duties, he requires that some dignity be given
to their modest and useful functions, and that the usher be a sort
of supernumerary, or “professor in reversion,” who aspires to the
chair of the professor, whose place he supplies from time to time,
and which he may finally attain.
358. HELVETIUS (1715-1771).--In undertaking the study of the
thoughts of Helvetius on education, and the rapid analysis of his
_Treatise on Man_, we shall not take leave of Diderot, for the work
of Helvetius has had the good or the bad fortune of being commented
on and criticised by his illustrious contemporary. Thanks to the
_Systematic Refutation of the Book of Helvetius on Man_, which
forms a charming accompaniment of pungent or vigorous reflections
to a dull and languid book, the reading of the monotonous treatise
of Helvetius becomes easy and almost agreeable.
359. THE TREATISE ON MAN.--Under this title, a little long, _De
l’homme, de ses facultés intellectuelles et de son éducation_,
Helvetius has composed a large work which he had in contemplation
for fifteen years, and which did not appear till after his
death, in 1772. As a matter of fact, education does not directly
occupy the author’s attention except in the first and the last
chapters (sections I. and X.). With this exception, the whole
book is devoted to long developments of the favorite maxims of
his philosophy: as the intellectual equality of all men, and the
reduction of all the passions to the pursuit of pleasure; or to
platitudes, such as the influence of laws on the happiness of
people, and the evils which result from ignorance.
360. POTENCY OF EDUCATION.--When he does not fall into platitudes,
Helvetius goes off into paradoxes that are presumptuous and
systematic. His habitual characteristic is pedantry in what is
false. According to him, for example, education is all-powerful; it
is the sole cause of the difference between minds. The mind of the
child is but an empty capacity, something indeterminate, without
predisposition. The impressions of the senses are the only elements
of the intelligence; so that the acquisitions of the five senses
are the only thing that is of moment; “the senses are all that
there is of man.” It is not possible to push sensationalism further
than this.
The impressions of the senses are, then, the basis of human nature,
and as these impressions vary with circumstances, Helvetius
arrives at this conclusion, that chance is the great master in the
formation of mind and character. Consequently, he undertakes to
produce at will men of genius, or, at least, men of talent. For
this purpose, it suffices to ascertain, by repeated observations,
the means which chance employs for making great men. These means
once discovered, it remains only to set them at work artificially
and to combine them, in order to produce the same effects.
“Genius is a product of chance. Rousseau, like a countless number
of illustrious men, may be regarded as one of the masterpieces of
chance.”
361. HELVETIUS REFUTED BY DIDEROT.--It is easy to reply to
extravagant statements of this sort. Had Helvetius consulted
teachers and parents, had he observed himself, had he simply
reflected on his two daughters, so unequally endowed though
identically educated, he would doubtless have felt constrained
to acknowledge the limitations of education; he would have
comprehended that it cannot give imagination to minds of sluggish
temperament, nor enthusiasm and sensibility to inert souls, and
that the most marvellously helpful circumstances will not make of
a Helvetius a Montesquieu or a Voltaire.
But if it is easy to refute Helvetius, it is impossible to
criticise him with more brilliancy and eloquence than Diderot has
done. With what perfection of reason he restores to nature, to
innate and irresistible inclinations, the influence which Helvetius
denies to them in the formation of character!
“The accidents of Helvetius,” he says, “are like the spark which
sets on fire a cask of wine, and which is extinguished in a bucket
of water.”
“For thousands of centuries the dew of heaven has fallen on the
rocks without making them fertile. The sown fields await it in
order to become productive, but it is not the dew that scatters the
seed. Accidents themselves no more produce anything, than the pick
of the laborer who delves in the mines of Golconda produces the
diamond that it brings to the surface.”
Doubtless education has a more radical effect than that which is
attributed to it by La Bruyère when he said that “it touches only
the surface of the soul.” But if it can do much, it cannot do all.
It perfects if it is good; it deadens and it perverts if it is bad;
but it can never be a substitute for lacking aptitude, and can
never replace nature.
362. SECULARIZED INSTRUCTION.--In other parts of his system
Helvetius is in accord with Diderot. Like him, he believes the
necessary condition of progress in education is that it be made
secular and entrusted to the civil power. The vices of education
come from the opposition of the two powers, spiritual and temporal,
that assume to direct it. Between the Church and the State
there is an opposition of interests and views. The State would
have the nation become brave, industrious, and enlightened. The
Church demands a blind submission and unlimited credulity. Hence
there is contradiction in pedagogical precepts, diversity in the
means that are employed, and, consequently, an education that is
hesitating, that is pulled in opposite directions, that does not
know definitely where it is going, that misses its way, that gropes
and wastes time.
But the conclusion of Helvetius is not as we might expect,--the
separation of Church and State in the matter of instruction
and education, such as recent laws have established in France.
No; Helvetius would have the State absorb the Church, and have
religious power and civil power lodged in the same hands and both
belong to those who control the government,--a vexatious confusion
that would end in the oppression of consciences.
Helvetius, whatever may be thought of him, does not deserve to
claim our attention for any length of time, and we cannot seriously
consider as an authority in pedagogy a writer who, in intellectual
as in moral education, reduces everything to a single principle,
the development and the satisfaction of physical sensibility.[189]
363. THE ENCYCLOPÆDISTS.--The vast collection which, under the
name _Encyclopédie_, sums up the science and the philosophy of
the eighteenth century, touches educational questions only in
passing. Properly speaking, the _Encyclopédie_ contains no system
of pedagogy. The principal fragment is the article _Éducation_,
written by the grammarian and Latinist Dumarsais.
But this piece of work is little worthy of its author, and little
worthy in particular of the _Encyclopédie_. It contains scarcely
anything but vague and trite generalities, and belongs to the
category of those articles for padding which caused Voltaire to
say: “You accept articles worthy of the Journal of Trévoux.” We
shall notice, however, in this article, the importance accorded
to the study of physics, and to the practice of the arts,
even the most common, and the marked purpose to “subordinate”
knowledges and studies, or to distribute them in a logical, or
rather psychological, order; for example, to cause the concrete
always to precede the abstract. But, after having lost himself in
considerations of but little interest on the development of ideas
and sentiments in the human soul, the author, who is decidedly far
below his task, concludes by recommending to young people “the
reading of newspapers.”
The other pedagogical articles of the _Encyclopédie_ are equally
deficient in striking novelties. If the great work of D’Alembert
and Diderot has contributed something to the progress of education,
it is less through the insufficient efforts which it has directly
attempted in this direction, than through the general influence
which it has exercised on the French mind in extolling the
sciences in their theoretical study as well as in their practical
applications, in diffusing technical knowledge, in glorifying
the industrial arts, and in thus preparing for the coming of
a scientific and positive education in place of an education
exclusively literary and of pure form.
364. KANT (1724-1804).--We know the considerable influence
which, for a century, Kant has exercised on the development of
philosophy. Since Descartes, no thinker had to the same degree
excited an interest in the great problems of philosophy, nor more
vigorously obliged the human reason to render an account of itself.
It is then a piece of good fortune for the science of education
that a philosopher of this order has taken up the discussion of
pedagogical questions, and has thrown upon them the light of his
penetrating criticism. The admiration which he felt for Rousseau,
his attentive and impassioned reading of the _Émile_, his own
reflections on the monastic education which he had received at the
Collegium Fredericianum, a sort of small seminary conducted by the
Pietists, the experience which he had had as a preceptor in several
families that entrusted him with their children, and finally, above
all else, his profound studies on human nature and his exalted
moral philosophy, had given him a capital preparation for treating
educational questions. Professor at the University of Königsberg,
he several times resumes the discussion of pedagogical subjects
with a marked predilection for them, and the notes of his lectures,
collected by one of his colleagues, formed the little _Treatise on
Pedagogy_ which we are about to analyze.[190]
365. HIGH CONCEPTION OF EDUCATION.--In the opinion of Kant, the
art of educating men, with that of governing them, is the most
difficult and the most important of all. It is by education alone
that humanity can be perfected and regenerated:--
“It is pleasant to think that human nature will always be better
and better developed by education, and that at last there will thus
be given it the form which best befits it.
“To know how far the omnipotence of education can go, it would be
necessary that a being of a superior order should undertake the
bringing up of men.”
But in order that it may attain this exalted end, education must
be set free from routine and traditional methods. It must bring
up children, not in view of their success in the present state of
human society, but “in view of a better state, possible in the
future, and according to an ideal conception of humanity and of its
complete destination.”
366. PSYCHOLOGICAL OPTIMISM.--Kant comes near accepting the opinion
of Rousseau on the original innocence of man and the perfect
goodness of his natural inclinations:--
“It is said in medicine that the physician is but the servant of
nature. This is true of the moralist. Ward off the bad influences
from without, and nature can be trusted to find for herself the
best way.”[191]
Thus Kant does not tire of exalting the service which Rousseau
had rendered pedagogy, in recalling educators to the confidence
and respect that are due to calumniated human nature. Let us add,
however, that the German philosopher is not content to repeat
Rousseau. He corrects him in affirming that man, at his birth, is
neither good nor evil, because he is not naturally a moral being.
He does not become such till he raises his reason to the conception
of duty and law. In other terms, in the infant everything is in
germ. The infant is a being in preparation. The future alone,
the development which he will receive from his education, will
make him good or bad. At the beginning, he has but indeterminate
dispositions, and evil will come, not from a definite inclination
of nature, but solely from the fact that we will not have known how
to direct it,--from the fact, according to Kant’s own expression,
that we will not have “subjected nature to rules.”
367. RESPECT FOR THE LIBERTY OF THE CHILD.--The psychological
optimism of Kant inspires him, as it does Rousseau, with the idea
of a negative education, respectful of the liberty of the child:--
“In general, it must be noted that the earliest education should
be negative; that is to say, nothing should be added to the
precautions taken by nature, and that the effort should be limited
to the preservation of her work.... It is well to employ at first
but few helps, and to leave children to learn for themselves. Much
of the weakness of man is due, not to the fact that nothing is
taught him, but to the fact that false impressions are communicated
to him.”
Without going so far as to say with Rousseau that all dependence
with respect to men is contrary to order, Kant took great care
to respect the liberty of the pupil. He complains of parents who
are always talking about “breaking the wills of their sons.” He
maintains, not without reason, that it is not necessary to offer
much resistance to children, if we have not begun by yielding
too readily to their caprices, and by always responding to their
cries. Nothing is more harmful to them than a discipline which
is provoking and degrading. But, in his zeal for human liberty,
the theorist of the autonomy of wills goes a little too far. He
fears, for example, the tyranny of habits. He requires that they
be prevented from being formed, and that children be accustomed to
nothing. He might as well demand the suppression of all education,
since education should be but the acquisition of a body of good
habits.
368. STORIES INTERDICTED.--In the education of the intellectual
faculties or talents, which he calls the _physical culture_ of the
soul, as distinguished from _moral culture_, which is the education
of the will, Kant also approaches Rousseau. He proscribes romances
and stories. “Children have an extremely active imagination
which has no need of being developed by stories.” It may be said
in reply, that fables and fictions, at the same time that they
develop the imagination, also direct it and adorn it with their
own proper grace, and may even lend it moral support. Rousseau,
notwithstanding the ardor of his criticisms on the _Fables_ of La
Fontaine, himself admitted the moral value of the apologue.
369. CULTURE OF THE FACULTIES.--That which distinguishes Kant
as an educator is that he is pre-occupied with the culture of
the faculties much more than with the acquisition of knowledge.
He passes in review the different intellectual forces, and his
reflections on each of them might be collected as the elements of
an excellent system of educational psychology. He will criticise,
for example, the abuse of memory:--
“Men who have nothing but memory,” he says, “are but living
lexicons, and, as it were, the pack-horses of Parnassus.”
For the culture of the understanding, Kant proposes “at first to
train it passively to some degree,” by requiring of the child
examples which illustrate a rule, or, on the contrary, the rule
which applies to particular examples.
For the exercise of the reason, he recommends the Socratic method,
and, in general, for the development of all the faculties of the
mind, he thinks that the best way of proceeding is to cause the
pupil to be active:--
“The best way to comprehend is to do. What we learn the most
thoroughly is what we learn to some extent by ourselves.”
370. DIFFERENT KINDS OF PUNISHMENTS.--Kant has made a subtile
analysis of the different qualities with which punishment may be
invested. He distinguishes from _physical punishment_, _moral
punishment_, which is the better. It consists in humiliating the
pupil, in greeting him coolly, “in encouraging the disposition of
the child to be honored and loved, that auxiliary of morality.”
Physical punishments ought to be employed with precaution, “to the
end that they may not entail servile dispositions.”
Another distinction is that of _natural_ punishments and
_artificial_ punishments. The first are preferable to the second,
because they are the very consequences of the faults which have
been committed; “indigestion, for example, which a child brings
on himself when he eats too much.” Another advantage of natural
punishment, Kant justly remarks, “is that man submits to it all his
life.”[192]
Finally, Kant divides punishments into _negative_ and _positive_.
The first are to be used for minor faults, and the others are to be
reserved for the punishment of conduct that is absolutely bad.
Moreover, whatever punishment may be applied, Kant advises the
teacher to avoid the appearance of feeling malice towards the
pupil:--
“The punishments we inflict while exhibiting signs of anger have a
wrong tendency.”
371. RELIGIOUS EDUCATION.--At first view, we might be tempted to
think that Kant has adopted the conclusions of Rousseau, and that,
like him, he refuses to take an early occasion to inculcate in the
child’s mind the notion of a Supreme Being:--
“Religious ideas always suppose some system of theology. Now, how
are we to teach theology to the young, who, far from knowing the
world, do not yet know themselves? How shall the young who do not
yet know what duty is, be in a condition to comprehend an immediate
duty towards God?”
To speak of religion to a young man, it would then be logical to
wait till he is in a condition to form a clear and fixed conception
of the nature of God. But it is impossible to do this, says Kant,
because the young man lives in a society where he hears the name
of the Divinity spoken at each moment, and where he takes part
in continual observances of piety. It is better, then, to teach
him at an early hour true religious notions, for fear that he may
borrow from other men notions that are superstitious and false. In
reality, Kant dissents from Rousseau only because, re-establishing
the conditions of real life, he restores Émile to society, no
longer keeping him in a fancied state of isolation. What a broad
and noble way, moreover, of conceiving religious education! The
best way of making clear to the mind of children the idea of God,
is, according to Kant, to seek an analogy in the idea of a human
father. It is necessary, moreover, that the conception of duty
precede the conception of God; that morality precede, and that
theology follow. Without morality, religion is but superstition;
without morality, the pretended religious man is but a courtier, a
suitor for divine favor.
372. MORAL CATECHISM.--Those who know to what a height Kant
could raise the theory of morality, will not be surprised at the
importance which he ascribes to the teaching of morals.
“Our schools,” he says, “are almost entirely lacking in one
thing which, however, would be very useful for training children
in probity,--I mean a catechism on duty. It should contain, in
a popular form, cases concerning the conduct to be observed
in ordinary life, and which would always naturally raise this
question: Is this right or not?”
He had begun to write a book of this kind under the title _Moral
Catechism_;[193] and he would have desired that an hour a day
of school time be given to its study, “in order to teach pupils
to know and to learn by heart their duty to men,--that power of
God on the earth.” The child, he says again, would there learn
to substitute the fear of his own conscience for that of men and
divine punishment, inward dignity for the opinion of others, the
intrinsic value of actions for the apparent value of words, and,
finally, a serene and cheerful piety for a sad and gloomy devotion.
[373. ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.--1. This study exhibits the influence
of philosophical systems on education. New conceptions of human
destiny, new theories with respect to the composition of human
nature, or a new hypothesis concerning man’s place in nature,
determine corresponding changes in educational theory.
2. Perhaps the broadest generalization yet reached in educational
theory is the assumption made by Condillac, that the education
of each individual should be a repetition of civilization _in
petto_. With Mr. Spencer this hypothesis becomes a law.
3. In theory, the secularization of education has begun. The
Church is to lose one of its historical prerogatives, and the
modern State is to become an educator.
4. Helvetius typifies what may be called the _plastic theory_ in
education, or the conception that the teacher, if wise enough,
may ignore all differences in natural endowment. This makes man
the victim of his environment. The truth evidently is that man is
the only creature which can bend circumstances to his will; and
he has such an endowment of power in this direction that he can
virtually recreate his environment and thus rise superior to it.
And farther than this, there are innate differences in endowment
that will persist in spite of all that education can do.
5. The culture value of literary studies is justly exhibited in
the quotation from Marmontel, and in particular the disciplinary
value of translation.
6. Education for training, discipline, or culture, as
distinguished from an education whose chief aim is to impart
knowledge, receives definite recognition from Kant.]
FOOTNOTES:
[177] _Discours préliminaire sur la grammaire_, in the _Œuvres
complètes_ of Condillac, Tome VI. p. 264.
[178] This is also the main principle in Mr. Spencer’s educational
philosophy. “The education of the child must accord both in mode
and arrangement with the education of mankind as considered
historically; or, in other words, the genesis of knowledge in the
individual must follow the same course as the genesis of knowledge
in the race.”--_Education_, p. 122. (P.)
[179] The general law of human progress is _inheritance
supplemented by individual acquisition_. Using the symbols _i_
(inheritance) and _a_ (acquisition), the progress of the race
from its origin upwards, through successive generations, may be
exhibited by this series: _i_; _i_ + _a_; _i_ (2_a_) + _a_; _i_
(3_a_) + _a_; _i_ (4_a_) + _a_. If the factor of inheritance could
be eliminated, as Condillac and Spencer recommend, the series would
take this form: _a_′; _a_″; _a_‴; _a_^{iv}; _a_^v: the successive
increments in acquisition being due to successive increments in
power gained through heredity. But, happily, the law of inheritance
cannot be abrogated, and so philosophers write books in order to
save succeeding generations from the fate of Sisyphus. (P.)
[180] _Cours d’études_, Tome X. Introduction.
[181] See _Œuvres complètes_ of Diderot. Edited by Tourneux,
1876-77. Tomes II. and III.
[182] _Œuvres_, Tome III. p. 459.
[183] For Comte’s classification of the sciences, see Spencer’s
_Illustrations of Universal Progress_, Chap. III. (P.)
[184] See note, p. 131.
[185] This thought will bear extension as in the following
quotation: “The reasoning that I oppose starts from the low and
false assumption that instruction serves only for the practical
use that is made of it; for example, that he who, by his social
position, does not make use of his intellectual culture, has no
need of that culture. Literature, from this point of view, is
useful only to the man of letters, science only to the scientist,
good manners and fine bearing only to men of the world. The poor
man should be ignorant, for education and knowledge are useless
to him. Blasphemy, Gentlemen! The culture of the mind and the
culture of the soul are duties for every man. They are not simple
ornaments; they are things as sacred as religion” (Renan, _Famille
et État_, p. 3). This is a sufficient answer to Mr. Spencer’s
assumption (_Education_, p. 84), that the studies that are best for
guidance are at the same time the best for discipline. See also
Dugald Stewart (_Elements_, p. 12). (P.)
[186] This thought throws light on a dictum of current pedagogy,
“First, the idea, then the term.” It shows that very often, in
actual experience, the sequence is from term to idea. The relation
between term and idea is the same in kind as that between sentence
and thought. Must we then say, “First the thought, then the
sentence”? Or, “First the thought, then the chapter or the book”?
The disciplinary value of translation is also well stated. It may
be doubted whether the schools furnish a better “intellectual
gymnastic.” Three high intellectual attainments are involved in
a real translation: 1. The separation of the thought from the
original form of words; 2. The seizing or comprehension of the
thought as a mental possession; and 3. The embodying of the thought
in a new form. A strictly analogous process, of almost equal
value in its place, is that variety of reading in which the pupil
is required to express the thought of the paragraph _in his own
language_. This exercise involves the three processes above stated,
and may be called “the translation of thought from one form into
another, in the same language.” (P.)
[187] Marmontel, _Mémoires d’un père pour servir à l’instruction de
ses enfants_, Tome I. p. 19.
[188] _Maître d’étude_: “He who in a lycée, college, or
boarding-school, has oversight of pupils during study hours and
recreations.”--LITTRÉ.
[189] It is a matter of surprise that in a German _Pedagogical
Library_ the very first French work published is the _Traité de
l’Homme_ of Helvetius. This is giving the place of honor to what is
perhaps of the most ordinary value in French pedagogical literature.
[190] See the French translation of this tract at the end of the
volume, published by Monsieur Barni, under the title, _Éléments
métaphysiques de la doctrine de la vertu_. Paris, 1855. The work of
Kant appeared in German in 1803.
[191] Extract from Kant’s _Fragments posthumes_.
[192] Monsieur Compayré seems to give his sanction to the
“Discipline of Consequences.” I think that Mr. Fitch has correctly
stated its limitations (_Lectures_, p. 117). Kant doubtless
borrowed the idea from Rousseau, who employs it in the government
of his imaginary pupil. (See Miss Worthington’s translation of
the _Émile_, p. 66.) This doctrine is the basis of Mr. Spencer’s
chapter on _Moral Education_. (P.)
[193] Helvetius, but poorly qualified for teaching moral questions,
had had the idea of a _Catéchisme de probité_. Saint Lambert
published, in 1798, a _Catéchisme universel_.
CHAPTER XV.
THE ORIGIN OF LAY AND NATIONAL INSTRUCTION.--LA CHALOTAIS AND
ROLLAND.
JESUITS AND PARLIAMENTARIANS; EXPULSION OF THE JESUITS (1764);
GENERAL COMPLAINTS AGAINST THE EDUCATION OF THE JESUITS; EFFORTS
MADE TO REPLACE THEM; LA CHALOTAIS (1701-1785); HIS ESSAY ON
NATIONAL EDUCATION (1763); SECULARIZATION OF EDUCATION; PRACTICAL
END OF INSTRUCTION; NEW SPIRIT IN EDUCATION; INTUITIVE AND
NATURAL INSTRUCTION; STUDIES OF THE EARLIEST PERIOD; CRITICISM OF
NEGATIVE EDUCATION; HISTORY AVENGED OF THE DISDAIN OF ROUSSEAU;
GEOGRAPHY; NATURAL HISTORY; PHYSICAL RECREATIONS; MATHEMATICAL
RECREATIONS; STUDIES OF THE SECOND PERIOD; THE LIVING LANGUAGES;
OTHER STUDIES; THE QUESTION OF BOOKS; ARISTOCRATIC PREJUDICES;
INSTRUCTION WITHIN THE REACH OF ALL; NORMAL SCHOOLS; SPIRIT OF
CENTRALIZATION; TURGOT (1727-1781); ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.
374. JESUITS AND PARLIAMENTARIANS.--Of the educators of the
eighteenth century of whom we have been speaking up to the present
time, no one has been called to exercise an immediate and direct
action on the destinies of public education; no one of them had the
power to apply the doctrines which were so dear to him to college
education; so that, so far, we have studied the theory and not the
practice of education in the eighteenth century.
On the contrary, the members of the French Parliaments, after
having solicited and obtained from the king the expulsion of the
Jesuits, made memorable efforts, from 1762 up to the eve of the
Revolution, to supply the places of the teachers whom they had
driven away, to correct the faults of the ancient education, and to
give effect to the idea, cherished by the most of the great spirits
of that time, of a national education adapted to the needs of civil
society. They were the practical organizers of instruction; they
prepared the foundation of the French University of the nineteenth
century; they resumed, not without lustre, the struggle too often
interrupted, which the Jansenists had sustained against the Jesuits.
375. EXPULSION OF THE JESUITS (1764).--The causes of the expulsion
of the Jesuits were doubtless complex, and, above all else,
political. In attacking the Company of Jesus, the Parliaments
desired especially to defend the interests of the State,
compromised by a powerful society which tended to dominate all
Christian nations. But reasons of an educational character had also
some influence on the condemnation pronounced against the Jesuits
by all the Parliaments of France. From all quarters, in the reports
which were drawn up by the municipal or royal officers of all the
cities where the Jesuits had colleges, complaint is made of the
scholastic methods and usages of the Company. Reforms were demanded
which they were incapable of realizing.
And it is not in France alone that the faults in the education of
the Jesuits were vigorously announced. In the edict of 1759, by
which the king of Portugal expelled the Jesuits from his kingdom,
it was said: “The study of the humanities has declined in the
kingdom, and the Jesuits are evidently the cause of the decadence
into which the Greek and Latin tongues have fallen.” Some years
later, in 1768, the king of Portugal congratulated himself on
having banished “the moral corruption, the superstition, the
fanaticism, and the ignorance, which had been introduced by the
Society of Jesus.”
376. GENERAL COMPLAINTS AGAINST THE EDUCATION OF THE JESUITS.--Even
in the middle of the eighteenth century the Jesuits were still
addicted to their old routine, and even their faults were
aggravated with the times.
At Auxerre, complaint is made that pupils study in their schools
only a few Latin authors, and that they leave them without ever
receiving into their hands a single French author.
At Moulins, a request is made that at least one hour a week be
devoted to the history of France, which proves that the Society of
Jesus, always enslaved to its immobile formalism, did not grant
even this little concession to the teaching of history.
At Orleans, the necessity of teaching children the French language
is insisted on.
At Montbrison, the wish is expressed that pupils be taught a
smattering of geography, especially of their own country.
At Auxerre, it is proved that in the teaching of philosophy the
time is employed “in copying and learning note-books filled with
vain distinctions and frivolous questions.”
At Montbrison, the request is made “that the rules of reasoning be
explained in French, and that there be a disuse of debates which
train only disputants and not philosophers.”
It would be interesting to pursue this study, and to collect
from these reports of 1762,--real memorials of a scholastic
revolution,--all the complaints of public opinion against the
Jesuits. Even in religion, the Company of Jesus is charged with
substituting for the sacred texts, books of devotion composed by
the Fathers. At Poitiers, a demand is made in favor of the Old
and the New Testaments, the study of which was wholly neglected.
From time to time the Jesuits were accused of continually mixing
religious questions with classical studies and of catechising at
every turn. “The masters of the fifth and sixth forms in the
College of Auxerre dogmatize in the themes which they dictate to
the children.” Finally, the Company of Jesus maintained in the
schools the teaching of moral casuistry; it encouraged bigotry
and superstition; it relaxed nothing from the severity of its
discipline, and provoked violent recriminations among some of
its former pupils who had preserved a painful recollection of
corrections received in its colleges.[194]
377. EFFORTS MADE TO DISPLACE THE JESUITS.--The Parliaments,
then, did nothing more, so to speak, than register the verdict of
public opinion everywhere excited against the Jesuits. But while
they heartily joined in the general reprobation, they undertook
to determine the laws of the new education. “It is of little use
to destroy,” they said, “if we do not intend to build. The public
good and the honor of the nation require that we should establish
a civil education which shall prepare each new generation for
filling with success the different employments of the State.” It is
not just to say with Michel Bréal, that “once delivered from the
Jesuits, the University installed itself in their establishments
and continued their instruction.” Earnest attempts were made to
reform programmes and methods. La Chalotais, Guyton de Morveau,
Rolland, and still others attempted by their writings, and, when
they could, by their acts, to establish a system of education
which, while inspired by Rollin and the Jansenists, attempted to do
still better.
378. LA CHALOTAIS (1701-1785).--Of all the parliamentarians who
distinguished themselves in the campaign undertaken towards the
middle of the eighteenth century against the pedagogy of the
Jesuits, the most celebrated, and the most worthy of being such,
is undoubtedly the solicitor-general of the Parliament of Bretagne,
René de la Chalotais. A man of courage and character, he was
arrested and imprisoned in the citadel of Saint Malo for having
upheld the franchise of the province of Bretagne; and it was in
his prison, in 1765, that he drew up for his defence an eloquent
and impassioned memorial, of which Voltaire said, “Woe to every
sensitive soul that does not feel the quivering of a fever in
reading it!”
379. HIS ESSAY ON NATIONAL EDUCATION.--The _Essai_ of La Chalotais
appeared in 1763, one year after the _Émile_. Coming after the
ambitious theories of a philosopher who, scorning polemics and
the dissensions of his time, had written only for humanity and
the future, this was a modest and opportune work, the effort of
a practical man who attempted to respond to the aspirations and
the needs of his time. Translated into several languages, the
_Essai d’éducation nationale_ obtained the enthusiastic approval
of Diderot, and also of Voltaire, who said, “It is a terrible book
against the Jesuits, all the more so because it is written with
moderation.” Grimm carried his admiration so far as to write, “It
would be difficult to present in a hundred and fifty pages more
reflections that are wise, profound, useful, and truly worthy of
a magistrate, of a philosopher, of a statesman.” Too completely
forgotten to-day, this little composition of La Chalotais deserves
to be republished. Notwithstanding some prejudices that mar it, it
is already wholly penetrated with the spirit of the Revolution.
380. SECULARIZATION OF EDUCATION.--As a matter of fact, the whole
pedagogy of the eighteenth century is dominated by the idea of the
necessary secularization of instruction. Thorough-going Gallicans
like La Chalotais or Rolland, dauntless free-thinkers like Diderot
or Helvetius, all believe and assert that public instruction is a
civil affair, a “government undertaking,” as Voltaire expressed it.
All wish to substitute lay teachers for religious teachers, and to
open civil schools upon the ruins of monastic schools.
“Who will be persuaded,” says Rolland in his report of 1708, “that
fathers who feel an emotion that an ecclesiastic never should have
known, will be less capable than he of educating children?”
La Chalotais also demands these citizen teachers. He objects to
those instructors who, from interest as well as from principle,
give the preference in their affections to the supernatural world
over one’s native land.
“I do not presume to exclude ecclesiastics,” he said, “but I
protest against the exclusion of laymen. I dare claim for the
nation an education which depends only on the State, because
it belongs essentially to the State; because every State has
an inalienable and indefeasible right to instruct its members;
because, finally, the children of the State ought to be educated
by the members of the State.” This does not mean that La Chalotais
is irreligious; but he desires a national religion which does not
subordinate the interests of the country to a foreign power. What
he wants especially is, that the Church, reserving to herself the
teaching of divine truth, abandon to the State the teaching of
morals, and the control of purely human studies. He is of the same
opinion as his friend Duclos, who said:--
“It is certain that in the education which was given at Sparta, the
prime purpose was to train Spartans. It is thus that in every State
the purpose should be to enkindle the spirit of citizenship; and,
in our case, to train Frenchmen, and in order to make Frenchmen, to
labor to make men of them.”[195]
381. PRACTICAL PURPOSE OF INSTRUCTION.--The particular charge
brought by La Chalotais against the education of his time, against
that of the University as well as against that of the Jesuits, is,
that it does not prepare children for real life, for life in the
State. “A stranger who should visit our colleges might conclude
that in France we think only of peopling the seminaries, the
cloisters, and the Latin colonies.” How are we to imagine that
the study of a dead language, and a monastic discipline, are the
appointed means for training soldiers, magistrates, and heads of
families?
“The greatest vice of education, and perhaps the most inevitable,
while it shall be entrusted to persons who have renounced the
world, is the absolute lack of instruction on the moral and
political virtues. Our education does not affect our habits, like
that of the ancients. After having endured all the fatigues and
irksomeness of the college, the young find themselves in the need
of learning in what consist the duties common to all men. They have
learned no principle for judging actions, evils, opinions, customs.
They have everything to learn on matters that are so important.
They are inspired with a devotion which is but an imitation of
religion, and with practices which take the place of virtue, and
are but the shadow of it.”
382. INTUITIVE AND NATURAL INSTRUCTION.--A pupil of the sensational
school, a disciple of Locke and of Condillac, La Chalotais is too
much inclined to misconceive, in the development of the individual,
the play of natural activities and innate dispositions. But, by
way of compensation, his predilection for sensationalism leads him
to excellent thoughts on the necessity of beginning with sensible
objects before advancing to intellectual studies, and first of all
to secure an education of the senses.
“I wish nothing to be taught children except facts which are
attested by the eyes, at the age of seven as at the age of thirty.
“The principles for instructing children should be those by which
nature herself instructs them. Nature is the best of teachers.
“Every method which begins with abstract ideas is not made for
children.
“Let children see many objects; let there be a variety of such, and
let them be shown under many aspects and on various occasions. The
memory and the imagination of children cannot be overcharged with
useful facts and ideas of which they can make use in the course of
their lives.”
Such are the principles according to which La Chalotais organizes
his plan of studies.
383. THE NEW SPIRIT IN EDUCATION.--The purpose, then, is to
replace that monastic and ultramontane education (this is the term
employed by La Chalotais), and also that narrow education, and that
repulsive and austere discipline, “which seems made only to abase
the spirit”; that sterile and insipid teaching, “the most usual
effect of which is to make study hated for life”; those scholastic
studies where young men “contract the habit of disputing and
caviling”; and those ascetic regulations “which set neatness and
health at defiance.” The purpose is to initiate children into our
most common and most ordinary affairs, into what forms the conduct
of life and the basis of civil society.
“Most young men know neither the world which they inhabit, the
earth which nourishes them, the men who supply their needs, the
animals which serve them, nor the workmen and citizens whom they
employ. They have not even any desire for this kind of knowledge.
No advantage is taken of their natural curiosity for the purpose
of increasing it. They know how to admire neither the wonders of
nature nor the prodigies of the arts.”
This is equivalent to saying that they should henceforth learn all
that up to this time they had been permitted to be ignorant of.
384. STUDIES OF THE FIRST PERIOD.--Education, according to La
Chalotais, should be divided into two periods: the first from five
to ten, the second from ten to seventeen.
During the first period, we have to do with children who have no
experience because they have seen nothing, who have no power of
attention because they are incapable of any sustained effort,
and no judgment because they have not yet any general ideas; but
who, by way of compensation, have senses, memory, and some power
of reflection. It is necessary, then, to make a careful choice
of the subjects of study which shall be proposed to these tender
intelligences; and La Chalotais decides in favor of history,
geography, natural history, physical and mathematical _recreations_.
“The exercises proposed for the first period,” he says, “are as
follows: learning to read, write, and draw; dancing and music,
which ought to enter into the education of persons above the
commonalty; historical narratives and the lives of illustrious men
of every country, of every age, and of every profession; geography,
mathematical and physical recreations; the fables of La Fontaine,
which, whatever may be said of them, ought not to be removed from
the hands of children, but all of which they should be made to
learn by heart; and besides this, walks, excursions, merriment,
and recreations; I do not propose even the studies except as
amusements.”
385. CRITICISM OF NEGATIVE EDUCATION.--La Chalotais is often right
as against Rousseau. For example, he has abundantly refuted the
utopia of a negative education in which nature is allowed to have
her way, and which considers the toil of the centuries as of no
account. It is good sense itself which speaks in reflections like
these:--
“If man is not taught what is good, he will necessarily become
preoccupied with what is bad. The mind and the heart cannot remain
unoccupied.... On the pretext of affording children an experience
which is their own, they are deprived of the assistance of others’
experience.”
386. HISTORY AVENGED OF THE DISDAIN OF ROUSSEAU.--The sophisms of
Rousseau on history are brilliantly refuted. History is within the
comprehension of the youngest. The child who can understand Tom
Thumb and Blue Beard, can understand the history of Romulus and of
Clovis. Moreover, it is to the history of the most recent times
that La Chalotais attaches the greatest importance, and in this
respect he goes beyond his master Rollin:--
“I would have composed for the use of the child histories of every
nation, of every century, and particularly of the later centuries,
which should be written with greater detail, and which should
be read before those of the more remote centuries. I would have
written the lives of illustrious men of all classes, conditions,
and professions, of celebrated heroes, scholars, women, and
children.”
387. GEOGRAPHY.--La Chalotais does not separate the study of
geography from that of history, and he requires that, without
entering into dry and tedious details, the pupil be made to travel
pleasantly through different countries, and that stress be put “on
what is of chief importance and interest in each country, such as
the most striking facts, the native land of great men, celebrated
battles, and whatever is most notable, either as to manners and
customs, to natural productions, or to arts and commerce.”
388. NATURAL HISTORY.--Another study especially adapted to
children, says La Chalotais with reason, is natural history: “The
principal thing is first to show the different objects just as they
appear to the eyes. A representation of them, with a precise and
exact description, is sufficient.”
“Too great detail must be avoided, and the objects chosen must
be such as are most directly related to us, which are the most
necessary and the most useful.”
“Preference shall be given to domestic animals over those that are
wild, and to native animals over those of other countries. In the
case of plants, preference shall be given to those that serve for
food and for use in medicine.”
As far as possible, the object itself should be shown, so that the
idea shall be the more exact and vivid, and the impression the more
durable.
389. RECREATIONS IN PHYSICS.--La Chalotais explains that he means
by this phrase observations, experiments, and the simplest facts of
nature. Children should early be made acquainted with thermometers,
barometers, with the microscope, etc.
390. RECREATIONS IN MATHEMATICS.--All this is excellent, and La
Chalotais enters resolutely into the domain of modern methods. What
is more debatable is the idea of putting geometry and mathematics
into the programme of children’s studies, under this erroneous
pretext, that “geometry presents nothing but the sensible and the
palpable.” Let us grant, however, that it is easier to conceive
“clear ideas of bodies, lines, and angles that strike the eyes,
than abstract ideas of verbs, declensions, and conjugations, of an
accusative, an ablative, a subjunctive, an infinitive, or of the
omitted _that_.”
391. STUDIES OF THE SECOND PERIOD.--La Chalotais postpones the
study of the classical languages till the second period, the tenth
year. The course of study for this second period will comprise: 1.
French and Latin literature, or the humanities; 2. a continuation
of history, geography, mathematics, and natural history; 3.
criticism, logic, and metaphysics; 4. the art of invention; 5.
ethics.
La Chalotais complains that his contemporaries neglect French
literature, as though we had not admirable models in our national
language. Out of one hundred pupils there are not five who will
find it useful to write in Latin; while there is not one of them
who will have occasion to speak or write in Greek, and to construct
Latin verses. All, on the contrary, ought to know their native
language. Consequently, our author suggests the idea of devoting
the morning session to French, and that of the afternoon to Latin,
so that the pupils who have no need of the ancient languages may
pursue only the courses in French.
392. THE LIVING LANGUAGES.--La Chalotais thinks the knowledge
of two living languages to be necessary, “the English for
science, and the German for war.” German literature had not yet
produced its masterpieces, and it is seen that at this period the
utility of German appears especially with reference to military
affairs. However it may be, let us be grateful to him for having
appreciated, as he has done, the living languages. “It is wrong,”
he says, “to treat them nearly as we treat our contemporaries, with
a sort of indifference. Without the Greek and Latin languages there
is no real and solid erudition; and there is no complete erudition
without the others.”
393. OTHER STUDIES.--How many judicious or just reflections we have
still to gather from the _Essay on National Education_, as upon
the teaching of the ancient languages, which La Chalotais, however,
is wrong in restricting to too small a number of years; upon the
necessity of presenting to pupils as subjects for composition, not
puerile amplifications, or dissertations on facts or matters of
which they are ignorant, but things which they know, which have
happened to them, “their occupations, their amusements, or their
troubles”; upon logic or criticism, the study of which should not
be deferred till the end of the course, as is still done in our
day; upon philosophy, which is, he says, “the characteristic of
the eighteenth century, as that of the sixteenth was erudition,
and that of the seventeenth was talent!” La Chalotais reserves
the place of honor to ethics, “which is the most important of all
the sciences, and which is, as much as any other, susceptible of
demonstration.”
394. THE QUESTION OF BOOKS.--In tracing his programme of studies,
so new in many particulars, La Chalotais took into account the
difficulties that would be encountered in assuring, and, so to
speak, in improvising, the execution of it, at a time when there
existed neither competent teachers nor properly constructed books.
Teachers especially, he said, are difficult to train. But, while
waiting for the recruiting of the teaching force, La Chalotais puts
great dependence on elementary books, which might, he thought,
be composed within two years, if the king would encourage the
publication of them, and if the Academies would put them up for
competition.
“These books would be the best instruction which the masters could
give, and would take the place of every other method. Whatever
course we may take, we cannot dispense with new books. These books,
once made, would make trained teachers unnecessary, and there
would then be no longer any occasion for discussion as to their
qualities, whether they should be priests, or married, or single.
All would be good, provided they were religious, moral, and knew
how to read; they would soon train themselves while training their
pupils.”
There is much exaggeration in these words. The book, as we know,
cannot supply the place of teachers. But the language of La
Chalotais was adapted to circumstances as they existed. He spoke in
this way, because, in his impatience to reach his end, he would try
to remedy the educational poverty of his time, and supply the lack
of good teachers by provisional expedients, by means which he found
within his reach.
395. ARISTOCRATIC PREJUDICES.--That which we would expunge from
the book of La Chalotais is his opinion on primary instruction.
Blinded by some unexplained distrust of the people, and dominated
by aristocratic tendencies, he complains of the extension of
instruction. He demands that the knowledge of the poor do not
extend beyond their pursuits. He bitterly criticises the thirst for
knowledge which is beginning to pervade the lower classes of the
nation.
“Even the people can study. Laborers and artisans send their
children to the colleges of the smaller cities.... When these
children have accomplished a summary course of study which has
taught them only to disdain the occupation of their father, they
rush into the cloisters and become ecclesiastics; or they exercise
judicial functions, and often become subjects harmful to society.
The Brethren of the Christian Doctrine (_sic_), who are called
_ignorantins_, have just appeared to complete the general ruin;
they teach people to read and write who ought to learn only to
draw, and to handle the plane and the file, but have no disposition
to do it. They are the rivals or the successors of the Jesuits.”
A singular force of prejudice was necessary to conceive that the
Brethren of the Christian Schools were instructing the people too
highly.
Let it be said, however, towards exonerating La Chalotais, that he
perhaps does not so much attack the instruction in itself, as the
bad way in which it is given. What he censures is instruction that
is badly conceived, that which takes people from their own class.
In some other passages of his book we see that he would be disposed
to disseminate the new education among the ranks of the people.
“It is the State, it is the larger part of the nation, that must
be kept principally in view in education; for twenty millions of
men ought to be held in greater consideration than one million,
and the _peasantry, who are not yet a class_ in France, as
they are in Sweden, _ought not to be neglected in a system of
instruction_. Education is equally solicitous that letters should
be cultivated, and that the fields should be plowed; that all the
sciences and the useful arts should be perfected; that justice
should be administered and that religion should be taught; that
there should be instructed and competent generals, magistrates,
and ecclesiastics, and skillful artists and citizens, all in fit
proportion. It is for the government to make each citizen so
pleased with his condition that he may not be forced to withdraw
from it.”
Let us quote one sentence more, which is almost the formula that
to-day is so dear to the friends of instruction:--
“We do not fear to assert, in general, that in the condition in
which Europe now is, the people that are the most enlightened will
always have the advantage over those who are the less so.”
396. GENERAL CONCLUSION.--Notwithstanding the faults which mar
it, the work of La Chalotais is none the less one of the most
remarkable essays of the earlier French pedagogy. “La Chalotais,”
says Gréard, “belongs to the school of Rousseau; but on more than
one point he departs from the plan traced by the master. He escapes
from the allurements of the paradox. Relatively he has the spirit
of moderation. He is a classic without prejudices, an innovator
without temerity.”
His book is pre-eminently a book of polemics, written with the
ardor of one who is engaged in a fight, and overflowing with a
generous passion. What noble words are the following:--
“Let the young man learn what bread a ploughman, a day laborer, or
an artisan eats. He will see in the sequel how they are deprived
of the bread which they earn with so much difficulty, and how one
portion of men live at the expense of the other.”
In these lines, which breathe a sentiment of profound pity for the
disinherited of this world, we already hear, as it were, the signal
cry announcing the social reclamations of the French Revolution.
379. ROLLAND (1734-1794).--La Chalotais, after having criticised
the old methods, proposed new ones; Rolland attempted to put them
in practice. La Chalotais is a polemic and a theorist; Rolland
is an administrator. President of the Parliament of Paris, he
presented to his colleagues, in 1768, a Report which is a real
system of education.[196] But above all, he gave his personal
attention to the administration of the College Louis-le-Grand. An
ardent and impassioned adversary of the Jesuits, he used every
means to put public instruction in a condition to do without them.
“Noble and wise spirit, patient and courageous reason, who, for
twenty years, even during exile and after the dissolution of his
society, did not abandon for a single moment the work he had
undertaken, but brought it, almost perfected, to the very confines
of the Revolution; a heart divested of every ambition, who, chosen
by popular wish, and by the cabinet of the king, as director of
public instruction, obstinately entrenched himself in the peace
of his studious retreat.” This is the judgment of a member of the
University, in the nineteenth century, Dubois, director of the
Normal School.
No doubt Rolland is not an original educator. “It is in Rollin’s
_Traité des études_,” he says, “that every teacher will find
the true rules for education.” Besides, he borrowed ideas from
La Chalotais, and also from the _Mémoires_ which the University
of Paris drew up in 1763 and 1764 at the request of Parliament;
so that the interest in his work is less, perhaps, in its
personal views than in the indications it furnishes relative
to the situation of the University and its tendency towards
self-reformation.
398. INSTRUCTION WITHIN THE REACH OF ALL.--At least on one point
Rolland is superior to La Chalotais; he takes a bold stand for
the necessity of primary instruction, and for the progress and
diffusion of human knowledge.
“Education cannot be too widely diffused, to the end that there
may be no class of citizens who may not be brought to participate
in its benefits. It is expedient that _each citizen receive the
education_ which is adapted to his needs.”[197]
It is true that Rolland joins in the wish expressed by the
University, which demanded a reduction in the number of colleges.
But only colleges for the higher studies were in question,
and Rolland thought less of restricting instruction than of
proportioning and adapting it to the needs of the different classes
of society.
“_Each one ought to have the opportunity to receive the education_
which is adapted to his needs.... Now each soil,” adds Rolland,
“is not susceptible of the same culture and the same product.
Each mind does not demand the same degree of culture. All men
have neither the same needs nor the same talents; and it is in
proportion to these talents and these needs that public education
ought to be regulated.”
Rolland shared the prejudices of La Chalotais against “the new
Order founded by La Salle”; but none the less on this account did
he demand instruction for all.
“The knowledge of reading and writing, which is the key to all the
other sciences, ought to be universally diffused. Without this
the teachings of the clergy are useless, for the memory is rarely
faithful enough; and reading alone can impress in a durable manner
what it is important never to forget.” Would it be granted by every
one to-day, affected by prejudices that are ever re-appearing, that
“the laborer who has received some sort of instruction is but the
more diligent and the more skillful by reason of it”?
399. THE NORMAL SCHOOL.--We shall not dwell upon the methods
and schemes of study proposed by Rolland. Save very urgent
recommendations relative to the study of the national history and
of the French language, we shall find nothing very new in them.
What deserve to be pointed out, by way of compensation, are the
important innovations which he wished to introduce into the general
organization of public instruction.
First there was the idea of a higher normal school, of a seminary
for professors. The University had already expressed the wish that
such an establishment should be founded. To be convinced how much
this pedagogical seminary, conceived as far back as 1763, resembled
our actual Normal School, it suffices to note the following
details. The establishment was to be governed by professors drawn
from the different faculties, according to the different subjects
of instruction. The young men received on competitive examination
were to be divided into three classes, corresponding to the three
grades of admission. Within the establishment they were to take
part in a series of discussions, after a given time to submit to
the tests for graduation, and finally to be placed in the colleges.
Is it not true that there was no important addition to be made to
this scheme? Rolland also required that pedagogics have a place
among the studies of these future professors, and that definite and
systematic instruction be given in this art, so important to the
teachers of youth.
Rolland does not stop even there. He provides for inspectors, or
_visitors_, who are to examine all the colleges each year. Finally,
he subjects all scholastic establishments to one single authority,
to a council of the government, to which he applies the rather odd
title, the “Bureau of Correspondence.”
400. SPIRIT OF CENTRALIZATION.--Whatever opinion may be formed of
absolute centralization, which, in our century, has become the
law of public instruction, and has caused the disappearance of
provincial franchises, it is certain that the parliamentarians of
the eighteenth century were the first to conceive it and desire it,
if not to realize it. Paris, in Rolland’s plan, becomes the centre
of public instruction. The universities distributed through the
provinces are co-ordinated and made dependent on that of Paris.
“Is it not desirable,” said Rolland, “that the good taste which
everything concurs to produce in the capital, be diffused to the
very extremities of the kingdom; that every Frenchman participate
in the treasures of knowledge which are there accumulating from
day to day; that the young men who have the same country, who
are destined to serve the same prince and to fulfill the same
functions, receive the same lessons and be imbued with the same
maxims; that one part of France be not under the clouds of
ignorance while letters shed the purest light in another; in a
word, that the time come when a young man educated in a province
cannot be distinguished from one who has been trained in the
capital?” And he adds that “the only means for attaining an end so
desirable is to make Paris the centre of public instruction.”
Besides the gain that will thus accrue to instruction, Rolland sees
this other advantage, that, through uniformity in instruction,
there will be secured a uniformity in manners and in laws. By means
of a uniform education, “the young men of all the provinces will
divest themselves of all their prejudices of birth; they will form
the same ideas of virtue and justice; they will demand uniform
laws, which would have offended their fathers.”
By this means, finally, there will be developed a national spirit,
a national character, and a national jurisprudence, “the only means
of recreating love of country.” Is it not true that the great
magistrates of the close of the eighteenth century deserve also to
be counted among the founders of French unity?
401. TURGOT (1727-1781).--In his _Mémoires_ to the king (1775),
Turgot set forth analogous ideas, and also demanded the formation
of a council of public instruction. He made an eloquent plea for
the establishment of a civil and national education which should be
extended to the country at large.
“Your kingdom, Sir, is of this world. Without opposing any obstacle
to the instructions whose object is higher, and which already
have their rules and their expounders, I think I can propose to
you nothing of more advantage to your people than to cause to be
given to all your subjects an instruction which shows them the
obligations they owe to society and to your power which protects
them, the duties which those obligations impose on them, and the
interest which they have in fulfilling those duties for the public
good and their own. This moral and social instruction requires
books expressly prepared, by competition, and with great care, and
a schoolmaster in each parish to teach them to children, along
with the art of writing, reading, counting, measuring, and the
principles of mechanics.”
“The study of the duty of citizenship ought to be the foundation of
all the other studies.”
“There are methods and establishments for training geometricians,
physicists, and painters, but there are none for training citizens.”
In a word, La Chalotais, Rolland, Turgot, and some of their
contemporaries, were real precursors of the French Revolution
in the matter of education. At the date of 1762 the scholastic
revolution began, at least so far as secondary instruction is
concerned. The Parliaments of that period conceived the plan of the
University of the nineteenth century, and prepared for the work of
Napoleon I. But they left to the men of the Revolution the honor of
being the first to organize primary instruction.
[402. ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.--1. This study exhibits the evils
brought upon a country by an education controlled and
administered by a dominant Church for the attainment of its
own ends; and also the efforts of a nation to save itself from
imminent disaster by making the State the great public educator.
2. The right of the State to self-preservation is the vindication
of its right to control and direct public education. The State
thus becomes the patron of the public school; the product it
requires is good citizenship; and for the sake of securing this
product the State endows the school, wholly or in part.
3. The situation in France, as described in this study, is
an aggravated case of what may occur whenever education is
administered by a class having special interests and ambitions;
and under some form there must be the intervention of the State
as a means of protecting its own interests.
4. When education is administered in the main by the literary
class, there is some danger that the instruction may not be that
which is best adapted to the needs of other classes.]
FOOTNOTES:
[194] See the pamphlet published in 1764 entitled: _Mémoires
historiques sur l’orbilianisme et les correcteurs des Jésuites_.
[195] Duclos, _Considérations sur les mœurs de ce siècle_. Ch. II.
_Sur l’éducation et les préjugés_.
[196] See the _Recueil_ of the works of President Rolland, printed
in 1783, by order of the executive committee of the College
Louis-le-Grand.
[197] _Recueil_, etc., p. 25.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.--MIRABEAU, TALLEYRAND, CONDORCET.
CONTRADICTORY JUDGMENTS ON THE WORK OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION;
GENERAL CHARACTER OF THAT WORK; THE STATE OF PRIMARY INSTRUCTION;
WHAT WAS TAUGHT IN THE SCHOOLS; DISCIPLINE; THE SITUATION OF
TEACHERS; THE RECRUITMENT OF TEACHERS; WHAT THE SCHOOL ITSELF
WAS; THE PECULIAR WORK OF THE REVOLUTION; THE CAHIERS OF 1789;
MIRABEAU (1749-1791) AND HIS TRAVAIL SUR L’INSTRUCTION PUBLIQUE;
DANGERS OF IGNORANCE; LIBERTY OF TEACHING; THE CONSTITUENT
ASSEMBLY AND THE RAPPORT OF TALLEYRAND; TALLEYRAND (1758-1838);
POLITICAL PRINCIPLES OF UNIVERSAL INSTRUCTION; FOUR GRADES OF
INSTRUCTION; POLITICAL CATECHISM; INDEPENDENT MORALITY; THE
LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY AND THE RAPPORT OF CONDORCET; CONDORCET
(1743-1794); GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS ON EDUCATION; INSTRUCTION
AND MORALITY; INSTRUCTION AND PROGRESS; LIBERALITY OF CONDORCET;
FIVE GRADES OF INSTRUCTION; PURPOSE AND PROGRAMME OF PRIMARY
INSTRUCTION; IDEA OF COURSES FOR ADULTS; THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN;
PREJUDICES; FINAL JUDGMENT; ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.
404. CONTRADICTORY JUDGMENTS ON THE WORK OF THE REVOLUTION.--An
historian of education in France, Théry, opens his chapter on the
Revolution with these contemptuous words, “One does not study
a void, one does not analyze a negation.”[198] A more recent
historian of public instruction during the Revolution, Albert
Duruy, arriving at the work of Condorcet, certainly the most
important undertaking of the pedagogy of the Revolution, does not
hesitate to record this absolute and summary judgment: “We are now
no longer in the real and in the possible; we are travelling in the
land of chimeras; we are soaring in space at heights which admit of
only ideal attainment.”[199]
How easy it is to say this! To believe these facile judges, one
who would estimate the efforts of the Revolution in the matter of
public instruction would have to choose between a nothing and a
chimera. The men of the Revolution have done nothing, say some;
they are dreamers and idealists, say others.
These assertions do not bear examination. For every impartial
observer it is certain that the Revolution opened a new era in
education, and the proof of this is to be found in the very
documents that our opponents so triflingly condemn, and the
practical spirit of which they misconceive.
405. GENERAL CHARACTER OF THAT WORK.--It is not that the men of
the Revolution were educators in the strict sense of the term.
The science of education is not indebted to them for new methods.
They have not completed the work of Locke, of Rousseau, and of
La Chalotais; but they were the first to attempt a legislative
organization of a vast system of public instruction. It is just to
place them in the front rank of the men who might be called “the
politicians of education.” Doubtless they lacked time for applying
their ideas, but they had at least the merit of having conceived
these ideas, and of having embodied them in legislative acts. The
principles which we proclaim to-day, they formulated. The solutions
which we attempt to put in practice after a century of waiting,
were decreed by them. The reader who will follow the long series of
reports and decrees which constitutes the pedagogical work of the
Revolution will have witnessed the genesis of popular instruction
in France.
406. THE STATE OF PRIMARY INSTRUCTION.--In order to form a proper
appreciation of the merits of the men of the Revolution, it is
first necessary to consider in what a deplorable state they found
primary instruction. What a contrast between that which they hoped
to do and the actual situation in 1789! I very well know that
fancy sketches have been drawn of the old régime. A very showy
enumeration has been made of the number of colleges; but we have
not been told how many of these colleges had no professors, and
how many had no pupils. And so of the schools; they are found
everywhere, but it remains to be shown what was taught in them, and
whether anything was taught in them.[200]
Party writers who are bound to gainsay the work of the French
Revolution in the matter of education, generally put under
contribution, to serve their political prejudices, the old communal
archives. They cite imaginary statistics which prove, for example,
that in the diocese of Rouen, in 1718, there were 855 schools for
boys, and 306 schools for girls, for a territory of 1159 parishes.
It is first necessary to verify these statistics, whose accuracy
has not been demonstrated, and whose figures were evidently
obtained only by counting a school wherever the rector of the
parish gave lessons in reading and in the catechism to three or
four children.
But there are other replies to make to the traducers of the
Revolution who tax their ingenuity to prove that instruction
was flourishing under the old régime, and that the Revolution
destroyed more than it created. With this assumed efflorescence of
schools of which we hear, it is necessary to contrast the results
as shown by authentic statistics of the number of illiterates. In
1790 there was 53 per cent of men and 73 per cent of women who
could not sign their names to their marriage contracts.
Besides, we must inquire what was taught in these pretended
schools, how many children attended them, and what was the material
and moral condition of the teachers who directed them.
407. WHAT WAS TAUGHT IN THE SCHOOLS.--Instruction was reduced to
the catechism, to reading and writing. On this point there can be
no dispute. The official programme of the Brethren of the Christian
Schools did not go beyond this. The ordinance of Louis XIV., dated
in 1698, has been pompously quoted.
“We would have appointed,” it is there said, “as far as it shall be
possible, masters and mistresses in all the parishes where there
are none, to instruct all children, and _in particular those whose
parents have made profession of the pretended reformed religion_,
in the catechism and the prayers which are necessary; to take them
to mass on every work day; and also to teach reading and writing
_to those who will need this knowledge_.”
But does not this very text support those who maintain that the
Monarchy and the Church have never encouraged primary instruction
except as required by the necessities of the struggle against
heresy, and that primary instruction under the old régime was
scarcely more than an instrument of religious domination?
Most often the school was simply a place to which parents sent
their children for temporary care. Writing was not always taught
in it. A school-mistress of Haute-Marne was forbidden to teach
writing “for fear her pupils might employ their knowledge in
writing love-letters.”
408. DISCIPLINE.--Corporal punishments were more than ever the
order of the day. The bishop of Montpellier, at the end of the
seventeenth century, forbids, it is true, beating with sticks,
kicks, and raps on the head; but he authorizes the ferule and the
rod, on the condition that the patient be not completely exposed.
409. CONDITION OF THE TEACHERS.--That which is graver still is that
the teachers themselves (I speak of lay teachers, who, it is true,
were not numerous) lived in a wretched condition, without material
independence and without moral dignity. In general, there were no
fixed salaries. Wages varied from 40 to 200 francs, arbitrarily
fixed by the vestry-board or by the community, in return for a
great number of services the most various and the least exalted.
The school-masters were far less teachers than sextons, choristers,
beadles, bell-ringers, clock-makers, and even grave-diggers.
“Attendance at marriages and at burials was counted at the rate
of 15 sols and dinner for marriages, and 20 sols for burials.”
And Albert Duruy concludes that in this there were _substantial
advantages_ to the school-masters;[201]--advantages dearly bought
in every case, and repudiated by those who were interested in
them. “The more services we render the community,” said the
teachers of Bourgogne in their complaints in 1789, “the more we
are degraded.”[202] The school-masters were scarcely more than the
domestics of the _curé_.
In order to live, they were not only obliged to accept these church
services, but they also became shoemakers, tailors, innkeepers,
millers, etc. The teacher of the commune of Angles, in the High
Alps, was a “barbers’ surgeon.”
Thus there was no assured salary, and consequently no moral
consideration. “In the communes, teachers were regarded as
strangers and not as citizens; like tramps and vagrants, they were
not admitted to the assemblies of the commune.”
410. THE RECRUITMENT OF TEACHERS.--Nowhere were there normal
schools for the training of teachers. The schools were entrusted
to the first comer. The bishop granted his approbation, or
permission to teach, after an examination of the most summary kind.
The duties of teaching were the means of subsistence which were
accepted without call and without serious preparation. In Provence,
school-masters attended kinds of “teachers’ fairs” for the purpose
of being hired. In the Alps, teachers were numerous, but only in
winter. They tarried in the plain and in the valleys only during
the inclement season. They returned home for the labors of the
summer.
Consequently, most of the schools existed only in name. “The
schools,” we are told,[203] “were in vacation for four or five
months.” For a half of the year, the school-masters were free
to follow another trade, or, rather, to devote themselves more
completely to their ordinary trade, which their school duties did
not always interrupt.
411. WHAT THE SCHOOL ITSELF WAS.--School-houses were most
frequently merely wretched huts, wooden cots, and narrow
ground-floors, badly lighted, which served at the same time as a
domicile for the school-master and his family, and as a class-room
for pupils. Benches and tables were things rarely seen, and pupils
wrote while standing.
In a word, the state of primary instruction, when the
States-General opened in 1789, was as follows: schools few in
number and poorly attended; few lay teachers, trained no one
knows how, without thorough instruction, and, as they themselves
said, “degraded” by their inferior position; few or no elementary
books; gratuity only partial; finally, a general indifference
for elementary instruction, which philosophers like Voltaire,
and Rousseau, and Parliamentarians like La Chalotais, themselves
lightly esteemed.
412. THE PROPER WORK OF THE REVOLUTION.--I do not say that the
Revolution accomplished all that there was to be attempted in order
to bring instruction up to the needs of the new society; but it
purposed to do this. Every time a liberal ministry has decided
to work for the promotion of instruction, it has revived its
plans; and it is these same plans that by a vigorous effort public
authority has attempted to realize in recent times.
413. THE REPORTS OF 1789.--Already, in the reports of 1789, public
opinion vigorously pronounced itself in favor of educational
reforms. “The _cahiers_ of 1789, even those of the clergy and
the nobility, demand the reorganization of public instruction on
a comprehensive plan. The _cahiers_ of the clergy of Rodez and
of Saumur demand ‘that there may be formed a plan of _national
education_ for the young’; those of Lyons, that education be
restricted ‘to a teaching body whose members may not be removable
except for negligence, misconduct, or incapacity; that it may no
longer be conducted according to arbitrary principles, and that all
public instructors be obliged to conform to a uniform plan adopted
by the States-General.’ The _cahiers_ of the nobility of Lyons
insist that ‘a national character’ be impressed on the education
of both sexes. Those of Paris demand ‘that public education be
perfected, and extended to all classes of citizens.’ Those of
Blois, ‘that there be established a council composed of the most
enlightened scholars of the capital and of the provinces and of
the citizens of the different orders, to form a plan of national
education, for the use of all the classes of society, and to edit
elementary treatises.’”[204]
414. MIRABEAU (1749-1791).--From the first days of the Revolution,
pedagogical literature abounds, and gives evidence of the
ever-growing interest which public opinion attaches to educational
questions. The Oratorians, of whom La Chalotais said, “that they
were free from the prejudices of the school and of the cloister,
and that they were citizens,” present to the National Assembly
a series of scholastic plans. On its part, the Assembly sets
itself at work; Talleyrand prepares his great report, and Mirabeau
embodies his own reflections in four eloquent discourses.
Mirabeau’s discourses, published after his death through the good
offices of his friend Cabanis, had the following titles: 1. _Draft
of a Law for the Organization of the Teaching Body_; 2. _Public and
Military Festivals_; 3. _Organization of a National Lycée_; 4. _The
Education of the Heir Presumptive of the Crown_.
415. THE DANGERS OF IGNORANCE.--With what brilliancy the
illustrious orator made appear the advantages and the necessity of
instruction!
“Those who desire that the peasant may not know how to _read or
write_, have doubtless made a patrimony of his ignorance, and
their motives are not difficult to appreciate; but they do not
know that when they have made a wild beast of a man, they expose
themselves to the momentary danger of seeing him transformed into
a savage beast. Without intelligence there is no morality. But
on whom, then, is it important to bestow intelligence, if it is
not upon the rich? Is not the safeguard of their enjoyments the
morality of the people? Through the influence of the laws, through
that of a wise administration, through the efforts to which each
one should be inspired by the hope of ameliorating the condition
of his fellows, exert yourselves, public and private citizens, to
diffuse in all quarters the noble fruits of knowledge. Believe
that in dissipating one single error, in propagating one single
wholesome truth, you will do something for the happiness of the
human race; and whoever you are, do not have the least doubt that
it is only by this means that you can assure your own happiness.”
But through some inexplicable spirit of timidity, Mirabeau did not
draw from these principles the consequences that they permit. He
does not admit that the State can impose the obligation to attend
school.
“Society,” he says, “has not the right to prescribe instruction as
a duty.... Public authority has not the right, with respect to the
members of the social body, to go beyond the limits of watchfulness
against injustice and of protection against violence....”
“Society,” he adds, “can exact of each one only the sacrifices
necessary for the maintenance of the liberty and the safety of all.”
Mirabeau forgets that the obligation to send children to school is
exactly one of those necessary sacrifices which the State has the
right to impose on parents.
Hostile to obligation, Mirabeau feels no greater partisanship for
gratuity:--
“Gratuitous education,” he said, “is paid for by everybody, while
its fruits are immediately gathered by only a small number of
individuals.”
416. LIBERTY OF TEACHING.--Like so many other generous spirits,
Mirabeau cherished the dream of the most complete liberty of
teaching.[205]
“Your single purpose,” he said to the members, “is to give to man
the use of all his faculties, to make him enjoy all his rights, to
develop the corporate life out of all the individual lives freely
developed, and the will of the whole out of all personal wills.”
417. DISTRIBUTION OF STUDIES.--In Mirabeau’s plan, public and
national instruction depends, not on the executive power, but on
“the magistrates who truly represent the people, that is to say,
who are elected and often renewed by the people,”--in other terms,
the officers of departments or districts. Establishments for
instruction ought not to form a consolidated body.
Let us observe, finally, that by the side of the primary schools
Mirabeau established a college of literature for each department,
and at Paris, a single National Lycée, “designed to secure to
a select number of French youth the means of finishing their
education.” In this he established a chair of _method_, which, he
said, ought to be the basis of instruction.
In conclusion, the work of Mirabeau is but a very imperfect sketch,
and a sort of graduated transition between the old and the new
régime.
We do not yet find in it the grand ideas which are to impassion
men, and it is the _Rapport_ of Talleyrand which constitutes the
real introduction to the educational work of the Revolution.
418. THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY AND TALLEYRAND.--The constitution of
Sept. 4, 1791, announced the following provision:--
“There shall be created and organized a system of public
instruction, common to all citizens, and gratuitous with respect to
those branches of instruction which are indispensable for all men.”
It was to put in force the decree of the Constitution that
Talleyrand drew up his _Rapport_ and presented it to the Assembly
at the sessions of September 10 and 11. The entire bill contained
not less than 208 articles. Having reached the term of its
troubled existence, the Assembly did not find the time to discuss
it, and, while regretting “not having established the bases of
the regeneration of education,” it referred the examination of
Talleyrand’s work to the Legislative Assembly.
The Legislative Assembly showed but little anxiety to accept the
legacy of its predecessor. Another report, that of Condorcet, was
prepared, so that the bill of Talleyrand never had the honor of a
parliamentary discussion.
419. TALLEYRAND (1758-1838).--The ex-bishop of Autun, having
become a revolutionist of 1789, before being the chamberlain of
Napoleon I. and the minister of Louis XVIII., scarcely deserves by
his character the esteem of history; he too often gave a striking
example of political versatility. But at least, by his supple
and acute intelligence, and by the abundance of his ideas, he
has always risen to the height of the various tasks that he has
undertaken, and his _Rapport_ is a remarkable work.
420. GENERAL PRINCIPLES.--As Montesquieu has said, “the laws of
education ought to be relative to the principles of government.”
It is by this truth that Talleyrand is inspired in the long
considerations that serve as a preamble to his bill.
What was to be done in the presence of a constitution which,
limiting the powers of the king, called the entire people to
participate in political life? That constitution would have
remained sterile, would have been but a dead letter, if a suitable
education had not come to vivify it by causing it to pass, so to
speak, into the blood of the nation. In what did the new régime
consist? You have separated, said Talleyrand to the members, you
have separated the will of the whole, or the power of making the
laws, from the executive power, which you have reserved to the
king. But that general will must be upright, and, in order to
be upright, it must be enlightened and instructed. After having
given power to the people, you ought to teach them wisdom. Of what
use would it be to enfranchise brutal and unconscious forces, to
turn them over to their own keeping? Instruction is the necessary
counterpoise of liberty. The law, which is henceforth the work of
the people, ought not to be at the mercy of the tumultuous opinions
of an ignorant multitude.
421. EDUCATION AS RELATED TO LIBERTY AND EQUALITY.--Talleyrand
is pleased with his thought, and, considering in turn the two
fundamental ideas of the Revolution, the idea of equality and the
idea of liberty, he shows, not without some length of analysis,
that instruction is necessary, on the one hand, to create free
individuals, by giving to them a conscience and a reason, and on
the other, to draw men together by diminishing the inequality of
intelligences.
422. RULES FOR PUBLIC INSTRUCTION.--Instruction is due to all.
There must be schools in the villages as in the cities. Instruction
ought to be given by all; there ought to be no privilege in
instruction. Finally, instruction ought to extend to all subjects;
everything shall be taught which can be taught:--
“In a well organized society, though no one can attain to universal
knowledge, it should nevertheless be possible to learn everything.”
423. POLITICAL EDUCATION.--At the basis of every educational
system there is always a dominant and essential thought. In the
Middle Age--and the Middle Age is continued in the schools of the
Jesuits--it is the idea of salvation, it is the preparation of
the soul for the future life. In the seventeenth century it is the
conception of a perfect justness of spirit joined to uprightness of
heart; such was the ideal of the solitaries of Port Royal. In 1792
politics became the almost exclusive preoccupation of the educators
of youth. Everything else--religion, accuracy of judgment, nobility
of heart--is relegated to the second place: man is nothing more
than a political animal, brought into the world to know, to love,
and to obey the constitution.
The _Declaration of the Rights of Man_ became, in the system of
Talleyrand, the catechism of childhood. It is necessary that the
future citizen learn to know, to love, to obey, and finally to
perfect the constitution. We cannot help thinking that Talleyrand
himself showed a marvellous aptitude for loving and obeying the
constitution. Unfortunately this has not always been the case!
424. UNIVERSAL MORALITY.--One of the most beautiful pages of
Talleyrand’s work is certainly that in which he recommends the
teaching of universal morality, and claims the autonomy of natural
laws, distinct from all positive religion.
“We must learn to infuse ourselves with morality, which is the
first need of all constitutions.... Morality must be taught as
a real science, whose principles will be demonstrated to the
reason of all men, and to that of all ages. It is only in this
way that it will resist all trials. It has long been a matter of
lamentation to see men of all nations and of all religions make
it depend exclusively on that multitude of opinions which divide
them. From this have resulted great evils; for abandoning morality
to uncertainty, and often to absurdity, it has necessarily been
compromised; it has been made versatile and unsettled. It is
time to establish it upon its own bases, and to show men that if
baneful divisions separate them, they at least have in morality a
common meeting place where they all ought to take refuge and unite
for protection. It is necessary, then, to detach it in some sort
from everything else, in order to reunite it at once to that which
merits our approval and our homage.... This change is simple and
injures nothing; above all, it is possible. How is it possible not
to see, in fact, that abstraction being made of every system and of
every opinion, and by considering in men only their relations with
other men, they can be taught what is good and just, made to love
it, and made to find happiness in virtuous actions and wretchedness
in those which are not so?”
425. FOUR GRADES OF INSTRUCTION.--The organization of instruction,
in Talleyrand’s bill, was “to be combined with that of the
government,” and to be modeled after the division of administrative
functions. The _Rapport_ established four grades of instruction.
There was a school for each _canton_, corresponding to each
primary assembly. Then came intermediate or secondary instruction,
intended, if not for all, at least for the greater number, and
given in the principal town of the district, or _arrondissement_.
In the third place, special schools, scattered over the territory
of the kingdom, in the principal towns of the departments, prepare
young men for the different professions. Finally, the select
intelligences find at Paris, in the National Institute, all that
constitutes the higher instruction.
The great novelty of this system was the creation of cantonal
schools, open to peasants and to workmen, to those whom, up to this
time, improvidence or the purpose of the great sent off to their
plows or to their planes.
426. GRATUITY OF PRIMARY INSTRUCTION.--Talleyrand did not desire
compulsory education any more than Mirabeau; but, in accordance
with the constitution of 1791, he demands the gratuity of primary
instruction. Society is under obligations to give elementary
instruction, but not intermediate and secondary instruction, and
still less, special and higher instruction. Gratuitous for the
lowest grade, and in case of that elementary knowledge which
constitutes for every civilized man a real moral necessity,
instruction ought not to be free to young men who aspire to a
liberal profession, because they have leisure, and who have leisure
because they have wealth. However, Talleyrand admits exceptions in
the case of talent. By the creation of national scholarships, the
doors of all the schools will be opened to select intelligences
whom the lowness of their condition would condemn to remain obscure
and unappreciated, did not society lend to them a helping hand.
427. PROGRAMME OF PRIMARY INSTRUCTION.--Primary instruction should
comprise the principles of the national language, the elementary
rules of calculation and mensuration; the elements of religion, the
principles of morals, the principles of the constitution; finally,
the development of the physical, intellectual, and moral powers.
428. MEANS OF INSTRUCTION.--We shall not insist on the details of
the organization of the different parts of that which Talleyrand
himself called his “immense machine.” Let us notice only the last
part of his work, where he discusses a certain number of general
questions under this arbitrary and unjustifiable title: _Des
moyens d’instruction_. The professors, carefully chosen, shall
be elected by the king. Talleyrand does not determine that they
shall be irremovable, but he requires that their situation shall
be surrounded by all possible guarantees. Prizes, and rewards of
every kind, shall encourage the teachers of youth to redouble
their zeal and to find new methods. Talleyrand counts on dramatic
representations and on national holidays to hasten the progress of
instruction. Finally, let it be added that he entrusts the supreme
direction of public instruction to six commissioners, chosen by the
king and obliged to make an annual report.
429. THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN.--Talleyrand, in his proposal, has not
wholly forgotten women, and what he has said of them is just and
sensible. He discusses the question of their political rights,
and, in accord with tradition and good sense, he concludes that
the happiness of women, their own interests, their nature and
their proper destination, ought to forbid them from entering the
political arena. What is particularly fit for them is a domestic
education, which, received in the family, prepares them for living
there. Like Mirabeau, he wishes woman to remain a woman. Her
function, said the great orator, is to perpetuate the species, to
watch with solicitude over the perilous periods of early youth,
and “to enchain to her feet all the energies of the husband by the
irresistible power of her weakness.” Without being as gallant in
his expressions, Talleyrand’s thought is the same. He thought it
necessary, however, in order to respond to certain proprieties,
that the State should establish institutions of public education
destined to replace the convents.
This desire sets right whatever was unreasonable in this passage of
his proposed law:--
“Girls shall not be admitted to the primary schools after the age
of eight. After that age the National Assembly advises parents to
entrust the education of their daughters only to themselves, and
reminds them that this is their first duty.”
430. THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY AND CONDORCET.--Of all the
educational undertakings of the Revolution, the most remarkable
is that of Condorcet. His _Rapport_ presented to the Legislative
Assembly, in behalf of the committee on public instruction, April
20 and 21, 1792, reprinted in 1793 by order of the Convention,
did not directly have the honor of a public discussion; but
it contained principles and solutions which are found in the
deliberations and legislative acts of his successors. It remained,
during the whole duration of the Convention, the widely accessible
source whence the legislators of that time, like Romme, Bouquier,
and Lakanal, drew their inspiration.
431. CONDORCET (1743-1794).--Condorcet was admirably qualified for
the task which the Legislative Assembly imposed on him, in charging
him with the organization of public instruction. During the first
years of the Revolution he had employed his leisure (he was not
a member of the Constituent Assembly) in writing five _Mémoires_
on instruction, which appeared in a periodical called the
_Bibliothèque de l’homme public_. The _Rapport_ which he submitted
to the Assembly was a sort of résumé of his long reflections.
Condorcet brought to this work, not the indiscreet imagination of
an improvised educator, but the authority of a competent thinker,
who, if he had no personal experience in teaching, had at least
reflected much on these topics and was conscious of all their
difficulties. Besides, he devoted himself to his work with the
ardor of an enthusiastic nature, and with the serious convictions
of a mind that had carried farther than any one else the religion
of progress and zeal for the public good.
432. GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS UPON INSTRUCTION.--All the
Revolutionists have sung the praises of instruction, of which they
were the passionate admirers. Condorcet is its reflective partisan.
He did not love it more than the others, but he comprehended it
better, and better stated why it should be loved. He first takes
up the ideas of Talleyrand, and shows that without instruction,
liberty and equality would be chimeras:--
“A free constitution which should not be correspondent to the
universal instruction of citizens, would come to destruction after
a few conflicts, and would degenerate into one of those forms of
government which cannot preserve the peace among an ignorant and
corrupt people.”
Anarchy or despotism, such is the future of peoples who have become
free before having been enlightened.
As to equality, without falling into the chimeras of an instruction
which should be the same for all, and which should reduce all men
to the same level, Condorcet desires to realize it so far as it is
possible. He desires that the poorest and the humblest shall be
sufficiently instructed to belong to himself, and not to be at the
mercy of the first charlatan who comes along, and also to be able
to fulfill his civil duties, to be an elector, a juror, etc.
433. INSTRUCTION AND MORALITY.--The instrument of liberty and
equality, instruction, in the opinion of Condorcet, is, in
addition, the real source of public morality and of human progress.
If it were not correspondent to the advances in knowledge, a free
and impartial constitution would be hostile rather than favorable
to good morals.
“Instruction alone can give the assurance that the principle of
justice which the equality of rights ordains, shall not be in
contradiction with this other principle, which prescribes that
only those rights shall be accorded to men which they can exercise
without danger to society.”
But it is moral reasons still more than political motives that make
instruction the condition of virtue. Condorcet has shrewdly seen
that the vices of the people come chiefly from their intellectual
impotency.
“These vices come,” he says, “from the need of escaping from
_ennui_ in moments of leisure, and in escaping from it through
sensations and not through ideas.”
These are notable words which should never be lost sight of by the
teachers and moralists of the people.
To cause gross natures to pass from the life of the senses to the
intellectual life; to make study agreeable to the end that the
higher pleasures of the spirit may struggle successfully against
the appetites for material pleasures; to put the book in the place
of the wine bottle; to substitute the library for the saloon; in
a word, _to replace sensation by idea_,--such is the fundamental
problem of popular education.
434. INSTRUCTION AND PROGRESS.--Condorcet was a fanatic on the
subject of progress. Up to the last moment of his life he dreamed
of progress, its conditions, and its laws. Now the most potent
means of hastening progress is to instruct men; and here is the
final reason why instruction is so dear to him.
These are grand words:--
“If the indefinite improvement of our species is, as I believe, a
general law of nature, man ought no longer to regard himself as a
being limited to a transitory and isolated existence, destined to
vanish after an alternative of happiness or of misery for himself,
and of good and evil for those whom chance has placed near him; but
he becomes an active part of the grand whole, and a fellow-laborer
in a work that is eternal. In an existence of a moment, and upon a
point in space, he can, by his works, compass all places, relate
himself to all the centuries, and continue to act long centuries
after his memory has disappeared from the earth.” And further on:
“For a long time I have considered these views as dreams which were
to be realized only in an indefinite future, and for a world where
I should not exist. A happy event has suddenly opened an immense
career to the hopes of the human race; a single instant has put a
century of distance between the man of to-day and him of to-morrow.”
435. THE LIBERALITY OF CONDORCET.--Wrongly credited with a despotic
and absolute habit of mind, Condorcet is, on the contrary, full
of scruples and penetrated with respect as regards the liberty
of individual opinions. In fact, he carefully distinguishes
instruction from education. Instruction has to do with positive
and certain knowledge, the truths of fact and of calculation;
education, with political and religious beliefs. Now, if the State
is the natural dispenser of instruction, it ought, on the contrary,
in the matter of education, to forbear, and to declare itself
incompetent. In other words, the State ought not to abuse its power
by imposing by force on its citizens such or such a religious
_Credo_, such or such a political dogma.
“Public authority cannot establish a body of doctrine which is to
be exclusively taught. No public power ought to have the authority,
or even the permission, to prevent the development of new truths,
or the teaching of theories contrary to its particular policy or to
its momentary interests.”
436. FIVE GRADES OF INSTRUCTION.--Condorcet distinguishes five
grades of instruction: 1. Primary schools proper; 2. Secondary
schools, that is, such as we now call higher primary schools; 3.
_Institutes_, or colleges of secondary instruction; 4. _Lycées_,
or institutions of higher instruction; 5. The _National Society of
Sciences and Arts_, which corresponds to our Institute.
Two things are especially to be noted: first, Condorcet establishes
for the first time higher primary schools, and demands one for
each district, and in addition one for each town of four thousand
inhabitants; then, for primary schools proper, he takes the
population as a basis for their establishment, and requires one for
each four hundred inhabitants.[206]
437. PURPOSE AND PLAN OF PRIMARY INSTRUCTION.--Condorcet has
admirably defined the purpose of primary instruction:--
“In the primary schools there is taught that which is necessary for
each individual in order to direct his own conduct and to enjoy the
plenitude of his own rights.”
The programme comprised reading, writing, some notions on grammar,
the rules of arithmetic, simple methods of measuring a field and a
building with exactness; a simple description of the productions
of the country, of the processes in agriculture and the arts; the
development of the first moral ideas and the rules for conduct
derived from them; finally, such of the principles of social order
as can be put within the comprehension of children.
438. THE IDEA OF COURSES FOR ADULTS.--Condorcet was strongly
impressed with the necessity of continuing the instruction of the
workman and of the peasant after withdrawal from school:--
“We have observed that instruction ought not to abandon individuals
the moment they leave the schools; that it ought to embrace all
ages; that there is no period of life when it is not useful and
possible to learn, and that this supplementary instruction is so
much the more necessary as that of infancy has been contracted to
the narrowest limits. Here is one of the principal causes of the
ignorance in which the poor classes of society are to-day plunged;
they lacked not nearly so much the possibility of receiving an
elementary instruction as that of preserving its advantages.”
Consequently, Condorcet proposed, if not courses of instruction for
adults, at least something very like them,--weekly lectures, given
each Sunday by the village teachers, a kind of lay sermons.
“Each Sunday the teacher shall give a public lecture which citizens
of all ages will attend. In this arrangement we have seen a means
of giving to young people those necessary parts of knowledge,
which, however, did not form a part of their primary education.”
439. PROFESSIONAL AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION.--But Condorcet does
not think his duty to the people done when he has given them
intellectual emancipation. He is very anxious to give in addition
to the sons of peasants or workmen the means of struggling against
misery, by diffusing more and more among the masses of the
people a technical knowledge of the arts and trades. He deserves
to be counted among the adepts in professional instruction and
in industrial education. He asks that there be placed in the
schools “models of machines or of trades”; and in all grades of
instruction, he recommends with a special solicitude the teaching
of the practical arts.
We fancy we are doing something new to-day when we establish
school museums. “Each school,” says Condorcet, “shall have a
small library, and a small cabinet in which shall be placed some
meteorological instruments or some specimens of natural history.”
440. THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN.--Condorcet may be regarded as one
of the most ardent apostles of the education of women. He wishes
education to be common and equal. He is evidently wrong when he
dreams of a perfect identity of instruction for the two sexes, when
he forgets the particular destination of women, and the special
character of their education. But we have found so many educators
disposed to depreciate the abilities of woman, that we are happy to
find at last one voice that exalts them, even beyond measure.
Let us recall, however, the excellent reasons which he gives in
support of his thesis on the equality of education. It is necessary
that women should be instructed: 1. in order that they may be
able to bring up their children, of whom they are the natural
instructors; 2. in order that they may be the worthy companions,
the equals of their husbands, that they may feel an interest in
their pursuits, share in their preoccupations, and, finally,
participate in their life, such being the condition of conjugal
happiness; 3. in order, further, by an analogous reason, that they
may not quench, by their ignorance, that inspiration of heart and
mind which previous studies have developed in their husbands, but
that they may nourish this flame by conversation and reading in
common; 4. finally, because this is just,--because the two sexes
have an equal right to instruction.
441. RESERVATIONS TO BE MADE.--All is not equally worthy of
commendation in the work of Condorcet. Some faults and some
omissions mar this fine piece of political pedagogy. The faults
are, first, the exaggerated idea of liberty and of equality.
From Condorcet’s ardors for liberty there issues, in his plan for
education, a grave error,--the idea of making of the teaching
body a sort of State within the State, an independent authority,
a fourth power, released from all exterior authority, governing
itself and administering its own affairs, the State intervening
only as treasurer to pay for the services which it neither
regulates nor supervises. The liberal Daunou, while explaining
the system of our author, has criticised it on this point.[207]
“Condorcet,” he said, “the enemy of corporations, has sanctioned
one in his scheme of national instruction; he established, as it
were, an academic church. This is because Condorcet, the enemy of
kings, would add in the balance of public powers one counterbalance
more to that royal power whose monstrous existence, in a free
constitution, is sufficiently attested by the alarms and fears of
all the friends of liberty.”
The passion for equality led Condorcet into another chimera,--that
of the absolute gratuity of instruction of all grades.
Finally, in his dreams of infinite perfectibility, Condorcet allows
himself to be carried so far away as to imagine for man, and to
expect from instruction, results that are utterly unattainable.
Instruction, according to him, ought to be so complete “as to cause
the disappearance of every inequality which induces dependence.”
442. PREJUDICES OF THE MATHEMATICIAN.--From another point of view,
Condorcet was led astray by his predilection for the sciences. He
so far forgot that he was a member of the French Academy as to obey
only his tendencies, a little too exclusive, as a mathematician
and a member of the Academy of Sciences. By a reaction, natural
enough, against those long centuries in which an abuse was made
of literary culture, Condorcet is too prompt to underrate the
influence of letters in education, and to invest the sciences with
the place of honor. The reasons which he invokes to justify his
preference are not all conclusive.
443. OMISSIONS.--The idea of obligatory instruction is still
wanting in the scheme we are examining. We shall be surprised,
perhaps, that Condorcet, who has so clearly proclaimed the
necessity of universal instruction, did not think to impose
obligatory attendance, which is the only means of establishing it.
This is because the early revolutionists, in the ardor of their
enthusiasm, did not suspect the opposition to the accomplishment of
their plans that was to come from the indifference of the greater
number, and from the prejudices of those who, as Condorcet has
eloquently said, “thought they were obeying God while betraying
their country.” It seemed to them that when centres of light
had been made to glow over the whole surface of the country,
citizens would hasten after them, impelled by a natural appetite,
spontaneously thirsting for enlightenment. They were deceived.
These hopes, a little artless, were destined to be disproved by
facts; and it was to triumph over the neglect of some, and the
resistance of others, that the Convention, supplying one of the
rare defects in Condorcet’s plan, decreed, on several occasions,
instruction “imperative and forced,” as was then said.
On still another point, Condorcet remained inferior to his
successors; in his report there was no mention made of the
organization of normal schools. In this grave and fundamental
question of the education of the teaching body, Condorcet contented
himself with a provisional expedient, which consisted in entrusting
to the professors of the grade immediately higher the care of
preparing teachers for the grade lower.
444. FINAL CONCLUSION.--But even with these reservations, the
work of Condorcet deserves scarcely anything but praise. We have
commended its new and exalted conceptions. Its beautiful and exact
arrangement and its masterly style also deserve praise. Condorcet’s
periods are symmetrical in their fullness, and the expression is
precise and vigorous. Doubtless there is some monotony and some
frigidity in that style so concise and strong. But at intervals
there are outbursts of passion. The man whom his contemporaries
compared to “an enraged lamb,” or to a “volcano covered with snow,”
is painted to the life in his writings. His _Rapport_ is like a
beautiful and finished statue of marble, cold to the touch, but
upon which the hand might feel beating in places a vein warm with
life.
[445. ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.--1. The more important lessons to be
derived from this study are the following: the necessity of
making instruction universal and of having it administered by the
State; the need of making instruction obligatory, and, in certain
grades, gratuitous; the value of intellectual culture as a moral
safeguard.
2. The right of the State to self-preservation carries with it
the right to ordain the establishment of schools for giving a
certain kind and degree of instruction. This constitutes the
first form of compulsion.
3. When there is not a voluntary and general attendance on
the schools ordained by the State, it may avail itself of
the supplementary right to make attendance obligatory. This
constitutes the second form of compulsion.
4. Gratuity is the logical sequence to compulsion. If the State
may require all children to partake of a certain degree of
instruction, it must make such instruction free.
5. Should instruction that is above the compulsory grade be free?
This depends on the question whether the State needs a certain
amount of the higher culture, and whether this required amount
will be secured at the pupils’ own expense. Monsieur Compayré
decides, as against Condorcet (paragraph 441), that the higher
grades of instruction should not be gratuitous. In this country
the prevailing theory is that the higher education should be
endowed by the State.
6. The relation of instruction to morality has never been more
justly and pointedly stated than in paragraph 433. This is not
only good sense but sound philosophy.]
FOOTNOTES:
[198] Théry, _Histoire de l’éducation en France_, Paris, 1861, Tome
II. p. 188.
[199] Albert Duruy, _L’instruction publique et la Révolution_, p.
80.
[200] J. Simon, _Dieu, patrie, et liberté_, p. 11.
[201] Albert Duruy, _op. cit._, p. 16.
[202] _Doléances_ presented to the States-General by the teachers
of the smaller cities, hamlets, and villages of Bourgogne.
[203] A. Duruy, _op. cit._, p. 10.
[204] See the _Dictionnaire de Pédagogie_, Article FRANCE.
[205] What is meant by “liberty of teaching” will be better
understood from the following quotations from the _Dictionnaire de
Pédagogie_, Première Partie, p. 1575 _et seq._:--
“Liberty of teaching, in a country which has proclaimed obligatory
instruction, is the equal right of all to give that instruction,
or the prohibition of every monopoly which would put that
instruction into the hands either of privileged individuals, or of
corporations, or even of the State, to the exclusion of every other
teaching body.”
“Under the old régime, the education of the masses was committed to
the hands of the Church; the colleges, directed by a body of men
who were all ecclesiastics, gave ‘a vain pretence of an education,
where the memory alone was exercised, and where the reason was
insulted in the forms of reasoning.’”
“The purpose of the men of the Revolution was, then, above all
else, to emancipate science, and to guarantee the right of free
inquiry; and while rescuing instruction from the tyranny of the
Church, to assure to citizens in general the opportunity to acquire
the knowledge that is essential to man. On the one hand, they would
take precautions against the abuse of power by a government which
had always shown itself hostile to free thought ...; on the other,
in opposition to the old doctrine which condemned the people to
ignorance, they proclaimed the duty of the State to create a system
of _public instruction_, common to all citizens.”
“It is at this point of view that we must place ourselves in
order to gain a correct notion of the plans that were submitted
to the Constituent Convention and the Legislative Assembly. What
Talleyrand and Condorcet desired was, first, to organize, under the
form of a public service, a system of national education in which
all might participate; and in the second place, to take precautions
against the Church and the royal authority, and so prevent despotic
power from attempting to prevent the development of new truths and
the teaching of theories which it judged contrary to its policy
and interests. For them, liberty of teaching is the demand of
philosophic liberty against ecclesiastical and secular authority.”
(P.)
[206] Public instruction as now organized in France is of three
grades, as follows:--
“Primary instruction, which gives the elements of knowledge,
reading, writing, and arithmetic. Secondary instruction, embracing
the study of the ancient languages, of rhetoric, and the first
elements of the mathematical and physical sciences, and of
philosophy. This is given in the lycées and colleges, as well as
in the smaller seminaries. Superior instruction, designed to teach
in all their completeness letters, the languages, the sciences,
and philosophy. This is given in the Faculties, in the College of
France, and in the larger seminaries.”--LITTRÉ. (P.)
[207] See the _Rapport_ of Daunou presented to the National
Convention, 27 Vendémiaire, year IV.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE CONVENTION.--LEPELLETIER SAINT-FARGEAU, LAKANAL, DAUNOU.
THE CONVENTION; SUCCESSIVE MEASURES; THE BILL OF LANTHENAS; THE
BILL OF ROMME; THE NATIONAL HOLIDAYS; ELEMENTARY BOOKS; DECREE
OF MAY 30, 1793; LAKANAL (1762-1845); DAUNOU (1761-1840); THE
BILL OF LAKANAL, SIEYÈS, AND DAUNOU; LEPELLETIER SAINT-FARGEAU
(1760-1793); HIS SCHEME OF EDUCATION (JULY 13, 1793); LEPELLETIER
AND CONDORCET; COMPULSORY EDUCATION IN BOARDING-SCHOOLS; THE
CHILD BELONGS TO THE REPUBLIC; SCHOOL OCCUPATIONS; ABSOLUTE
GRATUITY; THE RIGHTS OF THE FAMILY; SAINT-JUST; THE ROMME
LAW; THE BOUQUIER LAW; THE LAKANAL LAW; EDUCATIONAL METHODS;
ELEMENTARY BOOKS; GEOGRAPHY; LETTERS AND SCIENCES; THE FOUNDATION
OF NORMAL SCHOOLS; THE NORMAL SCHOOL OF PARIS; CENTRAL SCHOOLS;
THEIR DEFECTS; POSITIVE AND PRACTICAL SPIRIT; GREAT FOUNDATIONS
OF THE CONVENTION; THE LAW OF OCTOBER 27, 1795; INSUFFICIENCY OF
DAUNOU’S SCHEME; ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.
446. THE CONVENTION.--The Constituent Assembly and the Legislative
Assembly had done nothing more than to prepare reports and
projected decrees, without either discussing them or bringing
them to a vote. The Convention went so far as to vote, but it did
not have the time to execute the resolutions, contradictory and
incoherent, which it was forced to adopt, one after another, by the
fluctuation of political currents.
447. SUCCESSIVE MEASURES.--Nothing definite in the way of execution
issued from the enthusiastic passion which the Convention exhibited
for the organization of primary instruction. First there was a
triumph of modern ideas in the bill of Lanthenas, the first
article of which was adopted December 12, 1792; and they appeared
again in the bill of Sieyès, Daunou, and Lakanal, presented June
26, 1793, and defeated after an exciting discussion. But the
influence of the Girondists was succeeded by the domination of
the Montagnards[208] whose dictatorial and violent spirit is
indicated: 1. in the bill of Lepelletier, adopted through the
support of Robespierre, August 13, 1793; 2. in the bill projected
and presented by Romme in behalf of the commission of public
instruction, October 20, 1793, and passed on the following day;
3. and lastly in the bill of Bouquier, which, presented December
19, 1793, became the decree of December 26. The reaction which
followed resulted in the legislative acts by which the Convention
finished its educational work. The bill of Sieyès, Daunou, and
Lakanal was reconsidered, and November 17, 1793, it was substituted
for the bill of Bouquier. Finally, when the constitution of 1794
was substituted for the constitution of 1793, a new law of public
instruction was passed on the report of Daunou, October 27, 1795,
and it is this law which presided over the organization of schools
under the Directory.
In this confusion, this chaos of bills and counter-bills, it
is difficult to establish any clew that is wholly trustworthy.
We shall restrict ourselves to noting the points that seem
essential.[209]
Impatient to finish its business, the committee on public
instruction, which the Convention had appointed October 2,
1792, decided to put aside, for the present, the other branches
of public instruction, and proposed for immediate action only
the organization of primary schools, by taking, as a point
of departure, the bill which Condorcet had presented to the
Legislative Assembly. The report of Lanthenas and a proposed decree
were within a few weeks the results of these deliberations; but in
all its parts this result is scarcely more than the reproduction
of Condorcet’s work, and presents nothing original. Let us note,
however, the idea of associating the pupil with his teacher in the
work of instruction:--
“Teachers will call to their aid the pupils whose intelligence
shall have made the most rapid progress; and they will thus be
able, _very easily_, to give to four classes of pupils, in the
same session, all the attention needed for their progress. At the
same time, the efforts made by the most competent to teach what
they know to their schoolmates, will be much more instructive to
themselves than the lessons they receive from their masters.”
Further, let us notice title III. of the proposed decree relative
to the measures to be taken in order to make obligatory the use of
the French language, and to abolish the _patois_, or particular
idioms. The minimum salary of men teachers was fixed at six hundred
francs. The appointment of teachers was entrusted to the heads
of families, who were to elect one from a list prepared by a
“commission of educated persons” appointed by the Councils-General
of the communes and the Directories of departments.
448. THE BILL OF LANTHENAS.--The discussion of the bill of
Lanthenas began on December 12, 1792, but only article first was
carried, and the bill itself did not become a law.
On December 20, another member of the Convention, Romme,
mathematician, deputy from Puy-de-Dôme, read a new report on public
instruction.
449. THE BILL OF ROMME.--The bill of Lanthenas aimed at only the
first grade of instruction, but the report of Romme embraced
the four grades of instruction, and was but little more than a
reproduction of Condorcet’s work. But no legislative measure
followed the reading of his bill, and up to the 30th of May, 1793,
there is scarcely anything to be noted, as the educational work of
the Convention, save the bill of Rabaud Saint-Étienne on public
festivals, and the report of Arbogast on elementary books.
450. NATIONAL HOLIDAYS.--It is difficult to form an idea of
the importance which the men of this period attributed to the
educational influence of national holidays. At variance on so
many points, they all agree in thinking that the French people
could be instructed and regenerated simply by establishing popular
solemnities.
“It is a kind of institution,” said Robespierre, “which ought to
be considered as an essential part of public education,--I mean
national holidays.”
Daunou also persisted in considering national holidays as the most
certain and the most comprehensive means of public instruction. The
decree passed at his request established seven national holidays:
that of the foundation of the Republic, of young men, of husbands,
of thanksgiving, of agriculture, of liberty, of old men.
451. ELEMENTARY BOOKS.--An important point in the pedagogy of the
Revolution was the attention given to the composition of elementary
books. On several occasions the Convention put up for competition
these modest works intended to aid parents or teachers in their
task. It was one of the happiest thoughts of that period to desire
that there should be placed in the hands of parents simple methods
and well-arranged books which might teach them how to bring up
their children. The difficulty of this kind of composition was
understood, and so application was made to the most distinguished
writers. Bernardin de Saint Pierre was employed to edit the
_Elements of Morality_.
December 24, 1792, Arbogast had submitted to the Convention a
proposed decree in which it was said:--
“It is only the superior men in a science, or in an art, those who
have sounded all its depths, and have carried it to its farthest
limits, who are capable of composing such elementary treatises as
are desirable.”
452. DECREE OF MAY 30, 1793.--The first decree of the Convention
relative to primary schools was passed May 30, 1793. But this
laconic law contained nothing very new. Besides, it was forgotten
in the storm which on the next day, May 31, swept away the
Girondists, and gave to the Montagnards the political supremacy.
453. LAKANAL (1762-1845).--After the revolution of May 31, among
the men who, in the committee on public instruction and in the
assembly itself, were occupied with the educational organization
of France, we must assign the first place to Lakanal and Daunou.
On June 26, 1793, three days after the adoption of the new
constitution, Lakanal brought to the tribune the bill which he had
drawn up in conjunction with Daunou and Sieyès.
Lakanal is one of the purest and most remarkable characters of the
French Revolution.[210] “Lakanal,” said Marat, to whom some one
had denounced him, “works too much to have the time to conspire.”
Industrious and thoughtful, after having taught philosophy with
the “Doctrinaires,” of whom he was the pupil, he became the
first, after Condorcet, of the educators of the Revolution. “His
appearance,” says Paul Bert, “has always particularly attracted
me. It unites gentleness with force, energy with serenity. We feel
that this austere citizen has never known any other passion than
that of well-doing, and has neither desired nor obtained any other
reward than that of having done his duty. He despises violence of
language, and hates that of acts; and so we do not find him, under
the Empire, a baron like Jean-Bon Saint André, a minister like
Fouché, or a senator like a whole herd.”
454. DAUNOU (1761-1840).--At an early period in his life, Daunou
had taught philosophy in the colleges of the Oratorians, of whom he
was a member. In 1789 he published in the _Journal Encyclopédique_,
a plan of national education which was approved by the Oratory,
and which he presented to the Constituent Assembly in 1790. In the
Convention he took an active part in the work of the committee on
public instruction, and assisted in the preparation of Lakanal’s
first bill. In the same year he published an _Essay on Public
Instruction_. In the Council of the Five Hundred he was appointed
to make a report on the organization of special schools. Under
the Empire he accepted the management of the national archives.
Under the Restoration he was appointed professor of history in
the College of France. Finally, after 1830, we find him once
more in the Chamber of Deputies, giving proof of unusual energy
and vitality, and presenting in opposition to the minister of
public instruction, de Montalivet, a counter-bill, the principal
aim of which was to lodge with the municipal authorities the
administration of schools, a power which the government wished to
leave in the hands of the inspectors.
455. THE BILL OF LAKANAL, SIEYÈS, AND DAUNOU.--These are the
principal provisions of this bill: a school for each thousand
inhabitants; separate schools for girls and boys; the election
of teachers entrusted to a board of inspectors composed of three
members, and located at the government centre of each district; the
general organization of methods, regulations, and school régime
placed in the hands of a central commission sitting with the Corps
Législatif, and placed under its authority; an education which
embraces the whole man, at once intellectual, physical, moral,
and industrial; the first lessons in reading given to boys as to
girls by a woman teacher; arithmetic, geometry, physics, and morals
included in the programme of instruction; visits to hospitals,
prisons, and workshops; finally, liberty granted to private
initiative to found schools.
“The law can put no veto on the right which all citizens have
to open private courses and schools, free in all grades of
instruction, and to direct them as shall seem to them best.” (Art.
61.)
This was pushing liberality rather far.
Another distinctive feature of this bill, which is not without
value, is the respect shown the character and functions of the
teacher. On public occasions the schoolmaster shall wear a medal
with this inscription: _He who instructs is a second father_.
The form is rather pretentious, but the sentiment is good. Other
articles do not merit the same commendation, particularly the one
which established theatres in each canton, in which men and women
would take part in music and dancing.
The bill of Lakanal, vigorously opposed by a part of the Assembly,
was not adopted. Under the leadership of Robespierre, the
Convention gave preference to the dictatorial and violent measure
of Lepelletier Saint-Fargeau.
456. LEPELLETIER SAINT-FARGEAU (1760-1793).--Assassinated in 1793,
Lepelletier Saint-Fargeau left among his papers an educational bill
which Robespierre took up, and which he presented to the Assembly
July 13, 1793, on the occasion of the debate opened on the motion
of Barrère. A month later the bill was passed by the Convention,
but before being carried into operation, the decree was revoked.
The Assembly receded from the accomplishment of a reform in which
some good intentions could not atone for measures that, on the
whole, were mischievous and tyrannical.
457. HIS SCHEME OF EDUCATION.--The plan of Lepelletier scarcely
deserves the admiration which Michelet gives it, who salutes
in this work the “_revolution of childhood_,” and who declares
that it is “admirable in spirit, and in no respect chimerical.”
An imitation with but little originality of the institutions of
Lycurgus and the reveries of Plato, the plan of Lepelletier is
scarcely more than an historical curiosity.
458. LEPELLETIER AND CONDORCET.--Lepelletier accepted Condorcet’s
plan in all that relates to _secondary schools_, _institutes_, and
_lycées_, that is to say, higher primary instruction, secondary
instruction, and superior instruction.
“I find,” he said, “in these three courses a plan which seems to me
wisely conceived.”
But Lepelletier follows only his own fancy in the conception of
those curious boarding-schools, little barracks for childhood,
in which he confined all children by force, wresting them from
their parents, and placing at the expense of the State their moral
training, as well as their material support.
459. OBLIGATORY ATTENDANCE IN BOARDING-SCHOOLS.--In education,
Lepelletier represents the doctrine of the Jacobins. In order
to make France republican, he would employ radical and absolute
measures.
“Let us ordain,” he says, “that all children, girls as well as
boys, girls from five to eleven, and boys from five to twelve,
shall be educated in common, at the expense of the State, and shall
receive, for six or seven years, the same education.”
In order that there may be complete equality, their food, like
their instruction, shall be the same; even more, their dress shall
be identical. Does Lepelletier then desire, in his craze for
equality, that girls shall be dressed like boys?
460. THE CHILD BELONGS TO THE REPUBLIC.--The idea of Lepelletier
is that the child is the property of the State, a chattel of the
Republic. The State must make the child in its own image.
“In our system,” he says, “the entire being of the child belongs to
us; the material never leaves the mould.” And he adds, “Whatever is
to compose the Republic ought to be cast in the republican mould.”
Lepelletier imposes on all children, girls and boys, the same
studies,--reading, writing, numbers, natural morality, domestic
economy. This is almost the programme of Condorcet. But he adds
to it manual labor. All children shall be employed in working
the soil. If the college has not at its disposal enough land to
cultivate, the children shall be taken out on the roads, there to
pick up stones or to scatter them. Can we imagine, without smiling,
a system of education, in which our future advocates and writers
are to spend six years in transporting material upon the highways?
461. ABSOLUTE GRATUITY.--The colleges in which Lepelletier
sequesters and quarters all the children are to be absolutely
free. Three measures were proposed for covering the expense: 1.
tuition paid by parents in easy circumstances; 2. the labor of the
children; 3. the balance needed furnished by the State. But is
there not just a little of the chimerical in counting much on the
work of children of that age?
462. THE RIGHTS OF THE FAMILY.--Lepelletier takes but little
account of the rights of the family. However, notice must be taken
of that idea which Robespierre thought “sublime,”--the creation, at
each college, of a council of heads of families, entrusted with the
oversight of teachers and their children.
463. SAINT-JUST.--Saint-Just, in his _Institutions républicaines_,
maintains opinions analogous to those of Lepelletier. He admits
that the child belongs to his mother till the age of five; but from
the age of five till death he belongs to the Republic. Till the age
of sixteen boys are fed at the expense of the State. It is true
that their food is not expensive. It is composed of grapes, fruit,
vegetables, milk-diet, bread, and water. Their dress is of cotton
in all seasons. However, Saint-Just did not subject girls to the
same régime. More liberal on this point than Lepelletier, he would
have them brought up at home.
464. THE ROMME LAW (Oct. 30, 1793).--Romme was one of the most
active members of the committee on public instruction. He was
the principal author of the bill which the Convention passed in
October, 1793, the principal articles of which were conceived as
follows:--
“Art. 1. There are primary schools distributed throughout the
Republic in proportion to the population.
“Art. 2. In these schools children receive their earliest physical,
moral, and intellectual education, the best adapted to develop in
them republican manners, love of country, and taste for labor.
“Art. 3. They learn to speak, read, and write the French language.
“They are taught the acts of virtue which most honor free men, and
particularly the acts of the French Revolution most fit to give
them elevation of soul, and to make them worthy of liberty and
equality.
“They acquire some notions of the geography of France.
“The knowledge of the rights and duties of the man and the citizen
is brought within their comprehension through examples and their
own experience.
“They are given the first notions of the natural objects that
surround them, and of the natural action of the elements.
“They have practice in the use of numbers, of the compass, the
level, weights and measures, the lever, the pulley, and in the
measurement of time.
“They are often allowed to witness what is done in the fields and
in workshops; and they take part in these employments as far as
their age permits.”
But the bill of Romme was not put in operation. The Convention
presently decided on a revision of the decree it had passed, and
the bill of Bouquier was substituted for the bill of Romme.
465. THE BOUQUIER LAW (Dec. 19, 1793).--Bouquier was a man of
letters, deputy from Dordogne, and belonged to the Jacobinic party.
He spoke of his bill as follows:--
“It is a simple and natural scheme, and one easy to execute; a
plan which forever proscribes all idea of an academic body, of a
scientific society, of an educational hierarchy; a plan, finally,
whose bases are the same as those of the constitution, liberty,
equality, and simplicity.”
The Bouquier bill was adopted December 19, and remained in force
till it was superseded by the Lakanal law.
These are its principal provisions:--
“The right to teach is open to all.” “Citizens, men and women,
who would use the liberty to teach, shall be required to produce
a certificate of citizenship and good morals, and to fulfill
certain formalities.” “They shall be designated as _instituteurs_
and _institutrices_.” They shall be placed “under the immediate
supervision of the municipality, of parents, and of all the
citizens.” “They are forbidden to teach anything contrary to the
laws and to republican morality.” On the other hand, parents are
required to send their children to the primary schools. Parents who
do not obey this order are sentenced, for the first offence, to pay
a fine equal to a fourth of their school tax. In case of a second
offence, the fine is to be doubled and the children to be suspended
for ten years from their rights as citizens. Finally, young people
who, on leaving the primary schools, “do not busy themselves with
the cultivation of the soil, shall be required to learn a trade
useful to society.”
Enforced school attendance, and what is an entirely different
thing, the obligation of citizens to work, were thus established by
the Bouquier law.
Let us add that the author of this bill, which, like so many
others, was not executed, had strange notions on the sciences and
on instruction.
“The speculative sciences,” he says, “detach from society the
individuals who cultivate them.... Free nations have no need of
speculative scholars, whose minds are constantly travelling over
desert paths.”
Hence, no scientific instruction. The real schools, “the noblest,
the most useful, the most simple, are the meetings of committees.
The Revolution, in establishing national holidays, in creating
popular associations and clubs, has placed in all quarters
inexhaustible sources of instruction. Then let us not go and
substitute for this organization, as simple and sublime as the
people that creates it, an artificial organization, based on
academic statutes which should no longer infect a regenerated
nation.”
466. THE LAKANAL LAW (Nov. 17, 1794).--There still remained
something of the spirit of Lepelletier in the Bouquier law, though
the idea of an education in common had been abandoned; but the
Lakanal law openly breaks with the tendencies of Robespierre and
his friends.
The law which was passed November 17, 1794, upon the report of
Lakanal, reproduced in its spirit and in its principal provisions
the original bill which the influence of Robespierre had defeated.
The following was the programme of instruction contained in this
law.
The instructor shall teach:--
“1. Reading and writing; 2. the declaration of the rights of man
and the constitution; 3. elementary lessons on republican morals;
4. the elements of the French language both spoken and written; 5.
the rules of simple calculation and of surveying; 6. lessons on
the principal phenomena and the most common productions of nature;
there shall be taught a collection of heroic actions and songs of
triumph.”
At the same time the bill required that the schools be divided into
two sections, one for the girls and the other for the boys, and
distributed in the proportion of one to each thousand inhabitants.
The teachers, nominated by the people and confirmed by a jury
of instruction, are to receive salaries as follows: men, twelve
hundred francs; women, one thousand francs.
467. PEDAGOGICAL METHODS.--Lakanal had given much thought to
pedagogical methods. It is the interior of the school, not less
than its exterior organization, that preoccupied his generous
spirit. Like the most of his contemporaries, a partisan of
Condillac’s doctrine, he believed that the idea could not reach
the understanding except through the mediation of the senses.
Consequently, he recommended the method which consists “in first
appealing to the eyes of pupils, ... in creating the understanding
through the senses, ... in developing morals out of the
sensibility, just as understanding out of sensation.” This is an
excellent method if we add to it a corrective, if we do not forget
to excite the intelligence itself, and to make an appeal to the
interior forces of the soul.
468. ELEMENTARY BOOKS.--A few other quotations will suffice
to prove with what acuteness of pedagogic sense Lakanal was
endowed.[211] Very much interested in the composition of works
for popular instruction, he sharply distinguished the elementary
book, which brings knowledge within the reach of children, from
the abridgment, which does no more than condense a long work. “The
abridged,” he said, “is exactly opposed to the elementary.” No
one has better comprehended than he the difficulty of writing a
treatise on morals for the use of children:--
“It requires special genius. Simplicity in form and artless
grace should there be mingled with accuracy of ideas; the art of
reasoning ought never to be separated from that of interesting the
imagination; such a work should be conceived by a profound logician
and executed by a man of feeling. There should be found in it, so
to speak, the analytical mind of Condillac and the soul of Fénelon.”
469. GEOGRAPHY.--Lakanal has defined with the same exactness the
method to be followed in the teaching of geography. “First let
there be shown,” he says, “in every school, the plan of the
commune in which it is situated, and then let the children see a
map of the canton of which the commune forms a part; then a map of
the department, and then a map of France; after which will come the
map of Europe and of other parts of the world, and lastly a map of
the world.”[212]
470. LETTERS AND SCIENCES.--More just than Condorcet, Lakanal did
not wish scientific culture to do prejudice to literary culture:--
“For a long time we have neglected the belles-lettres, and some men
who wish to be considered profound regard this study as useless. It
is letters, however, which open the intelligence to the light of
reason, and the heart to impressions of sentiment. They substitute
morality for interest, give pupils polish, exercise their judgment,
make them more sensitive and at the same time more obedient to the
laws, more capable of grand virtues.”
471. NECESSITY OF NORMAL SCHOOLS.--Lakanal’s highest title to glory
is that he has associated his name with the foundation of normal
schools. The idea of establishing pedagogical seminaries was not
absolutely new. A number of the friends of instruction, both in
the seventeenth and in the eighteenth century,[213] had seen that
it would be useless to open schools, if good teachers had not been
previously trained; but the Convention has the honor of having for
the first time given practical effect to this vague aspiration.
Decreed June 2, 1793, the foundation of normal schools was the
object of a report by Lakanal on October 26, 1794. In a style which
was inferior to his ideas, and which would have been more effective
had it been simpler, Lakanal sets forth the necessity of teaching
the teachers themselves before sending them to teach their pupils:--
“Are there in France, are there in Europe, are there in the whole
world, two or three hundred men (and we need more than this number)
competent to teach the useful arts and the necessary branches of
knowledge, according to methods which make minds more acute, and
truths more clear,--methods which, while teaching you to know one
thing, teach you to reason upon all things? No, that number of
men, however small it may appear, exists nowhere on the earth. It
is necessary, then, that they be trained. In being the first to
decree normal schools, you have resolved to create in advance a
very large number of teachers, capable of being the executors of a
plan whose purpose is the regeneration of the human understanding,
in a republic of twenty-five millions of men, all of whom democracy
renders equal.”
The term _normal schools_ (from the Latin word _norma_, a rule) was
not less new than the thing. Lakanal explains that it was designed
by this expression to characterize with exactness the schools which
were to be the type and the standard of all the others.
472. THE NORMAL SCHOOL OF PARIS.--To accomplish his purpose,
Lakanal proposed to assemble at Paris, under the direction of
eminent masters, such as Lagrange, Berthollet, and Daubenton, a
considerable number of young men, called from all quarters of the
Republic, and designated “by their talents as by their state of
citizenship.” The masters of this great normal school were to
give their pupils “lessons on the art of teaching morals, ... and
teach them to apply to the teaching of reading and writing, of the
first elements of calculation, of practical geometry, of history
and of French grammar, the methods outlined in the elementary
courses adopted by the National Convention and published by its
orders.” Once instructed “in the art of teaching human knowledge,”
the pupils of the Normal School of Paris were to go and repeat in
all parts of the Republic the “grand lectures” they had heard, and
there form the nucleus of provincial normal schools. And thus, says
Lakanal with exaggeration, “that fountain of enlightenment, so pure
and so abundant, since it will proceed from the foremost men of the
Republic of every class, poured out from reservoir to reservoir,
will diffuse itself from place to place throughout all France,
without losing anything of its purity in its course.”
October 30, 1794, the Convention adopted the proposals of Lakanal.
The Normal School opened January 20, 1795. Its organization
was defective and impracticable. First, there were too many
pupils,--four hundred young men admitted without competitive tests,
and abandoned to themselves in Paris; professors who were doubtless
illustrious, but whose literary talent or scientific genius did not
perhaps adapt itself sufficiently to the needs of a normal course
of instruction and of a practical pedagogy; lectures insufficient
in number, which lasted for only four months, and which, on the
testimony of Daunou, “were directed rather towards the heights of
science than towards the art of teaching.” Thus the experiment,
which terminated May 6, 1795, did not fulfill the hopes that had
been formed of it: the idea of establishing provincial normal
schools was not carried out. But no matter; a memorable example
had been given, and the fruitful principle of the establishment of
normal schools had made a start in actual practice.
473. CENTRAL SCHOOLS.--The _central schools_, designed to replace
the colleges of secondary instruction, were established by decree
of February 25, 1795, on the report of Lakanal. Daunou modified
them in the law of October 25, 1795. They continued, without great
success, till the law of May 1, 1802, which suppressed them.
474. DEFECTS OF THE CENTRAL SCHOOLS.--The Central Schools of
Lakanal resembled, trait for trait, the Institutes of Condorcet.
And it must be confessed that here the imitation is not happy.
Lakanal made the mistake of borrowing from Condorcet the plan of
these poorly defined establishments, in which the instruction was
on too vast a scale, and the programmes too crowded, where the
pupil, it seems, was to learn to discuss _de omni re scibili_.
Condorcet went so far as to introduce into his Institutes a
course of lectures on midwifery! The Central Schools, in which
the instruction was a medley of studies indiscreetly presented to
an overdriven auditory, do honor neither to the Convention that
organized them, nor to Condorcet who had traced the first sketch of
them.
475. POSITIVE AND PRACTICAL SPIRIT.--However, there was something
correct in the idea which presided over the foundation of the
Central Schools. We find this expressed in the _Essays on
Instruction_, by the mathematician, Lacroix.[214] Lacroix calls
attention to the fact that the progress of the sciences and the
necessity of learning a great number of new things, impose on the
educator the obligation to take some account of space; and, if I
may so speak, of clipping the wings of studies which, like Latin,
had thus far been the unique and exclusive object of instruction.
In the Central Schools, in fact, the classical languages held
only the second place. Not only were the mathematical sciences,
and those branches of knowledge from which the pupil can derive
the most immediate profit, associated with the classics, but the
preference was given to them. In the minds of those who organized
these schools, the positive and practical idea of success in life
was substituted for the speculative and disinterested idea of
mental development for its own sake. In reality, these two ideas
ought to complete each other, and not to exclude each other. The
ideal of education consists in finding a system which welcomes
both. But in the Central Schools the first point of view absorbed
the second. These establishments resembled the industrial schools
of our day, but with this particular defect, that there was a
determination to include everything in them, and to give a place
to new studies without wholly sacrificing the old. Let there be
created colleges of practical and special instruction; nothing can
be better, for provision would thus be made for the needs of modern
society. But let no one force literary studies and the industrial
arts to live together under the same roof.
476. GREAT FOUNDATIONS OF THE CONVENTION.--In the first years of
its existence, the Convention had given its attention only to
primary schools. It seemed as though teaching the illiterate to
read was the one need of society. In the end the Convention rose
above these narrow and exclusive views, and turned its attention
towards secondary instruction and towards superior instruction. It
is particularly by the establishment of several special schools
for superior instruction that the Convention gave proof of its
versatility and intelligence.
In quick succession it decreed and founded the Polytechnic School,
under the name of the Central School of Public Works (March 11,
1794); the Normal School (October 30, 1794); the School of Mars
(June 1, 1794); the Conservatory of Arts and Trades (September
29, 1794). The next year it organized the Bureau of Longitudes,
and finally the National Institute. What a magnificent effort to
repair the ruins which anarchy had made, or to supply the omissions
which the old régime had patiently suffered! Of these multiplied
creations the greater number remain and still flourish.
477. LAW OF OCTOBER 27, 1795.--Those who ask us to see in the
decree of October 27, 1795, “the capital work of the Convention in
the matter of instruction, the synthesis of all its previous labors
and proposals, the most serious effort of the Revolution,”[215]
evidently put forward a paradox. Lakanal and his friends would
certainly have disavowed a law which cancels with a few strokes
of the pen the grand revolutionary principles in the matter of
education,--the gratuity, the obligation, and the universality of
instruction.
The destinies of public instruction are allied to the fate of
constitutions. To changes of policy there correspond, by an
inevitable recoil, analogous changes in the organization of
instruction. Out of the slightly retrograde constitution of 1793
there issued the educational legislation of 1794, of which it could
be said that “the spirit of reaction made itself painfully felt in
it.”
Daunou, who was the principal author of it, doubtless had high
competence in questions of public instruction; but with a secret
connivance of his own temperament he yielded to the tendencies
of the times. He voluntarily condescended to the timidities of a
senile and worn-out Assembly, which, having become impoverished by
a series of suicides, had scarcely any superior minds left within
it.
478. INSUFFICIENCY OF DAUNOU’S SCHEME.--Nothing could be more
defective than Daunou’s plan. The number of primary schools was
reduced. It is no longer proposed to proportion them to the
population. Daunou goes back to the cantonal schools of Talleyrand:
“There shall be established in each canton of the Republic one or
more primary schools.” We are far from Condorcet, who required a
school for each group of four hundred souls, and from Lakanal, who
demanded one for each thousand inhabitants. On the other hand,
teachers no longer receive a salary from the State. The State
merely assures to them a place for a class-room and lodging, and
also a garden! “There shall likewise be furnished the teacher the
garden which happens to lie near these premises.” There is no other
remuneration save the annual tuition paid by each pupil to the
teacher. At the same stroke the teacher was made the hireling of
his pupils, and gratuity of instruction was abolished. Only the
indigent pupils, a fourth of the whole number, could be exempted
by the municipal administration from the payment of school fees.
Finally, the programme of studies was reduced to the humblest
proportions: reading, writing, number, and the elements of
republican morality.
After so many noble and generous ambitions, after so many
enthusiastic declarations in favor of the absolute gratuity
of primary instruction, after so many praiseworthy efforts to
raise the material and moral condition of teachers, and to cause
instruction to circulate to the minutest fibres of the social
tissue, the Convention terminated its work in a mean conception
which thinned out the schools, which impoverished the programmes,
which plunged the teacher anew into a precarious state of
existence, which put him anew at the mercy of his pupils, without,
however, taking care to assure him of patronage, and which, for his
sole compensation in case he had no pupils to instruct, guaranteed
him the right to cultivate a garden, if, indeed, there should be
one in the neighborhood of the school! Had the law of 1795 been in
fact the educational will of the Convention, is it not true, at
least, that it is after the manner of those wills extorted by undue
means, where a man by his final bequests recalls his former acts,
and proves himself faithless to all the aspirations of his life?
No, it is not from Daunou, but from Talleyrand, from Condorcet, and
from Lakanal that we must seek the real educational thought of the
Revolution. Doubtless the measure of Daunou had over all previous
measures the advantages of being applied, and of not remaining a
dead letter; but the glory of the early Revolutionists should not
be belittled by the fact that circumstances arrested the execution
of their plans, and that a century was necessary in order that
society might attain the ideal which they had conceived. They were
the first to proclaim the right and the duty of each citizen to
be instructed and enlightened. We are ceaselessly urged to admire
the past and to respect the work of our fathers. We do not in the
least object to this, but the Revolution itself also forms a part
of that past, and we regret that the men who so eloquently preach
the worship of traditions and respect for ancestors, are precisely
those who the most harshly disparage the efforts of the Revolution.
[479. ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.--1. The educational legislation of the
French Revolution, apparently so inconsiderate, so vacillating,
and so fruitless, betrays the instinctive feeling of a nation
in peril, that the only constitutional means of regeneration is
universal instruction, intellectual and moral.
2. Out of the same instinct grew the conception that the
starting-point in educational reform is the instruction and
inspiration of the teaching body. The normal school lies at the
very basis of national safety and prosperity.
3. The immediate fruitlessness of the educational legislation
of the Revolution, is another illustration of the general fact
that no reform is operative, which in any considerable degree
antedates the existing state of public opinion. Could there be a
revelation of the ideal education, human society could grow into
it only by slow and almost insensible degrees. While there can
be rational growth only through some degree of anticipation, it
is perhaps best that educators have only that prevision which is
provisional.]
FOOTNOTES:
[208] A term applied to the most pronounced revolutionists of the
Convention and of the National Assembly.
[209] It is impossible, within the limits prescribed by the
character and plan of this work, to enter into detail and enumerate
all the decrees and counter-decrees of the Convention on the
subject of public instruction. To see clearly into this chaos and
this confusion, it is necessary to read the excellent article of
Monsieur Guillaume in the _Dictionnaire de Pédagogie_, article
CONVENTION.
[210] See a recent sketch, _Lakanal_, by Paul Legendre (Paris,
1882), with a Preface by Paul Bert.
[211] See in the _Revue politique et littéraire_, for Oct. 7, 1882,
an excellent article on Lakanal, by Monsieur Janet.
[212] If the consensus of philosophic opinion is trustworthy, there
is no basis whatever in psychology for this sequence. On the almost
uniform testimony of psychologists, the organic mental sequence is
from aggregates to parts; so that if the method of presentation is
to be in harmony with the organic mode of the mind’s activities,
the sequence should be as follows: the globe; the eastern
continent; Europe; France; the department; the canton; the commune.
On the mental sequence, see Hamilton’s _Lectures_, Vol. I. pp. 69,
70, 368, 371, 469, 498, 500, 502, 503. (P.)
[213] Dumonstier, rector of the University of Paris in 1645, La
Salle, and in the eighteenth century, the Abbé Courtalon.
[214] Essais sur l’enseignement. Paris, 1805.
[215] Albert Duruy, _op. cit._ p. 137.
CHAPTER XVIII.
PESTALOZZI.
GERMAN PEDAGOGY; THE PIETISTS AND FRANCKE (1663-1727); THE
PHILANTHROPISTS AND BASEDOW (1723-1790); THE PEOPLE’S SCHOOLS;
PESTALOZZI (1746-1827); THE EDUCATION OF PESTALOZZI; PESTALOZZI
AS AN AGRICULTURIST; HOW PESTALOZZI BECAME A TEACHER; EDUCATION
OF HIS SON; THE SCHOOL AT NEUHOF (1775-1780); PESTALOZZI
AS A WRITER (1780-1787); LEONARD AND GERTRUDE (1781); NEW
EXPERIMENTS IN AGRICULTURE; OTHER WORKS; THE ORPHAN ASYLUM AT
STANZ (1798-1799); METHODS FOLLOWED AT STANZ; THE SCHOOLS AT
BURGDORF (1799-1801); HOW GERTRUDE TEACHES HER CHILDREN (1801);
PESTALOZZI’S STYLE; ANALYSIS OF THE GERTRUDE; THE INSTITUTE AT
BURGDORF (1801-1804); THE INSTITUTE AT YVERDUN (1805-1825);
TENTATIVES OF PESTALOZZI; ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES; EDUCATIONAL
PROCESSES; SIMPLIFICATION OF METHODS; ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.
480. GERMAN PEDAGOGY.--For two centuries Germany has been the
classical land of pedagogy; and to render an account of all the
efforts put forth in that country in the domain of education it
would be necessary to write several volumes.
From the opening of the eighteenth century, says Dittes, “a change
for the better takes place. Ideas become facts. The importance of
education is more and more recognized; pedagogy shakes off the
ancient dust of the school and interests itself in actual life; it
is no longer willing to be a collateral function of the Church, but
begins to become an independent art and science. A few theologians
will still render it important service, but in general they will do
this outside the Church, and often in opposition to it.”
While awaiting the grand and fruitful impulsion of Pestalozzi, the
history of pedagogy ought to mention at least the Pietists, “whose
educational establishments contributed to prepare the way for the
new methods,” and after them, the Philanthropists, of whom Basedow
is the most celebrated representative.
481. THE PIETISTS AND FRANCKE (1663-1727).--Francke played nearly
the same part in Germany that La Salle did in France. He founded
two establishments at Halle, the _Pædagogium_ and the _Orphan
Asylum_, which, in 1727, contained more than two thousand pupils.
He belonged to the sect of Pietists, Lutherans who professed an
austere morality, and, in conformity with the principles of his
denomination, he made piety the supreme end of education.
That which distinguishes and commends Francke, is his talent for
organization. He was right in giving marked attention to the
material condition of schools and to needed supplies of apparatus.
The Pædagogium was installed in 1715 in comfortable quarters,
and there were annexed to it a botanical garden, a museum of
natural history, physical apparatus, a chemical and an anatomical
laboratory, and a shop for the cutting and polishing of glass.
After him his disciples, Niemeyer, Semler, and Hecker, continued
his work, and, in certain respects, reformed it. They founded
the first _real schools_ of Germany. They kept up the practical
spirit, the professional pedagogy of their master, and assured the
development of those educational establishments which still exist
to-day under the name of the _Institutions_ of Francke.
482. THE PHILANTHROPISTS AND BASEDOW (1723-1790).--With Basedow,
a more liberal spirit, borrowed in part from Rousseau, gained
entrance into German pedagogy. Basedow founded at Dessau a school
which received the praise of the philosopher Kant, and of the
clergyman Oberlin. He designated it by a name which reflects his
humanitarian intentions, the _Philanthropinum_. In the methods
which he employed in it he seems always to have had before his eyes
the exclamation of Rousseau: “Things, things! Too many words!” The
intuitive method, or that of _teaching by sight_, was practised in
the school of Dessau.
The principal work of Basedow, his _Elementary Book_, is scarcely
more than the _Orbis Pictus_ of Comenius reconstructed according
to the principles of Rousseau. At Dessau, the pretence was made of
teaching a language in six months. “Our methods,” says Basedow,
“make studies only one-third as long and thrice as agreeable.”
An abuse was made of mechanical exercises. The children, at
the command of the master: _Imitamini sartorem_,--_Imitamini
sutorem_,--all began to imitate the motions of a tailor who is
sewing, or of a shoemaker who is using his awl. Graver still,
Basedow made such an abuse of _object lessons_ as to represent to
children certain scenes within the sick-chamber, for the purpose of
teaching them their duties and obligations to their mothers.[216]
483. SCHOOLS FOR THE PEOPLE.--Great efforts were made in the
eighteenth century, in the Catholic, as well as in the Protestant
countries of Germany, towards the development of popular
instruction. Maria Theresa and Frederick II. considered public
instruction as an affair of the State. Private enterprise was
added to the efforts of the government. In Prussia, a nobleman,
Rochow (1734-1805), founded village schools; and in Austria, two
ecclesiastics, Felbiger (1724-1788) and Kindermann (1740-1801),
contributed by their activity in education to the reform of schools.
Nevertheless, the results were still very poor, and the public
school, especially the village school, remained in a sorry
condition.
“Almost everywhere,” says Dittes, “there were employed as
teachers, domestics, corrupt artisans, discharged soldiers,
degraded students, and, in general, persons of questionable
morality and education. Their pay was mean, and their authority
slight. Attendance at school, generally very irregular, was almost
everywhere entirely suspended in summer. Many villages had no
school, and scarcely anywhere was the school attended by all the
children. In many countries, most of the children, especially the
girls, were wholly without instruction. The people, especially the
peasantry, regarded the school as a burden. The clergy, it is true,
always regarded themselves as the proprietors of the school, but
on the whole they did but very little for it, and even arrested
its progress. The nobility was but little favorable, in general,
to intellectual culture for the people.... Instruction remained
mechanical and the discipline rude. It is reported that a Suabian
schoolmaster, who died in 1782, had inflicted during his experience
in teaching 911,527 canings, 124,010 whippings, 10,235 boxes on the
ear, and 1,115,800 thumps on the head. Moreover, he had made boys
kneel 777 times on triangular sticks, had caused the fool’s cap
to be worn 5001[217] times, and the stick to be held in air 1707
times. He had used something like 3000 words of abuse....”
484. PESTALOZZI (1746-1827).--In Switzerland, the situation of
primary instruction was scarcely better. The teachers were gathered
up at hazard; their pay was wretched; in general they had no
lodgings of their own, and they were obliged to hire themselves
out for domestic service among the well-off inhabitants of the
villages, in order to find food and lodging among them. A mean
spirit of caste still dominated instruction, and the poor remained
sunk in ignorance.
It was in the very midst of this wretched and unpropitious state
of affairs that there appeared, towards the end of the eighteenth
century, the most celebrated of modern educators, a man who, we may
be sure, was not exempt from faults, whose mind had deficiencies
and weaknesses, and whom we have no intention of shielding from
criticism, by covering him with the praises of a superstitious
admiration; but who is pre-eminently great by reason of his
unquenchable love for the people, his ardent self-sacrifice, and
his pedagogic instinct. During the eighty years of his troubled
life, Pestalozzi never ceased to work for children, and to devote
himself to their instruction. War or the ill-will of his countrymen
destroyed his schools to no purpose. Without ever despairing,
he straightway rebuilt them farther away, sometimes succeeding,
through the gift of ardent speech, which never deserted him, in
communicating the inspiration to those about him; gathering up
in all places orphans and vagabonds, like a kidnapper of a new
species; forgetting that he was poor, when he saw an occasion
to be charitable, and that he was ill, when it was necessary to
teach; and, finally, pursuing with an unconquerable energy, through
hindrances and obstacles of every description, his educational
apostleship. “It is death or success!” he wrote. “My zeal to
accomplish the dream of my life would have carried me through air
or through fire, no matter how, to the highest peak of the Alps!”
485. THE EDUCATION OF PESTALOZZI.--The life of Pestalozzi is
intimately related to his educational work. To comprehend the
educator, it is first necessary to have become acquainted with the
man.
Born at Zurich in 1746, Pestalozzi died at Brugg in Argovia in
1827. This unfortunate great man always felt the effects of the
sentimental and unpractical education given him by his mother, who
was left a widow with three children in 1751. He early formed the
habit of feeling and of being touched with emotion, rather than of
reasoning and of reflecting. The laughing-stock of his companions,
who made sport of his awkwardness, the little scholar of Zurich
accustomed himself to live alone and to become a dreamer. Later,
towards 1760, the student of the academy distinguished himself by
his political enthusiasm and his revolutionary daring. At that
early period he had conceived a profound feeling for the miseries
and the needs of the people, and he already proposed as the purpose
of his life the healing of the diseases of society. At the same
time there was developed in him an irresistible taste for a simple,
frugal, and almost ascetic life. To restrain his desires had become
the essential rule of his conduct, and, to put it in practice,
he forced himself to sleep on a plank, and to subsist on bread
and vegetables. Life in the open air had an especial attraction
for him. Each year he spent his vacations in the country at his
grandfather’s, who was a minister at Hœngg. _Omne malum ex urbe_
was his favorite thought.
486. PESTALOZZI AN AGRICULTURIST (1765-1775).--Pestalozzi’s call
to be a teacher manifested itself at first only by some vague
aspirations, of which it would be easy to find the trace in the
short essays of his youth, and in the articles which he contributed
in his twentieth year to a students’ journal published at Zurich.
After having tried his hand unsuccessfully at theology and law,
he became an agriculturist. When he established at Neuhof an
agricultural enterprise, he thought less of enriching himself
than of raising the material condition of the Swiss peasantry by
organizing new industries. But notwithstanding his good intent,
and the assistance of the devoted woman whom he had married in
1769, Anna Schultess, Pestalozzi, more enterprising than skillful,
failed in his industrial establishments. In 1775 he had exhausted
his resources. It is then that he formed an heroic resolution which
typifies his indiscreet generosity. Poor, and scarcely more than
able to support himself, he opened on his farm an asylum for poor
children.
487. HOW PESTALOZZI BECAME AN EDUCATOR.--The asylum for poor
children at Neuhof (1775-1780) is, so to speak, the first step
in the pedagogical career of Pestalozzi. The others will be the
orphan asylum at Stanz (1798-1799), the primary schools at Burgdorf
(1799), the institute at Burgdorf (1801-1804), and, finally, the
institute at Yverdun (1805-1825).
The first question that is raised when we study systems of
education, is, how the authors of those systems became teachers.
The best, perhaps, are those who became such because of their
great love for humanity, or because of their tender love for
their children. Pestalozzi is of this class. It is because he
has ardently dreamed from his youth of the moral amelioration of
the people; and it is also because he has followed with a tender
solicitude the first steps of his little son Jacob on life’s
journey, that he became a great teacher.
488. THE EDUCATION OF HIS SON.--The _Father’s Journal_,[218]
where Pestalozzi noted from day to day the progress of his
child, shows him intent on applying the principles of Rousseau.
At the age of eleven, Jacob, like Émile, did not yet know how to
read or to write. Things before words, the intuition of sensible
objects, few exercises in judgment, respect for the powers of the
child, an equal anxiety to husband his liberty and to secure his
obedience, the constant endeavor to diffuse joy and good humor
over education,--such were the principal traits of the education
which Pestalozzi gave his son, an education which was a real
experiment in pedagogy, from which the pupil perhaps suffered
somewhat, but from which humanity was to derive profit. From this
period Pestalozzi conceived some of the ideas which became the
principles of his method. The father had made the educator. One of
the superiorities of Pestalozzi over Rousseau is, that he loved and
educated his own child.
489. THE ASYLUM AT NEUHOF.--Madame de Staël was right in saying
that “we must consider Pestalozzi’s school as limited to childhood.
The education which it gives is designed only for the common
people.” And, in fact, the first and the last establishments of
Pestalozzi were schools for small children. In the last years of
his life, when he was obliged to leave the institute of Yverdun,
he returned to Neuhof, and there had constructed a school for poor
children.
The school at Neuhof was to be above all else, in Pestalozzi’s
thought, an experiment in moral and material regeneration through
labor, through order, and through instruction. Many exercises
in language, singing, reading of the Bible,--such were the
intellectual occupations. But the greater part of the time was
devoted to agricultural labor, to the cultivation of madder.
Notwithstanding his admirable devotion, Pestalozzi did not long
succeed in his philanthropic plans. He had to contend against
the prejudices of parents, and the ingratitude of the children.
Very often the little beggars whom he had gathered up waited only
till they had received from him new clothing, and then ran away
and resumed their vagabond life. Besides, he lacked resources. He
became poor, and fell more and more into debt. His friends, who had
aided him on the start, warned him that he would die in a hospital
or in a mad-house.
“For thirty years,” he says himself, “my life was a desperate
struggle against the most frightful poverty.... More than a
thousand times I was obliged to go without dinner, and at noon,
when even the poorest were seated around a table, I devoured a
morsel of bread upon the highway ...; and all this that I might
minister to the needs of the poor, by the realization of my
principles.”
490. PESTALOZZI A WRITER.--After the check to his undertaking at
Neuhof, Pestalozzi renounced for some time all practical activity,
and it was by his writings that he manifested, from 1780 to 1787,
his zeal in education.
In 1780 appeared the _Evening Hours of a Recluse_, a series of
aphorisms on the rise of a people through education. In this,
Pestalozzi sharply criticised the artificial method of the school,
and insisted on the necessity of developing the soul through _what
is within_,--through interior culture:--
“The school everywhere puts the order of words before the order of
free nature.”
“The home is the basis of the education of humanity.”
“Man, it is within yourself, it is in the inner sense of your
power, that resides nature’s instrument for your development.”
491. LEONARD AND GERTRUDE.--In 1781 Pestalozzi published the
first volume of _Leonard and Gertrude_. He had written it within
the blank spaces of an old account book. This book, the most
celebrated perhaps of all Pestalozzi’s writings, is a sort of
popular romance in which the author brings upon the stage a family
of working-people. Gertrude here represents the ideas of Pestalozzi
on the education of children. The three other volumes (1783, 1785,
1787) relate the regeneration of a village through the concerted
action of legislation, administration, religion, and the school,
and especially the school, “which is the centre whence everything
should proceed.”
_Leonard and Gertrude_ is the only one of Pestalozzi’s works which
Diesterweg[219] recommends to practical teachers.
“It was my first word,” says Pestalozzi, “to the heart of the poor
and of the abandoned of the land.”
In making Gertrude the principal character of his romance,
Pestalozzi wished to emphasize one of his fundamental ideas, which
was to place the instruction and the education of the people in the
hands of mothers.
492. NEW EXPERIMENTS IN AGRICULTURE.--From 1787 to 1797 Pestalozzi
returned to farming. It is from this period that date his
relations with Fellenberg, the celebrated founder of _Agricultural
Institutes_, and with the philosopher Fichte, who showed him the
agreement of his ideas with the doctrine of Kant. His name began
to become celebrated, and, in 1792, the Legislative Assembly
proclaimed him a French citizen, in company with Washington and
Klopstock.
During these years of farm labor, Pestalozzi had meditated
different works which appeared in 1797.
493. OTHER WORKS OF PESTALOZZI.--Educational thought pervades
all the literary works of Pestalozzi. Thus his _Fables_, short
compositions in prose, all have a moral and educational tendency.
Also, in his _Researches on the Course of Nature in the Development
of the Human Race_, he sought to justify the preponderant office
which he accorded to nature in the education of man. But Pestalozzi
was not successful in philosophical dissertations.
“This book,” he says himself, “is to me only another proof of
my lack of ability; it is simply a diversion of my imaginative
faculty, a work relatively weak.... No one,” he adds, “understands
me, and it has been hinted that the whole work has been taken for
nonsense.”
This judgment is severe, but it is only just. Pestalozzi had an
intuition of truth, but he was incapable of giving a theoretical
demonstration of it. His thought all aglow, and his language all
imagery, did not submit to the concise and methodical exposition of
abstract truths.
494. THE ORPHAN ASYLUM AT STANZ (1798-1799).--Up to 1798 Pestalozzi
had scarcely found the occasion to put in practice his principles
and his dreams. The Helvetic Revolution, which he hailed with
enthusiasm as the signal of a social regeneration for his country,
finally gave him the means of making a trial of his theories,
which, by a strange destiny, had been applied by other hands before
having been applied by his own.
The Helvetic government, whose sentiments were in harmony with the
democratic sentiments of Pestalozzi, offered him the direction of
a normal school. But he declined, in order that he might remain a
teacher. He was about to take charge of a school, the plan of which
he had organized, when events called him to direct an orphan asylum
at Stanz.
495. METHODS FOLLOWED AT STANZ.--From six to eight o’clock in the
morning, and from four to eight in the afternoon, Pestalozzi heard
the lessons of his pupils. The rest of the time was devoted to
manual labor. Even during the lesson, the child at Stanz “drew,
wrote, and worked.” To establish order in a school which contained
eighty pupils, Pestalozzi had the idea of resorting to rhythm;
“and it was found,” he says, “that the rhythmical pronunciation
increased the impression produced by the lesson.” Having to do
with pupils absolutely ignorant, he kept them for a long time on
the elements; he practised them on the first elements till they
had mastered them. He simplified the methods, and sought in each
branch of instruction a point of departure adapted to the nascent
faculties of the child. The mode of teaching was simultaneous.
All the pupils repeated in a high tone of voice the words of the
teacher; but the instruction was also mutual:--
“Children instructed children; they themselves tried the
experiment; all I did was to suggest it. Here again I obeyed
necessity. Not having a single assistant, I had the idea of putting
one of the most advanced pupils between two others who were less
advanced.”
Reading was combined with writing. Natural history and geography
were taught to children under the form of conversational lessons.
But what engrossed Pestalozzi above all else was to develop the
moral sentiments and the interior forces of the conscience. He
wished to make himself loved by his pupils, to awaken among them,
in their daily association, sentiments of fraternal affection,
to excite the conception of each virtue before formulating its
precept, and to give the children moral lessons through the
influence of nature which surrounded them and through the activity
which was imposed on them.
Pestalozzi’s chimera, in the organization at Stanz, was to
transport into the school the conditions of domestic life--the
desire to be a father to a hundred children.
“I was convinced that my heart would change the condition of my
children just as promptly as the sun of spring would reanimate the
earth benumbed by the winter.”
“It was necessary that my children should observe, from dawn to
evening, at every moment of the day, upon my brow and on my lips,
that my affections were fixed on them, that their happiness was my
happiness, and that their pleasures were my pleasures.”
“I was everything to my children. I was alone with them from
morning till night.... Their hands were in my hands. Their eyes
were fixed on my eyes.”
496. RESULTS ACCOMPLISHED.--Without plan, without apparent order;
merely by the action and incessant communication of his ardent soul
with children ignorant and perverted by misery; reduced to his own
resources in a house where he was himself “steward, accountant,
footman, and almost servant all in one,” Pestalozzi obtained
surprising results.
“I saw at Stanz,” he says, “the power of the human faculties....
My pupils developed rapidly; it was another race.... The children
very soon felt that there existed in them forces which they did
not know, and in particular they acquired a general sentiment of
order and beauty. They were self-conscious, and the impression of
weariness which habitually reigns in schools vanished like a shadow
from my class-room. They willed, they had power, they persevered,
they succeeded, and they were happy. They were not scholars who
were learning, but children who felt unknown forces awakening
within them, and who understood where these forces could and would
lead them, and this feeling gave elevation to their mind and heart.”
“It is out of the folly of Stanz,” says Roger de Guimps, “that has
come the primary school of the nineteenth century.”
While the pupils prospered, the master fell sick of overwork. When
the events of the war closed the orphan asylum, it was quite time
for the health of Pestalozzi. He raised blood and was at the limit
of his strength.
497. THE SCHOOLS OF BURGDORF (1799-1802).--As soon as he had
recovered his health, Pestalozzi resumed the course of his
experiments. Not without difficulty he succeeded in having
entrusted to him a small class in a primary school of Burgdorf. He
passed for an ignoramus.
“It was whispered that I could neither write, nor compute, nor even
read decently.” Pestalozzi does not defend himself against the
charge, but acknowledges his incapacity, and even asserts that it
is to his advantage.
“My incapacity in these respects was certainly an indispensable
condition for my discovery of the simplest method of teaching.”
What troubled him most in the school at Burgdorf “was that it was
subjected to rules.” “Never in my life had I borne such a burden. I
was discouraged. I cringed under the routine yoke of the school.”
Nevertheless, Pestalozzi succeeded admirably in his little school.
Then more advanced pupils were given him, but here his success was
less. He always proceeded without a plan, and he gave himself great
trouble in obtaining results that he might have attained much more
easily with a little more system. Blunders, irregularities, and
whimsicalities were ever compromising the action of his good will.
To be convinced of this, it suffices to read the books which he
published at this period, and in particular the most celebrated, of
which we shall proceed to give a brief analysis.
498. HOW GERTRUDE TEACHES HER CHILDREN.--It is under this
title that in 1801 Pestalozzi published an exposition of his
doctrine.[220] “It is the most important and the most profound of
all his pedagogical writings,” says one of his biographers. We
shall not dispute this; but this book also proves how the mind
of Pestalozzi was inferior to his heart, how the writer was of
less worth than the teacher. Composed under the form of letters
addressed to Gessner, the work of Pestalozzi is too often a tissue
of declamations, of rambling thoughts, and of personal grievances.
It is the work of a brain that is in a state of ferment, and of a
heart that is overflowing. The thought is painfully disentangled
from out a thousand repetitions. Why need we be astonished at this
literary incompetence of Pestalozzi when he himself makes the
following confession: “For thirty years I had not read a single
book; I could not longer read them.”
499. PESTALOZZI’S STYLE.--The style of Pestalozzi is the very man
himself: desultory, obscure, confused, but with sudden flashes
and brilliant illuminations in which the warmth of his heart
is exhibited. There are also too many comparisons; the imagery
overwhelms the idea. Within a few pages he will compare himself, in
succession, “to a sailor, who, having lost his harpoon, would try
to catch a whale with a hook,” to depict the disproportion between
his resources and his purpose; then to a straw, which even a cat
would not lay hold of, to tell how he was despised; to an owl, to
express his isolation; to a reed, to indicate his feebleness; to a
mouse which fears a cat, to characterize his timidity.
500. ANALYSIS OF THE GERTRUDE.--It is not easy to analyze one
of Pestalozzi’s books. To begin with, _How Gertrude teaches her
Children_ is a very bad title, for Gertrude is not once mentioned
in it. This proper name became for Pestalozzi an allegorical term
by which he personifies himself.
The first three letters are rather autobiographical memoirs than
an exposition of doctrine. Pestalozzi here relates his first
experiments, and makes us acquainted with his assistants at
Burgdorf,--Krüsi, Tobler, and Buss. In the letters which follow,
the author attempts to set forth the general principles of his
method. The seventh treats of language; the eighth, of the
intuition of forms, of writing, and of drawing; the ninth, of the
intuition of numbers and of computation; the tenth and twelfth, of
intuition in general. For Pestalozzi, intuition was, as we know,
direct and experimental perception, either in the domain of sense,
or in the interior regions of the consciousness. Finally, the last
letters are devoted to moral and religious development.
Without designing to follow, in all its ramblings and in all its
digressions, the mobile thought of Pestalozzi, we shall gather up
some of the general ideas which abound in this overcharged and
badly composed work.
501. METHODS SIMPLIFIED.--The purpose of Pestalozzi was indeed, in
one sense, as he was told by one of his friends, to _mechanize_
instruction. He wished, in fact, to simplify and determine methods
to such a degree that they might be employed by the most ordinary
teacher, and by the most ignorant father and mother. In a word,
he hoped to organize a pedagogical machine so well set up that it
could in a manner run alone.
“I believe,” he says, “that we must not dream of making progress
in the instruction of the people as long as we have not found the
forms of instruction which make of the teacher, at least so far as
the completion of the elementary studies is concerned, the simple
mechanical instrument of a method which owes its results to the
nature of its processes, and not to the ability of the one who uses
it. I assert that a school-book has no value, save as it can be
employed by a master without instruction as well as by one who has
been taught.”
This was sheer exaggeration, and was putting too little value on
the personal effort and merit of teachers. On this score, it would
be useless to found normal schools. Pestalozzi, moreover, has given
in his own person a striking contradiction to this singular theory;
for he owed his success in teaching much more to the influence of
his living speech, and to the ardent communication of the passion
by which his heart was animated, than to the methodical processes
which he never succeeded in combining in an efficient manner.
502. THE SOCRATIC METHOD.--Pestalozzi recommends the Socratic
method, and he indicates with exactness some of the conditions
necessary for the employment of that method. He first observes that
it requires on the part of the teacher uncommon ability.
“A superficial and uncultivated intelligence,” he says, “does not
sound the depths whence a Socrates made spring up intelligence and
truth.”
Besides, the Socratic method can be employed only with pupils who
already have some instruction. It is absolutely impracticable
with children who lack both the point of departure, that is,
preliminary notions, and the means of expressing these notions,
that is, a knowledge of language. And as it is always necessary
that Pestalozzi’s thought should wind up with a figure of speech,
he adds:--
“In order that the goshawk and the eagle may plunder eggs from
other birds, it is first necessary that the latter should deposit
eggs in their nests.”
503. WORD, FORM, AND NUMBER.--A favorite idea of Pestalozzi, which
remained at Yverdun, as at Burgdorf, the principle of his exercises
in teaching, is that all elementary knowledge can and should be
related to three principles,--_word_, _form_, and _number_. To the
_word_ he attached language, to _form_, writing and drawing, and to
_number_, computation.
“This was,” he says, “like a ray of light in my researches, like
a _Deus ex machina!_” Nothing justifies such enthusiasm. It would
be very easy to show that Pestalozzi’s classification, besides
that it offers no practical interest, is not justifiable from the
theoretical point of view, first because one of the elements of
his trilogy, the _word_, or language, comprises the other two;
and then because a large part of knowledge, for example, all
physical qualities, does not permit the distinction of which he was
superstitiously fond.
504. INTUITIVE EXERCISES.--What is of more value is the importance
which Pestalozzi ascribes to intuition. An incident worthy of note
is that it is not Pestalozzi himself, but one of the children
of his school, who first had the idea of the direct observation
of the objects which serve as the text for the lesson. One day
as, according to his custom, he was giving his pupils a long
description of what they observed in a drawing where a window was
represented, he noticed that one of his little auditors, instead of
looking at the picture, was attentively studying the real window of
the school-room.
From that moment Pestalozzi put aside all his drawings, and took
the objects themselves for subjects of observation.
“The child,” he said, “wishes nothing to intervene between nature
and himself.”
Ramsauer, a pupil at Burgdorf, has described, not without some
inaccuracy perhaps, the intuitive exercises which Pestalozzi
offered to his pupils:--
“The exercises in language were the best we had, especially those
which had reference to the wainscoting of the school-room. He
spent whole hours before that wainscoting, very old and torn,
busy in examining the holes and rents, with respect to number,
form, position, and color, and in formulating our observations in
sentences more or less developed. Then Pestalozzi would ask us,
Boys, what do you see? (He never mentioned the girls.)
_Pupil_: I see a hole in the wainscoting.
_Pestalozzi_: Very well; repeat after me:--
I see a hole in the wainscoting.
I see a large hole in the wainscoting.
Through the hole I see the wall, etc., etc.”
505. THE BOOK FOR MOTHERS.--In 1803 Pestalozzi published a work
on elementary instruction, which remained unfinished, entitled
_The Book for Mothers_. This was another _Orbis Pictus_ without
pictures. Pestalozzi’s intention was to introduce the child to a
knowledge of the objects of nature or of art which fall under his
observation. In this he tarried too long over the description of
the organs of the body and of their functions. A French critic,
Dussault, said, with reference to this:--
“Pestalozzi gives himself much trouble to teach children that
their nose is in the middle of their face.” In his anxiety to be
simple and elementary, Pestalozzi often succeeds in reality in
making instruction puerile. On the other hand, the Père Girard
complains that the exercises in language which compose _The Book
for Mothers_, “really very well arranged, are also very dry and
monotonous.”
506. A SWISS TEACHER IN 1793.--To form a just estimate of the
efforts of Pestalozzi and his assistants, we must take into account
the wretched state of instruction at the period when they attempted
to reform the methods of teaching. Krüsi, Pestalozzi’s first
assistant, one of those who were perhaps the nearest his heart,
has himself related how he became a teacher. He was eighteen,
and till then his only employment had been that of a peddler for
his father. One day, as he was going about his business with a
heavy load of merchandise on his shoulders, he meets on the road
a revenue officer of the State, and they enter into conversation.
“Do you know,” said the officer, “that the teacher of Gais is about
to leave his school? Would you not like to succeed him?--It is
not a question of what I would like; a school-master should have
knowledge, in which I am absolutely lacking.--What a school-master
can and should know with us, you might easily learn at your
age.”--Krüsi reflected, went to work, and copied more than a
hundred times a specimen of writing which he had procured; and he
declares that this was his only preparation. He registered for
examination. The day for the trial arrived.
“There were but two competitors of us,” he says. “The principal
test consisted in writing the Lord’s Prayer, and to this I gave my
closest attention. I had observed that in German, use was made of
capital letters; but I did not know the rule for their use, and
took them for ornaments. So I distributed mine in a symmetrical
manner, so that some were found even in the middle of words. In
fact, neither of us knew anything.
“When the examination had been estimated, I was summoned, and
Captain Schœpfer informed me that the examiners had found us both
deficient; that my competitor read the better, but that I excelled
him in writing; ... that, besides, my apartment, being larger
than that of the other candidate, was better fitted for holding a
school, and, finally, that I was elected to the vacant place.”
Is it not well to be indulgent to teachers whom we meet on the
highway, who scarcely know how to write, and whom a captain
commissions?
507. THE INSTITUTE AT BURGDORF (1802).--When Pestalozzi published
the _Gertrude_ and _The Book for Mothers_, he was not simply a
school-master at Burgdorf; he had taken charge of an institute,
that is, of a boarding-school of higher primary instruction. There
also he applied the natural method, “which makes the child proceed
from his own intuitions, and leads him by degrees, and through
his own efforts, to abstract ideas.” The institute succeeded. The
pupils of Burgdorf were distinguished especially by their skill
in drawing and in mental arithmetic. Visitors were struck with
their air of cheerfulness. Singing and gymnastics were held in
honor, and also exercises on natural history, learned in the open
field, and during walks. Mildness and liberty characterized the
internal management. “It is not a school that you have here,” said
a visitor, “but a family!”
508. JOURNEY TO PARIS.--It was at this period that Pestalozzi
made a journey to Paris, as a member of the _consulta_ called by
Bonaparte to decide the fate of Switzerland. He hoped to take
advantage of his stay in France to disseminate his pedagogical
ideas. But Bonaparte refused to see him, saying that he had
something else to do besides discussing questions of _a b c_.
Monge, the founder of the Polytechnic School, was more cordial, and
kindly listened to the explanations of the Swiss pedagogue. But
he concluded by saying, “It is too much for us!” More disdainful
still, Talleyrand had said, “It is too much for the people!”
On the other hand, at the same period, the philosopher Maine
de Biran, then sub-prefect at Bergerac, called a disciple of
Pestalozzi, Barraud, to found schools in the department of
Dordogne, and he encouraged with all his influence the application
of the Pestalozzian method.
509. THE INSTITUTE AT YVERDUN (1805-1825).--In 1803 Pestalozzi
was obliged to leave the castle of Burgdorf. The Swiss government
gave him in exchange the convent of München-Buchsee. Pestalozzi
transferred his institute to this place, but only for a little
time. In 1805 he established himself at Yverdun, at the foot of
Lake Neufchâtel, in French Switzerland; and here, with the aid of
several of his colleagues, he developed his methods anew, with
brilliant success at first, but afterwards through all sorts of
vicissitudes, difficulties, and miseries.
The institute at Yverdun was rather a school of secondary
instruction, devoted to the middle classes, than a primary school
proper. Pupils poured in from all sides. The character of the
studies, however, was poorly defined, and Pestalozzi found himself
somewhat out of his element in his new institution, since he
excelled only in elementary methods and in the education of little
children.
510. SUCCESS OF THE INSTITUTE.--Numerous visitors betook themselves
to Yverdun, some through simple love of strolling. The institute
of Yverdun made a part, so to speak, of the curiosities of
Switzerland. People visited Pestalozzi as they went to see a
lake or a glacier. As soon as notice was given of the arrival of
a distinguished personage, Pestalozzi summoned one of his best
masters, Ramsauer or Schmid.
“Take your best pupils,” he said, “and show the Prince what we are
doing. He has numerous serfs, and when he is convinced, he will
have them instructed.”
These frequent exhibitions entailed a great loss of time. Disorder
reigned in the instruction. The young masters whom Pestalozzi had
attached to his fortunes were overwhelmed with work, and could not
give sufficient attention to the preparation of their lessons.
Pestalozzi was growing old, and did not succeed in completing his
methods.
511. THE TENTATIVES OF PESTALOZZI.--The teaching of Pestalozzi was
in reality but a long groping, an experiment ceaselessly renewed.
Do not require of him articulate ideas, and methods definitely
established. Always on the alert, and always in quest of something
better, his admirable pedagogic instinct never came to full
satisfaction. His merit was that he was always on the search for
truth. His theories almost always followed, rather than preceded,
his experiments. A man of intuition rather than of reasoning, he
acknowledges that he went forward without considering what he
was doing. He had the merit of making many innovations, but he
was wrong in taking counsel of no one but himself, and of his
personal feelings. “We ought to read nothing,” he said; “we ought
to discover everything.” Pestalozzi never knew how to profit by the
experience of others.
He never arrived at complete precision in the establishment of his
methods. He complained of not being understood, and he was not
in fact. One of his pupils at Yverdun, Vulliemin, thus expresses
himself:--
“That which was called, not without pretense, the _method_
of Pestalozzi was an enigma for us. It was for our teachers
themselves. Each of them interpreted the doctrine of the master
in his own way; but we were still far from the time when these
divergencies engendered discord; when our principal teachers, after
each had given out that he alone had comprehended Pestalozzi, ended
by asserting that Pestalozzi himself was not understood; that he
had not been understood except by Schmid, said Schmid, and by
Niederer, said Niederer.”
512. METHODS AT YVERDUN.--The writer whom we have just quoted
gives us valuable information on the methods which were in use at
Yverdun:--
“Instruction was addressed to the intelligence rather than to the
memory. Attempt, said Pestalozzi to his colleagues, to _develop_
the child, and not to _train_ him as one trains a dog.”
“Language was taught us by the aid of intuition; we learned to see
correctly, and through this very process to form for ourselves a
correct idea of the relations of things. What we had conceived
clearly we had no difficulty in expressing clearly.”
“The first elements of geography were taught us on the spot....
Then we reproduced in relief with clay the valley of which we had
just made a study.”
“We were made to invent geometry by having marked out for us the
end to reach, and by being put on the route. The same course was
followed in arithmetic; our computations were made in the head and
_viva voce_, without the aid of paper.”
513. DECADENCE OF THE INSTITUTE.--Yverdun enjoyed an extraordinary
notoriety for some years. But little by little the faults of the
method became apparent. Internal discords and the misunderstanding
of Pestalozzi’s colleagues, of Niederer, “the philosopher of
the method,” and of Schmid, the mathematician, hastened the
decadence of an establishment in which order and discipline had
never reigned. Pestalozzi was content with being the spur of the
institute. He became more and more unfit for practical affairs.
He allowed all liberty to his assistants, and also to his pupils.
At Yverdun the pupils addressed their teachers in familiar style.
The touching fiction of paternity transported into the school,
which was successful with Pestalozzi in his first experience
in teaching, and with a small number of pupils, was no longer
practicable at Yverdun, with a mass of pupils of every age and of
every disposition.
514. JUDGMENT OF PÈRE GIRARD.--In 1809 the Père Girard[221] was
commissioned by the Swiss government to inspect the institute.
The result was not favorable, though Girard acknowledges that he
conceived the idea of his own method from studying at first hand
that of Pestalozzi.
The principal criticism of Girard bears on the abuse of
mathematics, which, under the influence of Schmid, became in fact
more and more the principal occupation of teachers and pupils.
“I made the remark,” he says, “to my old friend Pestalozzi,
that the mathematics exercised an unjustifiable sway in his
establishment, and that I feared the results of this on the
education that was given. Whereupon he replied to me with spirit,
as was his manner: ‘This is because I wish my children to believe
nothing which cannot be demonstrated as clearly to them as that two
and two make four.’ My reply was in the same strain: ‘In that case,
if I had thirty sons, I would not entrust one of them to you, for
it would be impossible for you to demonstrate to him, as you can
that two and two make four, that I am his father, and that I have
a right to his obedience.’”
It is evident that Pestalozzi was deviating from his own
inclinations. The general character of his pedagogy is in fact to
avoid abstraction, and in all things to aim at concrete and living
intuition. Even in religion, he deliberately excluded dogmatic
teaching, precise and literal form, and sought only to awaken in
the soul a religious sentiment, sincere and profound. The Père
Girard had remarked to him that the religious instruction of his
pupils was vague and indeterminate, and that their aspirations
lacked the doctrinal form. “The form,” replied Pestalozzi, “I am
still looking for it!”
515. THE LAST YEARS OF PESTALOZZI.--Disheartened by the decadence
of his institute, Pestalozzi left Yverdun in 1824, and sought
a retreat at Neuhof, on the farm where he had tried his first
experiments in popular education. It is here that he wrote his
last two works,--_The Swan’s Song_ and _My Destinies_. January 25,
1827, he was taken to Brugg to consult a physician. He died there
February 17; and two days after he was buried at Birr. It is there
that the Canton of Argovia erected a monument to him in 1846, with
the following inscription:--
“Here lies Henry Pestalozzi, born at Zurich, January 12, 1746,
died at Brugg, February 17, 1827, savior of the poor at Neuhof,
preacher of the people in _Leonard and Gertrude_, father of orphans
at Stanz, founder of the new people’s school at Burgdorf and at
München-Buchsee, educator of humanity at Yverdun, man, Christian,
citizen: everything for others, nothing for himself. Blessed be his
name.”
516. ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES.--Pestalozzi never took the trouble to
formulate the essential principles of his pedagogy. Incapable of
all labor in abstract reflection, he borrowed from his friends,
on every possible occasion, the logical exposition of his own
methods. In his first letter to Gessner, he is only too happy to
reproduce the observations of the philanthropist Fischer, who
distinguished five essential principles in his system:--
1. To give the mind an intensive culture, and not simply extensive:
to form the mind, and not to content one’s self with furnishing it;
2. To connect all instruction with the study of language;
3. To furnish the mind for all its operations with fundamental
data, mother ideas;
4. To simplify the mechanism of instruction and study;
5. To popularize science.
On several points, indeed, Pestalozzi calls in question the
translation which Fischer has given of his thought; but,
notwithstanding these reservations, powerless to find a more exact
formula, he accepts as a finality this interpretation of his
doctrine.
Later, another witness of the life of Pestalozzi, Morf, also
condensed into a few maxims the pedagogy of the great teacher:--
1. Intuition is the basis of instruction;
2. Language ought to be associated with intuition;
3. The time to learn is not that of judging and of criticising;
4. In each branch, instruction ought to begin with the simplest
elements, and to progress by degrees while following the
development of the child, that is to say, through a series of steps
psychologically connected;
5. We should dwell long enough on each part of the instruction for
the pupil to gain a complete mastery of it;
6. Instruction ought to follow the order of natural development,
and not that of synthetic exposition;
7. The individuality of the child is sacred;
8. The principal end of elementary instruction is not to cause the
child to acquire knowledge and talents, but to develop and increase
the forces of his intelligence;
9. To wisdom there must be joined power; to theoretical knowledge,
practical skill;
10. The relations between master and pupil ought to be based on
love;
11. Instruction proper ought to be made subordinate to the higher
purpose of education.
Each one of these aphorisms would need a long commentary. It is
sufficient, however, to study them in the aggregate, in order to
form an almost exact idea of that truly humane pedagogy which
reposes on psychological principles.
Krüsi could say of his master: “With respect to the ordinary
knowledge and practices of the school, Pestalozzi was far below
a good village _magister_; but he possessed something infinitely
superior to that which can be given by a course of instruction,
whatever it may be. He knew that which remains concealed from a
great number of teachers,--the human spirit and the laws of its
development and culture, the human heart and the means of vivifying
it and ennobling it.”
517. PEDAGOGICAL PROCESSES.--The pedagogy of Pestalozzi is no less
valid in its processes than in its principles. Without presuming
to enumerate everything, we will indicate succinctly some of the
scholastic practices which he employed and recommended:--
The child should know how to speak before learning to read.
For reading, use should be made of movable letters glued on
pasteboard. Before writing, the pupil should draw. The first
exercises in writing should be upon slates.
In the study of language, the evolution of nature should be
followed, first studying nouns, then qualificatives, and finally
propositions.
The elements of computation shall be taught by the aid of material
objects taken as units, or at least by means of strokes drawn on a
board. Oral computation shall be the most employed.
The pupil ought, in order to form an accurate and exact idea of
numbers, to conceive them always as a collection of strokes or of
concrete things, and not as abstract figures. A small table divided
into squares in which points are represented, serves to teach
addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
There was neither book nor copy-book in the schools of Burgdorf.
The children had nothing to learn by heart. They had to repeat all
at once and in accord the instructions of the master. Each lesson
lasted but an hour, and was followed by a short interval devoted to
recreation.
Manual labor, making paper boxes, working in the garden,
gymnastics, were associated with mental labor. The last hour of
each day was devoted to optional labor. The pupils said, “We are
working for ourselves.”
A few hours a week were devoted to military exercises.
Surely everything is not to be commended in the processes which
we have just indicated. It is not necessary, for example, that
the child conceive, when he computes, the content of numbers,
and Pestalozzi sometimes makes an abuse of sense intuition. He
introduces analysis, and an analysis too subtile and too minute,
into studies where nature alone does her work. “My method,” he
said, “is but a refinement of the processes of nature.” He refines
too much.
518. PESTALOZZI AND ROUSSEAU.--Pestalozzi has often acknowledged
what he owed to Rousseau. “My chimerical and unpractical spirit was
taken,” he said, “with that chimerical and impracticable book....
The system of liberty ideally established by Rousseau, excited in
me an infinite longing for a wider and more bounteous sphere of
activity.”
The great superiority of Pestalozzi over Rousseau, is that he
worked for the people,--that he applied to a great number of
children the principles which Rousseau embodied only in an
individual and privileged education. Émile, after all, is an
aristocrat. He is rich, and of good ancestry; and is endowed with
all the gifts of nature and fortune. Real pupils do not offer,
in general, to the action of teachers, material as docile and
complaisant. Pestalozzi had to do only with children of the common
people, who have everything to learn at school, because they have
found at home, with busy or careless parents, neither encouragement
nor example,--because their early years have been only a long
intellectual slumber. For these benumbed natures, many exercises
are necessary which would properly be regarded as useless if it
were a question of instructing children of another condition.
Before condemning, before ridiculing, the trifling practices of
Pestalozzi, and of teachers of the same school, we should consider
the use to which these processes were applied. The real organizer
of the education of childhood and of the people, Pestalozzi has a
right to the plaudits of all those who are interested in the future
of the masses of the people.
519. CONCLUSION.--We should not flatter ourselves that merely by
means of an analysis of Pestalozzi’s methods, we can comprehend
the service of a man who excelled in the warmth of his charity, in
his ardor of devotion and of propagandism, and in I know not what
that makes a grand personality, more than by the clearness and the
exactness of his theories. It is somewhat with Pestalozzi as with
those great actors who carry with them to their tomb a part of the
secret of their art.
He was especially great in heart and in love. To read some of his
writings, we would sometimes be tempted to say that his intellect
was far inferior to the expectation excited by his name; but what
a splendid revenge he takes in the domain of sentiment!
He passionately loved the people. He knew their sufferings, and
nothing turned him from his anxiety to cure them. In the presence
of a beautiful landscape, he thought less of the charming scene
that was displayed before his eyes than of the poor people who,
under those splendors of nature, led a life of misery.
That which assures him an immortal glory is the high purpose that
he set before himself,--his ardor to regenerate humanity through
instruction. Of what consequence is it that the results obtained
were so disproportionate to his efforts, and that he could say,
“The contrast between what I would and what I could is so great
that it cannot be expressed”? Even the French Revolution did
not succeed in the matter of instruction, in making its works
commensurate with its aspirations.
The love and the admiration of all the friends of instruction are
forever secured to Pestalozzi. He was the most suggestive, the
most stimulating, of modern educators. If it was not given him to
act sufficiently on French pedagogy, he was in Germany the great
inspirer of reform in popular education. While he was despised by
Bonaparte, he obtained, in 1802, from the philosopher Fichte, this
fine compliment, “It is from the institute of Pestalozzi that I
expect the regeneration of the German nation.”
[520. ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.--1. _Inveniam viam aut faciam._ To know
the end is to find the way; and to be possessed of an impulse to
reach an end is to make a way. There are thus two categories of
educational reformers. Some see a goal by the light of reason
and reflection, and then lay out a logical route to it which
they may or may not traverse, but which some one will ultimately
traverse. Others are dominated by an intense feeling, and grope
their uncertain way towards a goal whose outline and position are
only dimly discerned through the mists of emotion. With some,
the motive is intellectual, with others, it is emotional; and
in their higher manifestations these endowments are mutually
exclusive.
2. Pestalozzi belongs pre-eminently to the emotional reformers.
He felt intensely, but he saw vaguely. His impulses were the
highest and the noblest that can animate the human soul, but
at every stage in his career his success was compromised by
his inability to see things in their normal relations and
proportions. Conscious of his inability to frame a rational
defence of his system, he was glad to borrow philosophic insight
from abroad; but he could not live with colleagues who would test
the logic of his methods.
3. Tested by the simplest rules of order, symmetry, and economy,
the schools organized by Pestalozzi were failures; but tested by
the exalted humanity, the heroic devotion, and self-sacrifice of
their founder, and by the new life which, through his example,
was henceforth to animate the teaching profession, his schools
were successful beyond all precedent. Judged by modern standards,
Pestalozzi was a poor teacher, but an unsurpassed educator.
4. The conception which the humanitarian warmth of Pestalozzi’s
nature converted into a motive, was that true education is a
growth, the outward evolution of an inward life. The conception
itself was as old as David and Socrates, but it had ceased to
have the power of a living truth.
5. The history of human thought shows that there has ever
been a tendency to separate form from content, or letter from
spirit, and as constant a predilection for form or letter, as
distinguished from content or spirit; and the essential work of
reform has consisted in reanimation. This illustrates and defines
Pestalozzi’s mission as an educator. The story of his devotion
and suffering is the most pathetic in the history of education,
and it should be unnecessary to repeat the lesson that was taught
at such cost.]
FOOTNOTES:
[216] Besides Basedow, there should be mentioned among the
educators who have become noted in Germany under the name of
Philanthropists, Salzman (1744-1811) and Campe (1746-1818).
[217] What a painstaking soul to be so exact in his accounts!
Doubtless he had an eye to the future publication of his record
as a _maître de fouet_! This account is rather too exact to be
trustworthy. (P.)
[218] See interesting quotations from the “_Journal d’un père_,” in
the excellent biography of Pestalozzi, by Roger de Guimps.
[219] See Chap. XIX.
[220] A second edition appeared in the lifetime of the author, in
1820, with some important modifications. The French translation
published in 1882 by Dr. Darin was made from the first edition.
[221] See the following chapter.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE SUCCESSORS OF PESTALOZZI.--FRŒBEL AND THE PÈRE GIRARD.
THE PEDAGOGY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY; FRŒBEL (1782-1852); YOUTH
OF FRŒBEL; DIFFERENT EMPLOYMENTS; CALL TO TEACH; FRŒBEL AND
PESTALOZZI; TREATISE ON THE SPHERICAL; NEW STUDIES; INSTITUTE OF
KEILHAU; THE EDUCATION OF MAN; ANALYSIS OF THAT WORK; LOVE FOR
CHILDREN; UNITY OF EDUCATION; DIFFERENT STAGES IN THE DEVELOPMENT
OF MAN; NATURALISM OF FRŒBEL; NEW EXPERIMENTS IN TEACHING;
KINDERGARTENS; ORIGIN OF THE KINDERGARTENS; THE GIFTS OF FRŒBEL;
APPEAL TO THE INSTINCTS OF THE CHILD; IMPORTANCE OF SPORTS;
PRINCIPAL NEEDS OF THE CHILD; FAULTS IN FRŒBEL’S METHOD; THE LAST
ESTABLISHMENTS OF FRŒBEL; FRŒBEL AND DIESTERWEG; POPULARITY OF
FRŒBEL; THE PÈRE GIRARD (1765-1850); LIFE OF THE PÈRE GIRARD;
PLAN OF EDUCATION FOR HELVETIA; LAST YEARS OF THE PÈRE GIRARD;
TEACHING OF THE MOTHER TONGUE; GRAMMAR OF IDEAS; DISCREET USE OF
RULES; EDUCATIVE COURSE IN THE MOTHER TONGUE; ANALYSIS OF THAT
WORK; MORAL ARITHMETIC; MORAL GEOGRAPHY; INFLUENCE OF GIRARD;
ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.
521. THE PEDAGOGY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.--Pestalozzi really
belongs to our century by the close of his career, and especially
by the posthumous glory of his name. With Frœbel and the Père
Girard, we enter completely upon the nineteenth century; both, in
different degrees and with characteristics of their own, continue
the work of Pestalozzi.
522. FRŒBEL (1782-1852).--It may be said of Frœbel as of
Pestalozzi, that in France at least, he is more praised than
known, more celebrated than studied. We have been tardy in
speaking of him,--it is scarcely twenty years since; but it seems
that our admiration has sought to atone for the slowness of its
manifestation by its vivacity and its ardor. The name of the
founder of _Kindergartens_ has become almost popular, while his
writings have remained almost unknown.
An impartial and thorough study of Frœbel’s work will abate rather
than encourage this excessive infatuation and this somewhat
artificial enthusiasm. Assuredly, Frœbel had grand qualities as a
teacher; but he lacked a profound classical culture and also the
sense of proportion. Like most of the Germans of this century,
he has ventured on the conceptions of a nebulous philosophy, and
following the steps of Hegel, he has too often deserted the route
of observation and experiment, to strike out into metaphysical
divagations. Frœbel’s imagination magnifies and distorts
everything. He cannot see objects as they are, but lends them a
symbolical meaning, and wanders off into transcendental and obscure
considerations. But his practical work is worth more than his
writings, and he cannot be denied the glory of having been a bold
and happy innovator in the field of early education.
523. THE YOUTH OF FRŒBEL.--Frœbel was born in Thuringia in 1782. He
lost his mother almost at birth, and was educated by his father and
his uncle, both village pastors. We recollect that by a contrary
destiny, Pestalozzi was brought up by his mother. From his earliest
years he manifested remarkable traits of character, and also mental
tendencies which were a little singular. He was dreamy and wholly
penetrated with a profound religious sentiment. Thus, the day
when he believed that he was assured by peremptory reasoning that
he was not doomed to eternal flames, was an event in his life.
Ardently enamored of nature, he considers her as the true inspirer
of humanity. This had also been the conception of Rousseau and of
Pestalozzi, but it exhibits itself with much more power in the case
of Frœbel.
It is difficult to comprehend the exaggeration of his thought when
he says that nature, attentively observed, appears to us as the
symbol of the highest aspirations of human life.
“Entire nature, even the world of crystals and stones, teaches us
to recognize good and evil, but nowhere in a more living, tranquil,
clear, and evident way than in the world of plants and flowers.”
Morality, thus understood, is a little vague. We do not deny that
the calm life of the fields contributes to surround us with a
pure atmosphere, and to beget within us wholesome and elevated
aspirations; but one must have a singularly sentimental temperament
to believe that nature can give us “the clearest and the most
obvious” lessons in morals.
524. DIFFERENT OCCUPATIONS.--The first part of Frœbel’s life
gives evidence of a certain unsteadiness of mind. Inconstant in
his tastes, he cannot settle on a fixed mode of life. Improvident
and poor, like Pestalozzi, he is in turn forester, intendant,
architect, preceptor; he feels his way up to the day when his
vocation as a teacher is suddenly revealed to him. Moreover, he
studies everything,--law, mineralogy, agriculture, mathematics.
525. VOCATION TO TEACH.--It was in 1805, at Frankfort, that Frœbel
began to teach. He was then twenty-three. The teacher Gruner
offered him a position as instructor in the model school which he
directed; Frœbel accepted, but he was of that number who do nothing
artlessly.
“An accidental circumstance determined my decision. I received news
that my certificates were lost [certificates that he had sent to
an architect to secure a position with him]. I then concluded that
Providence had intended, by this incident, to take from me the
possibility of a return backward.”
At the end of a few days he wrote to his brother Christopher:--
“It is astonishing how my duties please me. From the first lesson
it seemed to me that I had never done anything else, and that I
was born for that very thing. I could no longer make it seem to me
that I had previously thought of following any occupation but this,
and yet I confess that the idea of becoming a teacher had never
occurred to me.”
526. FRŒBEL AND PESTALOZZI.--At the school in Frankfort, Frœbel,
still a novice in the art of teaching, attempted scarcely more than
scrupulously to apply the Pestalozzian methods.
And upon many points Frœbel remained to the end a faithful disciple
of Pestalozzi. Intuition is the fundamental principle of his
method, and we might say that his effort in pedagogy consists
chiefly in organizing into a system the sense intuitions which
Pestalozzi proposed to the child somewhat at random and without
plan.
Frœbel had had direct relations with Pestalozzi. In 1808 he went to
Yverdun with three of his pupils, and there spent two years, taking
part in the work of the institute, and becoming acquainted with the
methods of the master. He declares that it was a “decisive” epoch
in his life.
But let us note, in passing, the difference in character between
Pestalozzi and Frœbel. While Pestalozzi is ever ready to accuse
himself with a touching humility, Frœbel regards himself as almost
infallible. He never attributes failure to his own insufficiency,
but lays the blame on destiny or on the ill-will of others.
Pestalozzi is ever forgetting himself, and he is so neglectful as
to be uncouth in his attire. “He never knew how to dress,” say his
biographers; “his distraction made him forget sometimes his cravat,
and at others his garters.” Frœbel, on the contrary, affected an
elegant and theatrical bearing. He studied effect. At certain
periods, as we are told, he wore Hessian boots and a Tyrolese cap
with high plumes.
527. THE TREATISE ON SPHERICITY (1811).--It was about 1811 that
the peculiar originality of Frœbel manifested itself, and this
was done, it must be confessed, in an unfortunate way, by the
publication of his _Treatise on Sphericity_.
Pestalozzi somewhere wrote: “If my life is entitled to any credit,
it is that of having placed the square at the basis of an intuitive
instruction which has never yet been given to a people.”[222] This
language coming from Pestalozzi is certainly calculated to surprise
us; but at least Pestalozzi meant square in the proper sense of
the term, as a geometrical figure, or as a form for drawing. When
Frœbel speaks to us of the sphere, and makes of it the basis of
education, it is a wholly different thing.
In reading the _Treatise on Sphericity_, we are sometimes tempted
to inquire whether we have to do with a well-balanced mind, or
whether an exuberant imagination has not caused the author to lose
the consciousness of reality.
According to Frœbel, the sphere is the ideal form:--
“The sphere seems like the prototype or the unity of all bodies
and of all forms. Not an angle, not a line, not a plane, not
a surface, is shown in it, and yet it has all points and all
surfaces.”
Let this pass; but besides this, the sphere has mysterious
relations with spiritual things; it teaches the perfection of the
moral life.
“To labor conscientiously at the development of the spherical
nature of a being, is to effect the education of a being.”
An incident borrowed from the life of Frœbel will complete the
picture. He enlisted as a volunteer in 1812, and made the campaigns
of 1812-1813, with Langethal and Middendorf, who were afterward to
be his colleagues. After the war, he returned to Berlin, passing
through the whole of Germany. During the whole journey, he says, “I
was seeking something, but without reaching a definite idea of what
I was in quest of, and nothing could satisfy me. Wholly engrossed
in this thought, I entered one day into a very beautiful garden,
ornamented with plants the most various. I admired them, and yet
none of them brought relief to my inmost feeling.
“Passing them in review, at a glance, in my soul, I suddenly
discovered that among them there was no lily.... Then I knew what
was lacking in that garden, and what I was looking for. How could
my inmost feeling have manifested itself to me in a more beautiful
way? You seek, I said to myself, tranquil peace of heart, harmony
of life, and purity of soul, in the image of the lily, that
peaceful flower, simple and pure. The garden, with all its varied
flowers, but without the blossoms of the lily, was for me like life
agitated and variegated, but without harmony and without unity.”
528. NEW STUDIES.--Frœbel returned to Berlin in 1814, and there
obtained an assistant’s place in the mineralogical museum. He
there studied at leisure the geometrical forms of crystals, and
reflected anew on their symbolical meaning. Perhaps he derived
from these studies the idea of the first gifts which he afterwards
introduced into his _Kindergartens_. It was not till two years
afterwards that he formed the definite resolution to devote
himself to the education of youth (1816). He first established
himself at Griesheim, and then at Keilhau (a league’s distance
from Rudolstadt), where, with five pupils, all his nephews, he
opened a school which he called by a pompous title, and one hardly
justifiable at the beginning, the _General German Institute of
Education_. He succeeded in associating with himself Langethal
and Middendorf. The establishment was administered at first on a
very modest scale, as the resources were slender; but it prospered
little by little, and in 1826 it numbered more than fifty pupils.
529. INSTITUTE AT KEILHAU.--The principles of Pestalozzi were
applied at Keilhau. Langethal and Middendorf passed their
apprenticeship in the Pestalozzian method under the direction of
Frœbel. The three professors met in the common hall, and there
were frequently heard as echoes from their discussion the words:
_intuition_, _personal initiative_, _proceeding from the known to
the unknown_. “They are learning the system,” said the children who
heard them.
At Keilhau, physical, intellectual, and moral education marched
abreast. The master was to attempt to penetrate the individuality
of each child, to the end that he might thence provoke the free
development of that individuality. The government was austere and
the fare frugal. The system of physical hardening was carried to an
extreme. The pupils, winter and summer, wore a blouse and cotton
trousers. A considerable time was devoted to religious exercises.
Frœbel always remained attached to the Lutheran Church, though
his orthodoxy might have seemed open to suspicion, and he always
thought that education ought to be essentially religious.
“All education that is not founded on religion is sterile.” And he
adds, “All education that is not founded on the Christian religion
is defective and incomplete.”[223]
530. THE EDUCATION OF MAN.--It was at Keilhau in 1826, that Frœbel
published his principal work, _The Education of Man_.[224]
At that date, the idea of _Kindergartens_ had not yet taken form
in his mind; and _The Education of Man_ was not so much the
exposition of the practical applications of Frœbel’s method, as a
nebulous and tumid development of his metaphysical principles. It
is a book little read, and, let it be confessed, partly illegible!
We have ventured to speak of the nonsense written by Pestalozzi.
What shall be said of the mystical dreams of Frœbel? The pedagogy
of the Germans, like their philosophy, has for a century often
lost its way in strange theories which absolutely surpass the
comprehension of the French mind. From a mass of vague and
pretentious speculations on universal nature, there are culled with
difficulty some ideas which are well founded. However, let us try
to gather up the obscure idea of Frœbel, made still more obscure
by the exterior form of the work. In the first edition Frœbel had
omitted to introduce into the text any division into chapters and
paragraphs. The reading of this uninterrupted text could not fail
to be laborious; even with the somewhat artificial divisions which
were subsequently introduced, _The Education of Man_ remains
difficult to read and to analyze.
531. ANALYSIS OF THE WORK.--The introduction is the most
interesting part of the work. We might reduce the somewhat confused
ideas which it contains to three essential points, to three general
ideas, of philosophy, of psychology, and of pedagogy.
The idea of general philosophy is this: “Everything comes solely
from God. In God is the unique principle of all things.”
It is a vague pantheism which consists in believing that all the
objects of nature are the direct manifestations of the divine
activity.
“The end, the destiny of each thing, is to publish abroad its
being, the activity of God which operates in it, and the manner
in which this activity is combined with the thing.” From these
premises Frœbel is logically brought to this psychological
statement, that everything is good in man, for it is God who acts
in him. He pushes his optimism so far as to say:--
“From his earliest age the child yields himself to justice and
right with a surprising tact, for we rarely see him avoiding them
voluntarily.”
The pedagogical conclusion is easy to guess: Education shall be
essentially a work of liberty and of spontaneity. It ought to be
indulgent, flexible, supple, and restricted to protecting and
overseeing.
“The vocation of man, considered as a reasonable intelligence,
is to let his nature act in manifesting the action of God, who
operates in him; to publish God outwardly, to acquire the knowledge
of his real destiny, and to accomplish it in all _liberty_ and
_spontaneity_.”
These last two words are repeated _ad nauseam_. Frœbel goes so
far as to say that there can be no general form of education to
impose or even to recommend, because account must be taken of the
nature of each child, and the free development of his individuality
provoked by inviting him to action and to personal exertion. The
choice in the manifestation of the exterior form of education ought
to be left to the intelligence of the educator, and there ought to
be almost as many ways of educating men as there are individuals,
with their own natures aspiring to a personal development.
532. LOVE FOR CHILDREN.--Frœbel, and this is perhaps his best
quality, loves children tenderly. He speaks of them with touching
accents, but he does not fail to mingle with his affection for them
his habitual symbolism. The child is not for him simply the little
real being that he has under his eyes. He sees him through mystic
veils, so to speak, and, as it were, crowned with an aureole:--
“Let the child always appear to us as a living pledge of the
presence, of the goodness, and of the love of God.”
533. UNITY OF EDUCATION.--Frœbel is always bitterly complaining of
the fragmentary and scrappy character of the ordinary education.
His dream was to introduce unity into it. In this respect he
separates himself squarely from Rousseau. The different stages of
life form an uninterrupted chain. “Let life be considered as being
but one in all its phases, as forming one complete whole.”
534. DIFFERENT STAGES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF MAN.--Frœbel, in _The
Education of Man_, considers in succession the different periods
of life. The first three chapters treat of the _first stages of
development_ in man,--the nurseling, the child, the young boy. We
here find pages full of charm, upon the education of the child by
the mother, and upon the progress of the faculties; but pretentious
considerations and whimsical interpretations too often come to
spoil the psychology of Frœbel.
“The child,” he says, “scarcely knows whether he loves the flowers
for themselves, for the delight which they give him, ... or for the
vague intuition which they give him of the Creator.”
Farther on he speaks of introducing the child to colors, and from
this exercise he at once draws moral conclusions: the child loves
colors because he comes by means of them “to the knowledge of an
interior unity.”
535. THE NATURALISM OF FRŒBEL.--The elements of education according
to Frœbel are, with religion; the artistic studies, mathematics,
language, and, above all, nature. “Teachers should scarcely let a
week pass without taking to the country a part of their pupils.
They shall not drive them before them like a flock of sheep....
They shall walk with them as a father among his children, or a
brother among his brothers, in making them observe and admire the
varied richness which nature displays to their eyes at each season
of the year.”
536. NEW EXPERIMENTS IN TEACHING.--The institute of Keilhau did
not long prosper. In 1829 it was necessary to close it for lack of
pupils. Frœbel lacked the practical qualities of an administrator.
In 1831 he tried in vain to open a new school at Wartensee in
Switzerland. The attacks of the clerical party obliged him to
abandon his project. After several other attempts he was elected
director of an orphan asylum at Burgdorf; and it was there that
he resolved to devote his pedagogical efforts to the education of
early childhood.
The little village of Burgdorf had the honor, within a period of
thirty-five years, of offering an asylum to Pestalozzi and to
Frœbel, and of being the scene of their experiments in pedagogy.
537. THE KINDERGARTENS.--The master conception of Frœbel, the
creation of the _Kindergarten_, was only slowly developed in his
mind. It was only in 1840 that he invented the term. Of course,
given the imagination of Frœbel, and his tendency to symbolism,
_children’s garden_ ought to be taken in its allegorical sense. The
child is a plant, the school a garden, and Frœbel calls teachers
“gardeners of children.”[225]
But before giving a name to his school for early childhood, Frœbel
had long cherished the idea of it. In 1835, at Burgdorf, he
attempted to realize it; in 1837, at Blankenburg, near Rudolstadt,
he founded his first infant school.
538. ORIGIN OF THE KINDERGARTEN.--Without wishing to belittle the
originality of Frœbel’s creation, it is right to say that it was
suggested to him in part by Comenius. The philosopher Krause had
pointed out to him the importance of the writings of the Slavic
educator. He studied them, and the _Kindergarten_ certainly has
some relations of parenthood with the _schola materni gremii_.
There is, however, one essential difference between the idea of
Comenius and that of Frœbel,--the first confided to the mother the
cares which the second relegates to the teachers of the children’s
gardens.
It is said that it was from seeing a child playing at ball that
Frœbel conceived the first idea of his system. We know what
importance he attached to the spherical form and to play. The first
principle of his _Kindergarten_ was then that the child ought to
play, and to play at ball.
But Frœbel enveloped the simplest ideas in prolix and whimsical
theories. If he recommends the ball, it is not for positive
reasons, nor because it is an inoffensive play, very appropriate to
the need of movement which characterizes the child. It is because
the ball is the symbol of unity. The cube, which was to succeed the
ball, represents diversity in unity. It is also because the word
_ball_ is a symbolic word, formed from letters borrowed from the
German words _Bild von all, picture of the whole_.
Frœbel came to attribute an occult meaning to the different letters
of words. He thought he found in the figures of the year 1836, the
date of his first conception of the _Kindergarten_, the proof that
that year was to open to humanity a new era, and he expressed his
views in an essay entitled: _The Year 1836 requires a Renovation
of Life_. In this we read such things as these: “The word marriage
(German _Ehe_) represents by its two vowels =e=-=e=, life; these
two vowels are united by the consonant _h_, thus symbolizing a
double life which the spirit unites; again, the two halves thus
united are similar and equal each to each: =e=-_h_-=e=.” And
farther on: “What does the word _German_ (_Deutsch_) signify? It
is derived from the word _deuten_ (signifying to manifest), which
designates the act by which self-conscious thought is clearly
manifested outwardly.... To be a German is then to raise one’s self
as an individual and as a whole, by a clear manifestation of one’s
self, to a clear consciousness of self.”
539. THE GIFTS OF FRŒBEL.--Under the graceful name of gifts, Frœbel
presents to the child a certain number of objects which are to
serve as material for his exercises. The five gifts are contained
in a box from which they are taken in succession, as the children
are in a condition to receive them. In the original plan of Frœbel,
these gifts were: 1. the ball; 2. the sphere and the cube; 3. the
cube divided into eight equal parts; 4. the cube divided into
eight rectangular parallelopipeds, in the form of building-bricks,
which the child will use as material for little constructions;
5. the cube divided in each of its dimensions, that is, cut into
twenty-seven equal cubes; three of them are subdivided into two
prisms, and three others into four prisms, by means of an oblique
section, single or double.[226] And to these gifts Frœbel added
other objects, such as thin strips of wood and little sticks for
constructing figures; and bits of paper for braiding, folding,
dotting, etc.
The conception of Frœbel does not rest, as one might think, on
the adaptation of the objects which he chooses in succession,
to the faculties of the child. It is not this at all which
interests him. The order which he has adopted is derived from
another principle. According to him, the form of bodies has an
intimate relation with the general laws of the universe. There is,
consequently, a methodical gradation to be observed, according
to the intrinsic character of the objects themselves, for the
purpose of initiating the child into the laws of the divine thought
symbolized in the sphere, in the cube, in the cylinder, etc. Frœbel
was greatly irritated at those of his scholars who misunderstood
the philosophical import of his “gifts,” and who saw in them only
plays. “If my material for instruction possesses some utility,”
he said, “it does not owe it to its exterior appearance, which
has nothing striking and offers no novelty. It owes it simply
to the way in which I use it, that is, to my method and to the
philosophical law on which it is founded. The _justification of my
system of education is entirely in this law_; according as this law
is rejected or admitted, the system falls or continues with it. All
the rest is but material without any value of its own.”
It is this “material,” however, which for Frœbel had no value, that
his admirers have above all preserved of his method, without longer
caring for the allegorical sense which he attached to it.
540. APPEAL TO THE INSTINCTS OF THE CHILD.--That which makes,
notwithstanding so much that is whimsical, the lasting merit of
Frœbel’s work, that which justifies in part the admiration which
it has excited, is that he organized the _salle d’asile_, the
infant school, and that he realized for it that which Pestalozzi
had attempted for the elementary school. He knew how to make an
appeal to the instincts of the youngest child, to combine a system
of exercises for the training of the hand, for the education of the
senses, to satisfy the need of movement and activity which develops
itself from the first day of life, and, finally, to make of the
child a creator, a little artist always at work.
For the old education, which he calls “a hot-house education,” and
in which the instruction, premature through language, smothers in
their germs the native powers of the child, in order to excite his
memory and his judgment by artificial means,--for this education
he substitutes a free and cheerful education which cultivates the
faculties of the child by love, and which makes a just estimate of
his instincts. Books are suppressed, and lessons also. The child
freely expands in play.
541. THE IMPORTANCE OF PLAY.--With Frœbel, play became an essential
element of education. This ingenious teacher knew how to make
of it an art, an instrument for the development of the infant
faculties.
“The plays of the child,” he said, “are, as it were, the germ of
the whole life which is to follow, for the whole man develops and
manifests itself in it; in it he reveals his noblest aptitudes
and the deepest elements of his being. The whole life of man has
its source in that epoch of existence, and whether that life is
serene or sad, tranquil or agitated, fruitful or sterile, whether
it brings peace or war, that depends on the care, more or less
judicious, given to the beginnings of existence.”
542. PRINCIPAL NEEDS OF THE CHILD.--Gréard, in a remarkable study
on the method of Frœbel, reduces the aspirations of the child to
three essential instincts:--
1. The taste for observation:--
“All the senses of the child are on the alert; all the objects
which his sight or his hand encounters attract him, interest him,
delight him.”
2. The need of activity, the taste for construction:--
“It is not enough that we show him objects; it is necessary that
he touch them, that he handle them, that he appropriate them to
himself.... He takes delight in constructing; he is naturally
geometrician and artist.”
3. Finally, the sentiment of personality:--
“He wishes to have his own place, his own occupation, his own
teacher.”
Now Frœbel’s method has precisely for its object the satisfaction
of these different instincts.
“To place the child before a common table,” says Gréard, “but with
his own chair and a place that belongs to him, so that he feels
that he is the owner of his little domain; to excite at the very
beginning his good will by the promise of an interesting game;
to develop in succession under his very eyes the marvels of the
five gifts: to teach him in the first place, from concrete objects
exposed to his sight, balls of colored worsted and geometrical
solids, to distinguish color, form, material, the different parts
of a body, so as to accustom him to _see_, that is, to seize the
aspects, the figures, the resemblances, the differences, the
relations of things; then to place the objects in his hands, and to
teach him to make with the balls of colored worsted combinations
of colors agreeable to the eye, to arrange, with matches united
by balls of cork, squares, angles, triangles of all sorts, to set
up little cubes in the form of crosses, pyramids, etc.;--then,
either by means of strips of colored paper placed in different
directions, interlaced into one another, braided as a weaver would
make a fabric, or with the crayon, to drill him in reproducing,
in creating, designs representing all the geometrical forms, so
that to the habit of observation is gradually joined that of
invention; finally, while his hand is busy in concert with his
intelligence, and while his need of activity is satisfied, to take
advantage of this awakened and satisfied attention to fix in his
mind by appropriate questions some notions of the properties and
uses of forms, by relating them to some great principle of general
order, simple and fruitful, to mingle the practical lesson with
moral observations, drawn in particular from the incidents of the
school--this, in its natural progress and its normal development,
is the method of Frœbel.”
543. DEFECTS IN FRŒBEL’S METHOD.--There is ground for thinking,
notwithstanding all, that Frœbel’s method is a little complicated,
a little artificial, and that it sometimes proceeds in opposition
to the natural disposition of children. Their soul, he said,
cannot in the first period of its development, recognize itself,
apprehend itself, save in the perception of the simplest forms of
the exterior world, presented in a concrete manner. Now nature of
herself does not offer these elementary forms; it is necessary to
know how to extract them from the infinite diversity of things. And
Frœbel found these simple forms in the sphere, the cube, and the
cylinder.
But these forms, we reply, are but abstractions; it does not
suffice to say that the cube and the sphere are material and
palpable,--they are none the less the product of abstract thought
on this account; nature does not present these simple geometrical
forms; everything in them is complex. Now the nascent thought is
employed at first on real things, on the living and irregular forms
of animals and vegetables; then in this case, the mind proceeds
naturally from the complex to the simple, from the concrete to the
abstract. It seems, on the contrary, that Frœbel begins with the
abstract in order to arrive at the concrete.
In the school of Frœbel other defects have been developed. An
abuse has been made of the exercises in imitation and invention.
The child has been made to produce marvels of construction which
take too much of his time and demand of him too much effort. It
has been forgotten that these employments should be preparatory
exercises,--means, and not the end of education.
544. THE LAST ESTABLISHMENTS OF FRŒBEL.--Towards 1840, the ideas of
Frœbel began to become popular. His methods attracted attention.
Then he wished to transform his school at Blankenburg into a model
establishment. He addressed an appeal to the German nation in
favor of his work, but it was only slightly successful. Obliged in
1844 to close his institute, through lack of resources, he then
travelled through Germany in order to make known his methods. He
did not derive from his journey the profit that he expected from
it, and, discouraged, he returned once more to Keilhau, where he
opened a course in method, or a normal course, for the use of young
women who were preparing themselves for the education of infants.
This association with women, in which Frœbel lived till his death,
exercised a profound influence on the development of his system.
A much greater share of attention was given to the practical
exercises, and the mathematics was put in the background.
In 1850 he obtained through the intervention of the Baroness von
Marenholtz, one of his most ardent admirers, the lease of the
Castle of Marienthal, and to this he transferred his establishment.
A long period of activity seemed opening before him. He personally
directed the games of the children, and trained the teachers; but
he died suddenly in 1852.
545. FRŒBEL AND DIESTERWEG.--However, before his death, Frœbel
was able to witness the growing success of his work. Each day he
received eminent adhesions; for example, that of Diesterweg.[227]
It was through the mediation of the Baroness von Marenholtz that
Frœbel and Diesterweg, the celebrated director of the normal school
of Berlin, became acquainted. Diesterweg was a strong and practical
spirit, who contributed much to the development of instruction in
Prussia. At first he had a contempt for Frœbel, whom he treated
as a charlatan; but on his first conversation with him he changed
his opinion. He was taken to the school-room in which Frœbel was
teaching; but wholly intent on his work, Frœbel did not observe
the presence of the visitor. Diesterweg was impressed by seeing
this old man devoting himself entirely to his little pupils, and
his prejudices disappeared. To a certain extent he became the
propagator of Frœbel’s ideas. He agreed with him on his general
conception of the needs of the child, and of the province of woman
as the earliest educator.
546. SUCCESS OF FRŒBEL’S WORK.--Frœbel had other imitators. Like
Pestalozzi, he inspired a large number of minds by his writings,
and through the zeal of Madame von Marenholtz, and of some other
disciples, his practical work prospered. The _Kindergartens_ have
been multiplied in many places, and particularly in Austria.
547. THE PÈRE GIRARD (1765-1850).--The Père Girard is the most
eminent educator of modern Switzerland. Less celebrated than
Pestalozzi and Frœbel, he yet has this advantage over them, of
having been better prepared for his profession as an educator.
After having finished a thorough and complete course of classical
study, he for a long time taught the same subjects in the same
school. He acquired experience and wrote his treatises only in an
advanced age, at a time when he was in complete possession of his
ideas. He was in fact seventy-nine years old when he published
his book _On the Systematic Teaching of the Mother Tongue_. It is
a work of mature thought, and sums up a whole lifetime of labor.
Less addicted to system than Frœbel and Pestalozzi, the Père Girard
still carries mere system too far, and makes a misuse of the
principle which consisted in making of all the parts of instruction
the elements of moral education.
548. LIFE OF THE PÈRE GIRARD.--Girard was born in Friburg in 1765.
His pedagogic instinct manifested itself at an early hour. While
still very young he aided his mother in instructing his fourteen
brothers and sisters. Like Frœbel, he was passionately fond of
religious questions. One day as he had heard his preceptor say
that there was no salvation outside of the Roman Church, he sought
his mother in tears, and asked her if the Protestant tradesman who
brought her fruit each day would be damned. His mother reassured
him, and he always remained faithful to what he called “the
theology of his mother,”--a tolerant and broad theology which
brought on him the hatred of the Jesuits.
At the age of sixteen he entered the order of the Gray Friars,
and completed his novitiate at Lucerne. He then taught in several
convents, in particular at Wurtzburg, where he remained four years
(1785-1788). He returned to Friburg in 1789, and for ten years he
devoted himself almost exclusively to his ecclesiastical functions.
But his vocation as an educator was even then indicated by some
things that he had written.
In 1798, under the influence of the ideas of Kant, whose
philosophical doctrine he had ardently studied, he published a
_Scheme of Education for all Helvetia_, addressed to the Swiss
minister Stapfer, who was also the patron of Pestalozzi.
It was only in 1804, that Girard devoted himself entirely to
teaching, the very year in which Frœbel began his work. He was
appointed to direct the primary school at Friburg, which had just
been entrusted to the Gray Friars. Girard received the title of
“prefect of studies,” and for nineteen years, from 1805 to 1823, he
exercised his functions as a teacher in that school. Very small in
the beginning, the school had a remarkable growth. There was added
to it even a school for girls. At first Girard had Gray Friars
for colleagues; but he soon replaced them with lay teachers, who
obeyed him better and devoted themselves more entirely to their
task. The teacher of drawing was a Protestant.
549. SUCCESS OF THE SCHOOL AT FRIBURG.--A disciple and an admirer
of Girard, the pastor Naville, has related in his work on _Public
Education_[228] the brilliant results obtained by Girard in his
school at Friburg.
“He had trained a body of youth the like of which perhaps no city
in the world could furnish. It was not without a profound emotion
that the friends of humanity contemplated a spectacle so new and
so touching. That ignorant and boorish class, full of prejudices,
which everywhere abounds, was no longer met with at Friburg....
The young there developed graces of an amiable deportment which
were never marred by anything disagreeable in tone, speech, or
manner. If, seeing children approaching you covered with rags, you
approached them thinking that you were about to encounter little
ruffians, you were wholly surprised to have them reply to you with
politeness, with judgment, and with that accent which bespeaks
genteel manners and a careful education.... You will find the
explanation in the school, when you observe the groups where these
same children exercise by turns, as in playing, their judgment
and their conscience. Three or four hours a day employed in this
work gave the young that intelligence, those sentiments, and those
manners which delighted you.”
550. THE LAST YEARS OF THE PÈRE GIRARD.--Notwithstanding the
success of his instruction, the Père Girard was obliged to abandon
the charge of his school in 1823. His loss of position was the
result of the intrigues of the Jesuits, whose college had been
re-established in 1818. He left Friburg amid universal regrets, and
retired to Lucerne, where he taught philosophy till 1834. At that
date he returned to his native city and lived a life of seclusion.
It was then that he wrote his pedagogical works. But through his
disciples, and particularly through the pastor Naville, the methods
of the Père Girard were known before he had published anything.
551. TEACHING OF THE MOTHER TONGUE.--Let us now examine the general
spirit of the pedagogy of Girard. It is in the theoretical work
which he published in 1844, and which was crowned by the French
Academy in the same year, that we must look for the principles
of his method. It consisted in “choosing a study which may be
considered as one essential part of the instruction common to all
the classes of society, and which nevertheless is fit for calling
into exercise all the intellectual powers.” This study was the
mother tongue, which Girard employed for the moral and religious
development of children.
Villemain, in his report on the books of Girard, has clearly
defined the purpose of the common school as conceived by the
educator of Friburg:--
“Where the period of instruction is necessarily short and its
object limited, a wise choice of method is the thing of first
importance, for upon this choice will depend the education itself.
If that method is purely technical, if its exclusive object is
reading, writing, and the rules of grammar and computation, the
child of the common people will be poorly instructed and will not
be educated at all. A difficult task burdens his memory without
developing his soul. A new process is placed at his disposal, one
workshop more is open to him, so to speak; but the trace left by
that instruction will not be deep, will sometimes even be lost
through lack of application and exercise, and will not have acted
on the moral nature, too often absorbed eventually by a monotonous
devotion to duty or the excessive fatigue of bodily labor. The
only, the real people’s school, is then that in which all the
elements of study serve for the culture of the soul, and in which
the child grows better by the things which he learns and by the
manner in which he learns them.”
552. ANALYSIS OF THIS WORK.--The book of Girard is divided into
four parts. The first contains _general considerations_ on the
manner in which the mother teaches her children to speak, upon the
purpose of a course of instruction on the mother tongue, and on the
elements which should compose it.
The second part is entitled: _The Systematic Teaching of the Mother
Tongue considered solely as the Expression of Thought_. It is
language considered in itself; but Girard desires that the word
should always be united to the thought. It is not necessary that
the teaching of grammar should be reduced to verbal instruction; it
should also serve to develop the thought of pupils.
In the third part, the _Systematic Teaching of the Mother Tongue
considered as the Means of Intellectual Culture_, Girard considers
everything which can contribute to the development of the faculties.
In the fourth part, the _Systematic Teaching of Language employed
for the Culture of the Heart_, Girard shows how the teaching of
language may assist in moral education.
A fifth part, _Use of the Course in the Mother Tongue_, is, so to
speak, the material part of the book, and, as it were, the outline
of the great practical work of Girard, the _Educative[229] Course
in the Mother Tongue_.
553. THE GRAMMARIAN, THE LOGICIAN, THE EDUCATOR.--In other terms,
Girard places himself in succession at four different points of
view in the teaching of language:--
“Four persons,” he says, “ought to concur in constructing the
course in the mother tongue: the grammarian, the logician, the
educator, and, finally, the man of letters.”
The task of the grammarian is to furnish the material of the
language and its proper forms.
The logician will teach us what must be done in order to cultivate
the intelligence of the young.
The educator will ever be inspired by this grand truth: “Man acts
as he loves, and he loves as he thinks.” He will try to grave in
the souls of children all the beautiful and grand truths which can
awaken and nourish pure and noble affections.
Finally, the man of letters has also his part in the course in
language, in the sense that pupils, besides being required from the
beginning of their studies to invent propositions and sentences,
will have a little later to compose narratives, letters, dialogues,
etc.
554. THE GRAMMAR OF IDEAS.--Elementary instruction should have for
its purpose the development of the mind and the judgment. It is no
longer a question of cultivating the memory alone and of causing
words to be learned. The Père Girard would have grammar made an
exercise in thinking.
“The grammars in use,” he says, “are intended simply to teach
correctness in speaking and writing. By their aid we are able
finally to avoid a certain number of faults in style and
orthography.... This instruction becomes a pure affair of memory,
and the child becomes accustomed to pronounce sounds to which he
attaches no meaning. The child needs a _grammar of ideas_.... Our
_grammars of words_ are the plague of education.”
In other terms, grammar should be made above all else an exercise
in thinking, and, as it were, “the logic of childhood.”
555. DISCREET USE OF RULES.--The Père Girard does not proscribe
rules. The teaching of language cannot do without them; “but there
is,” he says, “a proper manner of presenting them to children, and
a just medium to hold.”
In the teaching of grammar we must follow the course which the
grammarians themselves have followed in order to construct their
science: “The rules were established on facts. It is then to
facts that they must be referred in instruction, in order that by
this means children may be taught to do intelligently what they
have hitherto done through blind imitation.... Few rules, many
exercises. Rules are always abstract, dry, and for this very reason
poorly adapted to please children, even when they can comprehend
them. We ought, then, in general, to make a very sparing use of
them.”
So the Père Girard particularly recommends practical exercises,
oral instruction, the continual use of the blackboard, the active
and animated co-operation of all the members of the class, rapid
interrogation, the Socratic method, the abuse of which, however, he
criticises.[230]
556. MORAL ARITHMETIC.[231]--The Père Girard, like almost all the
men who have conceived an original idea, has fallen into the love
of systematizing. He believed that not only language, but all the
branches of study might contribute to moral education.
“He conceived,” says Naville, “that by means of a selection of
problems adapted to the development of the social affections in the
family, the commune, and the State, one might give to arithmetic
such a wholesome direction that it might be made to contribute, not
only to making the child prudent and economical, but even more to
extend his views beyond the narrow circle of selfishness, and to
cultivate in him beneficent dispositions.”[232]
557. MORAL GEOGRAPHY.--It is in the same spirit that he claimed
to find in the study of geography a means of contributing to the
development of the moral nature.
“According to my honest conviction, every elementary work for
children ought to be a means of education. If it is limited to
giving knowledge, if it is limited to developing the faculties of
the pupil, I can approve the order and the life which the author
has known how to put into his work; but I am not satisfied with
it. I am even offended to find only a teacher of language, of
natural history, of geography, etc., when I expected something much
greater,--an instructor of the young, training the mind in order to
train the heart.... Geography lends itself as marvellously to this
sublime purpose, although in a sphere a little narrower.”[233]
558. EDUCATIVE COURSE IN THE MOTHER TONGUE.--Girard is not content
to state his doctrine in his book _On the Systematic Teaching
of the Mother Tongue_; but in the four volumes of his _Educative
Course_ (1844-1846) he has applied his method. Full of new and
radical views, original in the arrangement of material as in
its system of exposition, revolutionary even in its grammatical
terminology, this book is a mine from which we may borrow without
stint, only we shall not advise wholesale adoption: there is matter
to take and to leave.[234]
559. ANALYSIS OF THIS WORK.--The title indicates the general
character of the work. In his _Cours éducatif_, Girard does not
separate education from instruction. The purpose is to develop the
moral and religious sentiments of the child, no less than to teach
him his native language.
The first lessons in grammar ought to be lessons in things. The
child is made to name the objects which he knows,--persons,
animals, things,--and through these he is made to acquire notions
of nouns, common and proper, of gender and number. He is then
induced to find for himself the physical, intellectual, and moral
qualities of objects, and by this means is made familiar with
qualifying adjectives. Care is taken, moreover, while causing each
quality to be named, as farther on while causing each judgment to
be expressed, to ask the child, “Is this right? Is this wrong?”
The agreement of adjective with noun is learned by practice. The
child is drilled in applying adjectives to the nouns which he has
found, and _vice versa_.
Once in possession of the essential elements of the proposition,
the child begins the study of the proposition itself, and finally
the study of the verb. Girard makes it a principle always to
have the conjugations made by means of propositions. At first,
however, he employs in simple propositions only the indicative, the
infinitive, the imperative, and the participle; he postpones till
later the study of the conditional and the subjunctive. It is to
be noted, in addition, that he brings forward simultaneously the
simple tenses of all the conjugations.
The order followed by Girard is wholly different from that of the
ordinary grammars. This is how he explains it:--
“In their first part, the grammars set out in a row the nine sorts
of words, and thus give in rapid succession their definitions,
distinctions, and variable forms, which introduces a legion of
terms wholly unknown to the child. The second part of these
grammars takes up these words again in the same order, so as, in
an uninteresting way, to regulate their use in construction,--a
tedious and arid system, which affords the child no interest.”
Elsewhere, speaking of his own work, he writes:--
“My work differs essentially from the grammars which are put in
the hands of children. When we write on language for adults, we
may adhere to definitions, distinctions, rules, and exceptions,
and formulate statements regarding their proper use; but he who
writes for children ought to have the education of the mind and
heart in view, and regulate on that basis the course and form of
instruction. The course ought to be rigorously progressive, and
the pupils ought, from beginning to end, to assist themselves in
constructing a grammar of their own.”
“So, instead of making generalizations on the noun, adjective,
verb, etc., and of connecting with these parts of speech all that
relates to them, we must apply ourselves to the substance of
language, passing step by step from the simple to the complex, and
teaching children to think, in order to teach them to comprehend
and to speak the language of man. The little details cannot
appear till later, and as occasion requires. From this there
necessarily results a displacement of grammatical material which
has been industriously collected and arranged. Hence, also, a great
parsimony in definitions and abstract distinctions which repel
children.”
560. EDUCATIONAL INFLUENCE OF THE PÈRE GIRARD.--The influence
of the Père Girard was not extended simply to Switzerland. It
has radiated abroad. His ideas have been disseminated in Italy,
propagated by the Abbé Lambruschini and by Enrico Mayer. A journal
even has been founded to serve as the organ of the “Girardists” of
the Peninsula. In France, Michel, in the _Journal de l’éducation
pratique_, and Rapet in different works,[235] have commended to
public attention the methods of the Swiss educator. Finally, it
may be remarked that the principles very recently set forth by
the _Conseil supérieur de l’instruction publique_ (1880), on the
teaching of French in the elementary classes of the lycées, are in
great part the echo of the pedagogical doctrine of the Père Girard.
[561. ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.--1. In this study we have the third
exposition, in historical order,--Rousseau, Pestalozzi,
Frœbel,--of the doctrine of nature as applied to education. This
doctrine may be summarized as follows:--
The existing order of things is conceived as an animated
organism, and is personified under the term Nature. All living
things, such as plants, animals, and men, are products of
the creative power that is immanent in nature, and each is
predetermined to an upward development in the line of growth.
This growth is an unfolding from within outward, and each
individual thing, as a child, has reached the term of its
development when it has grown into the type of its kind. In
the case of the human species, this growth is best when it is
_natural_, and it is natural to the degree in which it takes
place without the deliberate intervention of art. This process
of development is Nature’s work, and its synonym is education.
Education is best when it is most _natural_, that is, when it
suffers least from human interference. The question of the
relative parts to be played by Nature and by Art in education has
given rise to two schools of educators.
2. In Frœbel’s application of this doctrine, the original
conception is obscured by three circumstances: 1. his deism;
2. his mysticism or symbolism; 3. his dependence on artificial
agents, his “gifts,” and his belief in the potency of
abstractions.
3. The _Kindergarten_ has introduced many ameliorations into
primary instruction, and its tendency is to make child-life happy
through self-activity. Its shortcomings are that it undervalues
the acquisition of second-hand knowledge, obscures the
distinction between work and play, and indisposes, and perhaps
unfits, the pupil to contend with real difficulties.[236]
4. The effect of this new movement in primary instruction
upon educational science has been wholesome. It has induced
a closer study of child nature, has enlisted the sympathies
and affections in support of elementary instruction, and has
profoundly modified the conception of the primary school.
5. Whether the _Kindergarten_ is to be maintained apart, as an
institution _sui generis_, or whether it is to lose its identity
by the absorption of its spirit into the primary school, is a
question for the future. Probably the latter result will follow.
6. The misuse of a good thought is seen in the attempt of the
Père Girard to give a distinct moral value to every school
exercise. It is the verdict of experience that the moral value
of science is greatest when it is taught simply as science, and
that the direct teaching of ethics should be conducted on an
independent basis.]
FOOTNOTES:
[222] _Comment Gertrude instruit ses enfants_, translated by Darin,
p. 204.
[223] See the _Aphorisms_ published by Frœbel in 1821.
[224] See the French translation by Madame de Crombrugghe, Paris,
1881. Also, the English translation by Josephine Jarvis, New York,
1885.
[225] Consequently it is wrong to take Frœbel’s expression in the
sense that he wished to establish by the side of each school a
garden, a lawn planted with trees and adorned with flower-beds. See
Gréard, _L’instruction primaire à Paris_, 1877, p. 73.
[226] The disciples of Frœbel have modified in different manners
his system of gifts. See, for example, the _Jardin d’enfants_, by
Goldammer, French translation by Louis Fournier, 1877.
[227] See on Diesterweg the article by Pécaut, in the _Dictionnaire
de Pédagogie_.
[228] _De l’éducation publique._ Paris, 1833, p. 158. Naville
(1784-1846) founded in 1817, at Vernier, near Geneva, an institute
where he applied with success the educative method of the Père
Girard.
[229] I am aware that this term is not found in the latest Webster,
but I see no other way of expressing the force of the word
_éducatif_, which seems to signify the disciplinary, or rather the
culture, value of a study. (P.)
[230] See Chap. III. of Book III. paragraph 1st. _Just medium
between two extremes._
[231] Here is an example from Père Girard’s arithmetic:--
“A father had the habit of going every evening to the dram-shop,
and often left his family at home without bread. During the five
years that he led this life, he spent, the first year, 197 francs,
the second, 204 francs, the third, 212 francs, and the fourth, 129
francs. How many francs would this unfortunate father have saved if
he had not had a taste for drink?” (P.)
[232] Naville, _De l’Éducation publique_, p. 411.
[233] _Explication du plan de Fribourg en Suisse_, 1817.
[234] See the interesting articles of Lafargue in the _Bulletin
pédagogique de l’enseignement secondaire_, 1882.
[235] Messieurs Rapet and Michel were associated in the publication
of the _Cours éducatif de la langue maternelle_.
[236] “Man owes his growth, his energy, chiefly to that striving
of the will, that conflict with difficulty, which we call effort.
Easy, pleasant work does not make robust minds, does not give men
a consciousness of their powers, does not train them to endurance,
to perseverance, to steady force of will, that force without which
all other acquisitions avail nothing.” Dr. Channing.
CHAPTER XX.
WOMEN AS EDUCATORS.
WOMEN AS EDUCATORS; MADAME DE GENLIS (1746-1830); PEDAGOGICAL
WORKS; ENCYCLOPÆDIC EDUCATION; IMITATION OF ROUSSEAU; MISS
EDGEWORTH (1767-1849); MISS HAMILTON (1758-1816); MADAME CAMPAN
(1752-1822); COMMENDATION OF HOME EDUCATION; PROGRESS IN
INSTRUCTION; INTEREST IN POPULAR EDUCATION; MADAME DE RÉMUSAT
(1780-1821); OUTLINE OF FEMININE PSYCHOLOGY; THE SERIOUS IN
EDUCATION; PHILOSOPHICAL SPIRIT; MADAME GUIZOT (1773-1827);
LETTERS ON EDUCATION; PSYCHOLOGICAL OPTIMISM; NATURE OF THE
CHILD; PHILOSOPHICAL RATIONALISM; MADAME NECKER DE SAUSSURE
(1765-1841); MADAME NECKER DE SAUSSURE AND MADAME DE STAËL;
PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION AND ROUSSEAU; ORIGINALITY OF MADAME NECKER
DE SAUSSURE; DIVISION OF PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION; DEVELOPMENT OF
THE FACULTIES; CULTURE OF THE IMAGINATION; EDUCATION OF WOMEN;
MADAME PAPE-CARPENTIER (1815-1878); GENERAL CHARACTER OF HER
WORKS; PRINCIPAL WORKS OF MADAME PAPE-CARPENTIER; OBJECT LESSONS;
OTHER WOMEN WHO WERE EDUCATORS; DUPANLOUP AND THE EDUCATION OF
WOMEN; ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.
562. WOMEN AS EDUCATORS.--One of the characteristic features of
the pedagogy of the nineteenth century is the constant progress in
the education of women. Woman will be better instructed, and at
the same time she will play a more important part in instruction.
Primary schools for girls did not exist, so to speak, in France, at
the commencement of this century. Fourcroy, who reported the bill
of May 1, 1802, declared that “the law makes no mention of girls.”
But through the efforts of the monarchy of July, and still more
of the liberal laws of the second and of the third Republic, the
primary instruction of girls will become more and more general.
Secondary public instruction will be created for women by the law
of December 20, 1880, and the equality of the two sexes, in respect
of education, will tend more and more to become a reality, through
the influence of governmental action as well as that of private
initiative.
But not less remarkable is the important part which women, by
their abstract reflections or by their practical efforts, have
taken in the progress of pedagogy. In the history of education,
the nineteenth century will be noted for the great number of
its women who were educators, some who were real philosophers
and distinguished writers, and others, zealous and enthusiastic
teachers.
563. MADAME DE GENLIS (1746-1830).--While she does not belong
to the nineteenth century by her pedagogical writings, Madame
de Genlis has certain rights to a foremost place in the list of
the educational women of our time. She had in the highest degree
the pedagogic vocation; only, that vocation became a mania and
was squandered on everything. Madame de Genlis wished to know
everything in order that she might teach everything. “She was more
than a woman author,” says Sainte-Beuve, wittily; “she was a woman
_teacher_; she was born with the sign on her forehead.”
Young girls of their own accord play _mamma_ with their dolls. From
the age of seven, Madame de Genlis played _teacher_.
“I had a taste for teaching children, and I became school-mistress
in a curious way.... Little boys from the village came under
the window of my parents’ country-seat to play. I amused myself
in watching them, and I soon took it into my head to give them
lessons.”
Twenty years later, the village teacher became the governess of the
daughters of the Duchesse de Chartres, and the _governor_ of the
sons of the Duke de Chartres (Philippe-Égalité).
564. PEDAGOGICAL WORKS.--The principal work of Madame de Genlis,
_Letters on Education_ (1782), treats of the education of princes
and also of “that of young persons and of men.” In giving it
that other title, _Adèle and Théodore_, the author indicated her
intention of rivaling Rousseau, and of educating a man and a woman
more perfect than Émile and Sophie.
Although she had a profoundly aristocratic nature, Madame de
Genlis, after the revolution of 1789, seemed for an instant to
follow the liberal current which was sweeping minds along. It was
then that she published the _Counsels on the Education of the
Dauphin_, and some parts of her educational journal, entitled
_Lessons of a Governess_. She never ceased to preach love of the
people to sovereigns, and in justice this must be said to her
credit, that she did not write merely for courtly people. She
protests, and with spirit, “that she is the first author who has
concerned herself with the education of the people. This glory,”
she adds, “is dear to my heart.” In support of these assertions,
Madame de Genlis cites the fourth volume of her _Théâtre
d’éducation_, which is, she says, “solely intended for the children
of tradesmen and artisans; domestics and peasants will there see a
detailed account of their obligations and their duties.”
565. ENCYCLOPÆDIC EDUCATION.--It has been said with reason
that Madame de Genlis was the personification of encyclopædic
instruction.[237]
“Her programme of instruction had no limits. She favors Latin,
without, however, thinking the knowledge of it indispensable. She
gives a large place to the living languages. At Saint Leu, her
pupils garden in German, dine in English, and sup in Italian. At
the same time she invents gymnastic apparatus,--pulleys, baskets,
wooden beds, lead shoes. Nothing takes her at unawares, her
over-facile pen stops at nothing; she is universal. A plan for
a rural school for children in the country is wanted, and she
furnishes it.”
566. IMITATION OF ROUSSEAU.--Madame de Genlis never ceased to
criticise Rousseau, and yet, in her educational romances, the
inspiration of Rousseau is everywhere present. How can we fail to
recognize a pupil of Rousseau in the father of Adèle and Théodore,
who leaves Paris in order to devote himself entirely to the
education of his children, to make himself “their governor and
their friend, and finally, to screen the infancy of his son and
daughter from the examples of vice”? And the methods manufactured
by Rousseau, the unforeseen lessons, the indirect means employed
to instruct without having the appearance of doing so,--Madame
de Genlis desires no others. Nothing is more amusing than the
description of the country-seat of the Baron d’Almane, the father
of Adèle and Théodore. It is no longer a country-seat; it is a
school-house. The walls are no longer walls; they are charts of
history and maps of geography.
“When we would have our children study history according to a
chronological order, we start from my bed-chamber, which represents
sacred history; from there we enter my gallery, where we find
ancient history; we reach the parlor, which contains Roman history,
and we end with the gallery of Monsieur d’Almane (it is the
Baroness who speaks), where is found the history of France.”
In her pedagogic fairyland, Madame de Genlis does not wish the
child to meet a single object which may not be transformed into
an instrument of instruction. Adèle and Théodore cannot take a
hand-screen without finding a geography lesson represented on it,
and drawn out at full length. Here are pictures worked in tapestry;
they are historical scenes; on the back of them care has been taken
to write an explanation of what they represent. At least, those
five or six movable partitions which are displayed in the apartment
on cold days have no instructive purposes? You are mistaken. There
is painted and written on them the history of England, of Spain,
of Germany, and that of the Moors and the Turks. Even in the
dining-room, mythology encumbers the panels of the room, and “it
usually forms the subject of conversation during the dinner.” In
that castle, bewitched, so to speak, by the elf of history, there
is not a glance that is lost, not a minute without its lesson, not
a corner where one may waste his time in dreaming. History pursues
you like a ghost, like a nightmare, along the corridors, on the
stairs, even on the carpet on which you tread, and on the chairs
upon which you sit. The true way to disgust a child forever with
historical studies is to condemn him to live for eight days in this
house-school of Madame de Genlis.
567. MISS EDGEWORTH (1767-1849).--It is with the Scotch philosophy
and the psychological theories of Reid and Dugald Stewart, that
were inspired in different degrees two distinguished women, who
honored English pedagogy at the beginning of this century,--Miss
Edgeworth and Miss Hamilton.
In her book on _Practical Education_, published in 1798,[238]
Miss Edgeworth does not lose herself in theoretical dissertations.
Her book is a collection of facts, observations, and precepts.
The first chapter treats of toys, and the author justifies this
beginning by saying that in education there is nothing trivial and
minute. It is first by conversations, and then by the use of the
inventive, analytical, and intuitive method, that Miss Edgeworth
proposes to train her pupils; and her reflections on intellectual
education deserve to be considered. In moral education she agrees
with Locke, and seems to place great reliance on the sentiment of
honor, and on the love of reputation. In every case she absolutely
ignores the religious feeling. The characteristic of her system is
that it makes “a total abstraction of religious ideas.”
568. MISS HAMILTON (1758-1816).--Miss Hamilton is at once more
philosophical and more Christian than Miss Edgeworth. It is from
the psychologist Hartley that she borrows her essential principle,
which consists in making of the association of ideas the basis of
education. Hartley saw in this the sovereign law of intellectual
development. But, on the other hand, she declares “that she follows
no other guide than the precepts of the Gospel.”
The principal work of Miss Hamilton, her _Letters on the Elementary
Principles of Education_ (1801),[239] has a more theoretical
character than the book of Miss Edgeworth. With her it is above all
else a question of principles, which, she says, are more necessary
than rules. We find but few reflections on teaching proper. She
borrows the very words of Dugald Stewart to define the object of
education:--
“The most essential objects of education are the following:
_first_, to cultivate all the various principles of our nature,
both speculative and active, in such a manner as to bring them
to the greatest perfection of which they are susceptible; and
_secondly_, by watching over the impressions and associations
which the mind receives in early life, to secure it against the
influence of prevailing errors; and, as far as possible, to engage
its prepossessions on the side of truth.”[240]
To cultivate the intellectual and moral faculties, Miss Hamilton
places her chief dependence, as we have said, on the principle of
the association of ideas. We must break up, or, rather, prevent
from being formed, all false associations, that is, all inaccurate
judgments. Order once re-established among ideas, the will will
be upright, and the conduct well regulated. In other terms, this
was to subordinate, perhaps too completely, the development of the
moral faculties to the culture of the intellectual faculties.
“It is evident,” says Miss Hamilton, “that all our desires are in
accord with ideas of pleasure, and all our aversions with ideas of
pain.”
The educator will then try to associate the idea of pleasure with
what is good and useful for the child and for the man.
Let us also note, in passing, the solicitude of Miss Hamilton for
the education of the people:--
“From most of the writers on education it would appear that it is
only to people of rank and fortune that education is a matter of
any importance.... My plan has for its object the cultivation of
the faculties that are common to the whole human race.”[241]
On this point her thought was the same as that of Miss Edgeworth,
whose father, in 1799, in the Irish Parliament, had caused the
adoption of the first law on primary instruction.
569. MADAME CAMPAN (1752-1822).--Twenty-five years’ experience,
either at the court of Louis XV., or in the school at
Saint-Germain, which she founded under the Revolution, or finally
in the institution at Écouen, the direction of which was entrusted
to her by Napoleon I., in 1807,--such are the claims which at
once assure to Madame Campan some authority on pedagogical
questions.[242] Let us add that good sense, a methodical and
prudent mind,--in a word, qualities which were reasonable rather
than brilliant,--directed that long personal experience.
“First I saw,” she said, “then I reflected, and finally I wrote.”
570. EULOGY ON HOME EDUCATION.--From a teacher, from the directress
of a school, we would expect prejudices in favor of public
education in boarding-schools. That which secures our ready
confidence, is that Madame Campan, on the contrary, appreciates
better than any one else the advantages of maternal education:--
“To create mothers,” she said, “this is the whole education of
women.” Nothing seems to her superior to a mother governess “who
does not keep late hours, who rises betimes,” who, finally, devotes
herself resolutely to the important duty with which she is charged.
“There is no boarding-school, however well it may be conducted,
there is no convent, however pious its government may be, which
can give an education comparable to that which a young girl
receives from a mother who is educated, and who finds her sweetest
occupation and her true glory in the education of her daughter.”
Madame Campan, moreover, reminds mothers who would be the teachers
of their own daughters, of all the obligations which are involved
in such a charge. Too often the mother who jealously keeps her
daughter near her, is not capable of educating her. In this case
there is only the appearance of home education, and as Madame
Campan wittily says, “this is no longer _maternal education_; it is
but _education at home_.”
571. PROGRESS IN INSTRUCTION.--Fénelon was Madame Campan’s favorite
author. On the other hand, there was some resemblance between the
rules of the school at Écouen and those of Saint Cyr. The spirit of
the seventeenth century lives again in the educational institutions
of the nineteenth, and Madame Campan continues the work of Madame
de Maintenon.
However, there is progress in more than one respect, and the
instruction is more solid and more complete.
“The purpose of education,” wrote Madame Campan to the Emperor,
“ought to be directed: 1. towards the domestic virtues; 2. towards
instruction, to such a degree of perfection in the knowledge of
language, computation, history, writing, and geography, that all
pupils shall be assured of the happiness of being able to instruct
their own daughters.”
Madame Campan desired, moreover, to extend her work. She demanded
of the Emperor the creation of several public establishments “for
educating the daughters of certain classes of the servants of the
State.” She desired that the government should take under its
supervision private institutions, and contemplated for women as
for men a sort of university “which might replace the convents and
the colleges.” But Napoleon was not the man to enter into these
schemes. The schools of “women-logicians” were scarcely to his
taste, and the teaching congregations, which he restored to their
privileges, the better served his purpose.
572. INTEREST IN POPULAR EDUCATION.--One might believe that Madame
Campan, who had begun by being the teacher of the three daughters
of Louis XV., and who associated with scarcely any save the wealthy
or the titled, had never had the taste or the leisure to think of
popular instruction. It is nothing of the sort, as is proved by her
_Counsels to Young Girls, a work intended for Elementary Schools_.
“There is no ground for fearing that the daughters of the rich
will ever be in want of books to instruct them or of governesses
to direct them. It is not at all so with the children who belong
to the less fortunate classes.... I have seen with my own eyes
how incomplete and neglected is the education of the daughters of
country people.... It is for them that I have penned this little
work.”
The work itself has not perhaps the tone that could be desired, nor
all the simplicity that the author would have wished to give it;
but we must thank Madame Campan for her intentions, and we count
among her highest claims to the esteem of posterity the effort
which she made in her old age to become, at least in her writings,
a simple school-mistress and a village teacher.
573. MADAME DE RÉMUSAT (1780-1821).--Madame de Rémusat has written
only for women of the world. Herself a woman of the world, lady of
the palace of the Empress Josephine, she had no personal experience
in the way of teaching. She had nothing to do with the practice of
education save in supervising the studies of her two sons, one of
whom became a philosopher and an illustrious statesman, Charles
de Rémusat. The noble book of Madame de Rémusat, her _Essay on
the Education of Women_, does not commend itself by reason of
its detailed precepts and scholastic methods, but by its lofty
reflections and general principles.[243]
574. SKETCH OF FEMININE PSYCHOLOGY.--Let us first notice different
passages in which the author sketches by a few touches the
psychology of woman, and determines her sphere in life:--
“Woman is the companion of man upon the earth, but yet she exists
on her own account; she is _inferior_, but not _subordinate_.”
The expression here betrays Madame de Rémusat, and it would be
more accurate to say that woman is not inferior to man, that she
is his equal, but that in existing civil and social conditions she
necessarily remains subordinate to him.
But with what perfect justness the amiable writer characterizes the
peculiar qualities of woman!
“We lack continuity and depth when we would apply ourselves to
general questions. Endowed with a quick intelligence, we hear
promptly, we even divine and see just as well as men; but too
easily moved to remain impartial, too mobile to be profound,
perceiving is easier for us than observing. Prolonged attention
wearies us; we are, in short, more mild than patient. More
sensitive and more devoted than men, women are ignorant of that
sort of selfishness which an independent being exhibits outwardly
as a consciousness of his own power. To obtain from them any
activity whatever, it is almost always necessary to _interest them
in the happiness of another_. Their very faults are the outgrowths
of their condition. The same cause will excite in man emotions of
pride, and in woman only those of vanity.”
575. THE SERIOUS IN EDUCATION.--Madame de Rémusat, still more than
Madame Campan, belongs to the modern school. She desires for woman
an education serious and grave.
“I see no reason for treating women less seriously than men, for
misrepresenting truth to them under the form of a prejudice, duty
under the appearance of a superstition, in order that they may
accept both the duty and the truth.”
She does not in the least incline to the opinion of the
over-courteous moralist Joubert, who, with more gallantry than real
respect for women, said: “Nothing too earthly or too material ought
to employ young ladies; only delicate material should busy their
hands.... They resemble the imagination, and like it they should
touch only the surface of things.”[244]
Madame de Rémusat enters into the spirit of her time, and her
admiration for the age of Louis XIV. does not make her forget what
she owes to the new society, transformed by great political reforms.
“We are drawing near the time when every Frenchman shall be a
citizen. In her turn, the destiny of woman is comprised in these
two terms: _wife and mother of a citizen_. There is much morality,
and a very severe and touching morality, in the idea which ought to
be attached to that word _citizen_. After religion, I do not know
a more powerful motive than the patriotic spirit for directing the
young towards the good.”
It is no longer a question, then, of training the woman and the
man for themselves, for their individual destiny. They must be
educated for the public good, for their duties in society. Madame
de Rémusat is not one of those timid and frightened women who
feel a homesickness for the past, whom the present terrifies.
Liberal and courageous, she manfully accepts the new régime; she
proclaims its advantages, and, if she writes like a woman of the
seventeenth century, almost with the perfection of Madame de
Sévigné, her chosen model, she at least thinks like a daughter of
the Revolution.
576. PHILOSOPHICAL SPIRIT.--That which is not less remarkable is
the philosophical character of her reflections. She believes in
liberty and in conscience. It is conscience which she purposes
to substitute, as a moral rule, “for despotic and superficial
caprices.” It is no longer by the imperative term, _you must_, but
by the obligatory term, _you ought_, that the mother should lead
and govern her daughter.
“On every occasion let these words, _I ought_, re-appear in the
conversation of the mother.”
This is saying that the child ought to be treated as a free
being. The end, and at the same time the most efficient means, of
education, is the wise employment of liberty. While keeping the
oversight of the child, he must be left to take care of himself,
and on many occasions to follow the course that he will. By this
means his will will be developed, and his character strengthened;
and this is an essential point according to Madame de Rémusat.
“If under Louis XIV.,” she says, “the education of woman’s mind
was grave and often substantial, that of her character remained
imperfect.”
577. MADAME GUIZOT (1773-1827).--Madame Guizot first became known
under her maiden name, Pauline de Meulan. In the closing years
of the eighteenth century she had written several romances, and
had contributed to the review of Suard, the _Publiciste_. In 1812
she married Guizot, the future author of the law of 1833, who had
just founded the _Annals of Education_.[245] From this period, all
her ideas and all her writings were directed almost exclusively
towards ethics and education. She published in succession,
_Children_ (1812), _Raoul and Victor_ (1821), and, finally, her
masterpiece, the _Family Letters on Education_ (1826).
578. THE LETTERS ON EDUCATION.--To give at once an idea of
the merit of this book,[246] we shall quote the opinion of
Sainte-Beuve:--
“The work of Madame Guizot will survive the _Émile_, marking in
this line the progress of the sound, temperate, and refined reason
of our times, over the venturesome genius of Rousseau, just as in
politics the _Démocratie_ of De Tocqueville is an advance over
the _Contrat Social_. Essential to meditate upon, as advice, in
all education which would prepare strong men for the difficulties
of our modern society, this book also contains, in the way of
exposition, the noblest moral pages, the most sincere and the
most convincing, which, with a few pages from Jouffroy, have been
suggested to the philosophy of our age by the doctrines of a
spiritualistic rationalism.”
579. PSYCHOLOGICAL OPTIMISM.--The philosophical spirit is not
lacking in the _Letters on Education_. The whole of Letter XII. is
a plea in behalf of the relative innocence of the child. That which
is bad in the disorderly inclination, says the author, is not the
inclination, but the disorder:--
“The inclinations of a sentient being are in themselves what they
ought to be. It has been said that a man could not be virtuous
if he did not conquer his inclinations; hence, his inclinations
are evil. This is an error. No more could the tree produce good
fruit, if, in pruning it, the disorderly flow of the sap were not
arrested. Does this prove that the sap is harmful to the tree?”
It follows from these principles that discipline ought not to be
severe.
“Do you not think it strange,” exclaims Madame Guizot, “that for
centuries education has been, so to speak, a systematic hostility
against human nature; that to correct and to punish have been
synonymous; and that we have heard only of dispositions to break,
and natures to overcome, just as though it were a question of
taking away from children the nature which God has given them in
order to give them another such as teachers would have it?”
580. NATURE OF THE CHILD.--That which gives a great value to the
work of Madame Guizot is, that besides the general considerations
and the philosophical reflections, we there find a great number
of circumstantial experiences and detailed observations which are
admissible in a sound treatise on pedagogy. Like the psychology of
the child, pedagogy itself, at least in its first chapters, ought
to be conceived and written near a cradle. Madame Guizot forcibly
indicates the importance of the first years, where the future
destiny of the child is determined: “In those imperfect organs, in
that incomplete intelligence, are contained, from the first moment
of existence, the germs of that which is ever more to proceed from
them either for better or for worse. The man will never have, in
the whole course of his life, an impulse which does not belong to
that nature, all the features of which are already foreshadowed
in the infant. The infant will never receive a keen and durable
impression, however slight, an impress of whatever kind, whose
effects are not to influence the life of the man.”
At the same time that she sees in the infant the rough draft of
the man, Madame Guizot recognizes with a remarkable delicacy
of psychologic sense, that which distinguishes, that which
characterizes, the irreflective and inconsiderate nature of the
child. What is more just than this observation?
“We often deceive ourselves in attributing to the conduct of
children, because it is analogous to our own, motives similar to
those which guide ourselves.”
What better observation than the example which Madame Guizot cites
in support of this statement!
“Louise, by a sudden impulse, drops her toys, throws herself upon
my neck, and cannot cease kissing me. It seems that all my mother’s
heart could not sufficiently respond to the warmth of her caresses;
but by the same playful impulse she leaves me to kiss her doll or
the arm of the chair which she meets on her way.”
581. PHILOSOPHIC RATIONALISM.--Madame Guizot pushes rationalism
much farther than Madame de Rémusat, and still farther than Madame
Necker de Saussure. She is first a philosopher, then a Christian.
She more nearly approaches Rousseau. She would first form in the
minds of children the universal idea of God before initiating
them into the particular dogmas of positive religions. She bases
morals on the idea of duty, which is “the only basis of a complete
education.”
“I would place,” she says, “each act of the child under the
protection of an idea or of a moral sentiment.”
Recalling the distinction made by Dupont de Nemours between
_paternal commands_ and _military commands_, the first addressing
themselves to the reason, the others to be observed without protest
and with a passive obedience, she does not conceal her preference
for the use of the first, because she would form in the woman,
as in the man, a spirit of reason and of liberty. She absolutely
proscribes personal interest, and hence declares that “rewards have
always seemed to her contrary to the true principle of education.”
Let us say, lastly, without being able to enter into detail, that
the book of Madame Guizot deserves to be read with care. There
will be found in it a great number of excellent reflections on
instruction which ought to be substantial rather than extensive;
upon the reading of romances, and upon the theatre, which she does
not forbid; upon easy methods, which she condemns; and, finally, on
almost all pedagogical questions.[247]
582. MADAME NECKER DE SAUSSURE (1765-1841).--There are in the
history of education privileged moments, periods that are
particularly and happily fruitful. It is thus that within the space
of a few years there appeared in succession the books of Madame
de Rémusat, of Madame Guizot, and, the most important of all, the
_Progressive Education_ of Madame Necker de Saussure.[248]
A native of Geneva, like Rousseau, Madame Necker de Saussure has
endowed French literature with an educational masterpiece, which
for elevation of view and nobleness of inspiration, can take rank
by the side of the _Émile_. Though she may sometimes be too logical
and too austere, and while in general she is lacking in good humor,
and while she looks upon life only through a veil of sadness,
Madame Necker is an incomparable guide in educational affairs.
She brings to the subject remarkable qualities of perspicacity
and penetration, and a spirit of marked gravity. She takes a
serious view of life, and applies herself to training the noblest
qualities of the human soul. Profoundly religious, she unites a
“philosophical boldness to the submission of faith.” She is, in
some measure, a Christian Rousseau.
583. MADAME NECKER DE SAUSSURE AND MADAME DE STAËL.--The first work
of Madame Necker, _Notice of the Character and the Writings of
Madame de Staël_, already gives proof of her interest in education.
The author of the _Progressive Education_ here studies with care
the ideas of her heroine on education and instruction. It is plain
that she has profited by some of the solid reflections in the noble
book on _Germany_, and particularly by this opinion on the gradual
and progressive method of Rousseau and of Pestalozzi:--
“Rousseau calls children into activity by degrees. He would have
them do for themselves all that their little powers permit them
to do. He does not in the least force their intelligence; he does
not make them reach the result without passing over the route.
He wishes the faculties to be developed before the sciences are
taught.”
“What wearies children is to make them jump over intermediate
parts, to make them advance without their really knowing what they
think they have learned. With Pestalozzi there is no trace of these
difficulties. With him, children take delight in their studies,
because even in infancy, they taste the pleasure of grown men,
namely, comprehending and completing that on which they have been
engaged.”
Moreover, Madame Necker must have recognized her own spirit, her
preference for a severe and painstaking education, in this passage
where Madame de Staël vigorously protested against amusing and easy
methods of instruction:--
“The education that takes place through amusement dissipates
thought; labor of some sort is one of the great aids of nature; the
mind of the child ought to accustom itself to the labor of study,
just as our soul to suffering.... You will teach a multitude of
things to your child by means of pictures and cards, but you will
not teach him how to learn.”
584. PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION AND ROUSSEAU.--It is undeniable that
Madame Necker owes much to Rousseau; but she is far from always
agreeing with him.
For Rousseau, man is good; for her, man is bad. The first duty of
the teacher should be to reform him, to raise him from his fall;
the purpose of life is not happiness, as an immoral doctrine
maintains, but it is improvement; the basis of education ought to
be religion.
Even when she is inspired by Rousseau, Madame Necker is not long
in separating from him. Thus we may believe that she borrows from
him the fundamental idea of her book, the idea of a successive
development of the faculties, to which should correspond a
parallel movement in educational methods. Like the author of the
_Émile_, she follows the awakening of the senses in the infant.
She considers the infant as a being _sui generis_ “who lives only
on sensations and desires.” She sees in the infant a distinct
period of life, an age whose education has its own special rules.
But at that point the resemblances stop; for Madame Necker de
Saussure hastens to add that, from the fifth year, the child is
in possession of all his intellectual faculties. He is no longer
simply a sentient being, a robust animal like Émile; but he is
a complete being, soul and body. Consequently, education should
take account of his double nature. Moral education ought not to be
separated from physical education, and cannot begin too soon.
“It is a great error to believe that nature proceeds in the
systematic order imagined by Rousseau. With her, we nowhere discern
a commencement; we do not surprise her at creating, and it always
seems that she is developing.”
So, in education, we must know how to appeal, at the same time
and as soon as possible, to the different motives, instinctive or
reflective, selfish or affectionate, which sway the will.
Often, in practice, the two thinkers approach each other, and,
even in her protestations against her countryman, Madame Necker
de Saussure preserves something of Rousseau’s spirit. Thus, she
does not desire the negative education which leaves everything to
nature. The teacher ought not to _allow_ the child to do (_laisser
faire_), but _cause_ him to do (_faire faire_). But, at the same
time, she demands that the will be strengthened, so that education
may find in it a point of support; that the character be hardened;
that some degree of independence be accorded to the child; “that
in permissible cases he be allowed to come to his own decision;
and that half-orders, half-obligations, tacit entreaties, and
insinuations, be avoided.” Is not this retaining all that is just
and practical in Rousseau’s theory, namely, the necessity of
associating the special and spontaneous powers of the child with
the work of education? Madame de Saussure adopts a just medium
between the active education which makes a misuse of the master’s
instruction, and the passive education which makes a misuse of the
pupil’s liberty. She would willingly have accepted this precept of
Frœbel, “Let teachers not lose sight of this truth: it is necessary
that always and at the same time they give and take, that they
precede and follow, that they act and let act.”
585. ORIGINALITY OF MADAME NECKER.--Though she had reflected much
on the writings of her predecessors, it is nevertheless to her
personal experience and to her original investigations that Madame
Necker owes the best of her thought. She had herself followed the
advice which she gives to mothers, of “observing their children,
and of keeping a journal, in which a record should be made of each
step of progress, and in which all the vicissitudes of physical and
moral health should be noted.” It is a rich psychological fund, and
at the same time a perpetual aspiration after the ideal, which
makes the strength and the beauty of the _Progressive Education_.
With what penetrating insight Madame Necker has pointed out the
difficulty and also the charm of the study of children!
“It were so delightful to fix the fugitive image of childhood, to
prolong indefinitely the happiness of contemplating their features,
and to be sure of ever finding again those dear creatures whom,
alas, we are always losing as children, even when we still have the
happiness of keeping them!”
“We must love children in order to know them, and we divine them
less by the intelligence than by the heart.”
Thanks to the pronounced taste for the study of child nature, the
most just psychological observations are ever mingled, in the
_Progressive Education_, with the precepts of education, and it has
been truly said that “this book is almost a journal of domestic
education which takes the proportions of a theory.”
586. DIVISION OF THE PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION.--The _Progressive
Education_ appeared in 1836 and 1838 in three volumes. The first
three books treat of the history of the soul in infancy; the fourth
examines the general principles of teaching, independently of the
age of the pupil; the fifth studies the child of from five to seven
years of age; the sixth takes us to the tenth year; the seventh
shows “the distinctive marks of the character and the intellectual
development of boys, during the years which immediately precede
adolescence.” Finally, the last four books form a complete whole,
and treat of the education of women during the whole course of life.
587. DEVELOPMENT OF THE FACULTIES.--We cannot attempt in this place
to analyze a work so rich in ideas as the work of Madame Necker.
Let us limit ourselves to indicating the essential points in her
system of education. First, it is the preoccupation of training the
will, a faculty which is too much neglected by teachers, but which,
nevertheless, is the endowment which dominates life. Madame Necker
treats this subject in a masterly way in a chapter to which she
prefixes these words as a superscription:--
“Obedience to law constrains the will without enfeebling it, while
obedience to man injures it or enervates it.
“It is, above all, to place the interior education of the soul
above superficial and formal instruction.
“To instruct a child is to construct him within; it is to make him
become a man.”
588. CULTURE OF THE IMAGINATION.--Whatever importance she
attaches to the active powers, Madame Necker does not neglect the
contemplative faculties. The imagination, next to the will, is the
faculty of the soul which has most often engrossed her attention.
“She has made it appear,” says a distinguished writer, “that this
irresistible power, when we believe it to have been conquered,
takes the most diverse forms; that it disguises its power and
arouses with a secret fire the most miserable passions. If
you refuse it space and liberty, it slinks away in the depths
of selfishness, and under vulgar features it becomes avarice,
cowardice, and vanity.”
“So it is necessary to see with what tender anxiety Madame Necker
watches its first movements in the soul of the child; with what
intelligent care she seeks to make of it from entrance upon life,
the companion of truth; how she surrounds it with everything which
can establish it within the circle of the good. The studies which
extend our intellectual horizon, the spectacle of nature in her
marvelous diversities, the emotions of the arts,--nothing seems
to her superfluous or dangerous for directing the imagination in
the way that is good. She fears to see it escape, through the lack
of pleasures that are intense enough, in the direction of other
routes.”[249]
In other terms, it is not proposed to repress the imagination,
still less to destroy it; but merely to guide it gently, to
associate it with reason and virtue, to awaken it to a taste for
the good, and to an admiration for nature.
“Show him a beautiful sunset, in order that nothing which can
enchant him may pass unnoticed.”
589. THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN.--In her special studies on the
education of women, Madame Necker, who in other parts of her
work sometimes makes an improper use of vague declarations of
principles, without entering sufficiently into the details of
practical processes, has had the double merit of assigning to
the destiny of women an elevated ideal, and of determining with
precision the means of attaining it. She complains that we too
often adhere to Rousseau’s programme, that of an education which
relates exclusively to the conjugal duties of the woman. She
recommends that the marriage of young girls be delayed, so that
they may have time to become “enlightened spirits and intelligent
creatures”; so that they may acquire, not “an assortment of all
petty knowledges,” but a solid instruction, which prepares them
for the duties of society and of maternity, which make of them the
first teachers of their children, which, in a word, starts them
on the way towards that personal perfection which they will never
completely attain except by the efforts of their whole life.[250]
590. MADAME PAPE-CARPENTIER (1815-1878).--With Madame
Pape-Carpentier, we leave the region of theories to enter the
domain of facts; we have to do with a practical teacher. In 1846,
after several trials at teaching at La Flèche, her native city, and
at Mans, she published her _Counsels on the Management of Infant
Schools_. In 1847 she founded at Paris a _Mothers’ Normal School_,
which the next year, under the ministry of Carnot, became a public
establishment, and which, in 1852, under the ministry of Fortoul,
took the distinctive title _Practical Courses on Infant Schools_.
It is there that during twenty-seven years Madame Pape-Carpentier
applied her methods and trained a large number of pupils, more
than fifteen hundred, who have propagated in France and abroad
her teaching and her ideas. In 1847 she was removed from the
management of her normal school through intrigues; but her loss of
position was not of long duration. A little later she was appointed
inspector-general of infant schools.
591. GENERAL CHARACTER OF HER WORKS.--Madame Pape-Carpentier may
be considered as a pupil of Pestalozzi and of Frœbel. She was
specially occupied with elementary education, and carried into
her work a spirit of great simplicity. We must not demand of her
ambitious generalities nor views on abstract metaphysics; but she
excels in practical wisdom, and speaks the language of childhood to
perfection.
592. PRINCIPAL WORKS OF MADAME PAPE-CARPENTIER.--Among the
important works of Madame Pape-Carpentier we shall recommend the
following in particular:--
1. _Advice on the Management of Infant Schools_ (1845). In her
preface the author excuses herself for undertaking “a subject of
such gravity.” But she goes on to say that “no instruction has yet
been given the teacher on the education of the poor child,” and
she asks the privilege of speaking in the name of her personal
experience. This book, often reprinted, has become _Enseignement
pratique dans les salles d’asile_.[251]
2. _Narratives and Lessons on Objects_ (1858). This is a collection
of little stories, “simple as childhood,” which were tested before
children before being written, and in which Madame Pape-Carpentier
attempts to teach them things which are good: “I mean,” she says,
“things really, seriously good.”
3. _Pedagogical Discussions held at the Sorbonne_ (1867). During
the Universal Exposition of 1867, Monsieur Duruy had assembled
at Paris a certain number of teachers before whom pedagogical
discussions were held. Madame Pape-Carpentier took upon herself the
special task of explaining to them how the methods of the infant
school might be introduced into the primary school.
4. _Reading and Work for Children and Mothers_ (1873). Here Madame
Pape-Carpentier is especially intent on popularizing the methods
of Frœbel; she suggests ingenious exercises which can be applied
to children to give them skill in the use of their fingers, and to
inspire them with a taste for order and symmetry.
5. _Complete Course of Education_ (1874). This book, which would
have been the general statement of the pedagogical principles of
the author, was left incomplete. Only three volumes have appeared.
A few quotations will make known their spirit.
“To co-operate with nature in her work, to extend it, to correct
her when she goes wrong,--such is the task of the educator. In all
grades of education, nature must be respected.
“The child should live in the midst of fresh and soothing
impressions; the objects which surround him in the school should be
graceful and cheerful.
“Socrates has admirably said, ‘The duty of education is to give the
idea birth rather than to communicate it.’”
6. _Note on the Education of the Senses, and some Pedagogical
Appliances_ (1878). Madame Pape-Carpentier is very much interested
in the education of the senses, because, she says, “every child
born into the world is a workman in prospect, a future apprentice
to an occupation still unknown.” It is then necessary to perfect at
an early hour the natural tools he will need in order to fulfill
his task. The education of the senses will have its place some day
or other in the official programmes, and, for this sense-training,
instruments are just as necessary as books are for the culture of
the intellect.
593. LESSONS ON OBJECTS.--“The object-lesson is the new continent
on which Madame Pape-Carpentier has planted her standard.”
She herself wrote a number of works which contain models of
object-lessons; she has stated the theory of them, notably in her
discussions of 1867. It is even permissible to think that she has
made a wrong use of them. With her, the object-lesson becomes a
universal process which she applies to all subjects, to chemistry,
to physics, to grammar, to geography, and to ethics.
However it may be, this is the course to follow according to her:
it is necessary to conform to the order in which the perceptions of
the intelligence succeed each other. The child’s attention is first
struck by color. Then he will distinguish the form of the object,
and would know its use, its material, and mode of production. It is
according to this natural development of the child’s curiosity that
the object-lesson should proceed.
Moreover, it can be given with reference to everything. Madame
Pape-Carpentier admits what she calls “occasional lessons”; but she
also thinks that object-lessons can be given according to a plan,
a fixed programme.
Madame Pape-Carpentier deserves, then, to be heard as an
experienced adviser in whatever relates to elementary instruction;
but that which we must admire in her still more than her
professional skill and her pedagogical knowledge, is an elevated
conception of the teacher’s work, and a lofty inspiration coming
from her devotion to children and her love for them.
“To educate children properly,” she said, “ought to be for the
teacher only the second part of his undertaking; the first, and the
most difficult, is to perfect himself.”
“What we are able to do for children is measured by the love we
bear them.”
594. OTHER WOMEN WHO WERE EDUCATORS.--If the education of women
has received an important development in our day, it is due, then,
in great part to the women who have shown what they were worth and
what they could do, either as teachers or as educators. And yet
the history whose principal features we have just traced remains
very incomplete. By the side of the celebrated women whose works we
have studied, we should mention Mademoiselle Sauvan, who, in 1811,
founded at Chaillot an educational establishment which she did not
leave till about 1830, to take the intellectual and moral direction
of the girls’ schools of Paris;[252] Madame de Maisonneuve, author
of an _Essay on the Instruction of Women_,[253] in which she sums
up the results of a long experience acquired in the management of
a private boarding-school.
But men have also contributed by their theoretical objections, or
by their practical efforts, to the progress of the education of
women. It would be of interest, for example, to study the courses
in secondary instruction of Lourmand (1834), and the _Courses in
Maternal Education_, of Lévi Alvarès (1820). “Monsieur Lévi,”
says Gréard, “makes the mother tongue and history the basis of
instruction. He himself sums up his methods in this formula of
progressive education: Facts, comparison of facts, moral or
philosophical consequence of facts; that is, seeing, comparing,
judging. This is the very order of nature.” Let us mention also the
work of Aimé Martin, _The Education of Mothers_,[254] which for
several years enjoyed an extraordinary reputation that it would be
rather difficult to justify.
595. DUPANLOUP AND THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN.--A bishop of the
nineteenth century, Dupanloup, has assumed to rival Fénelon in the
delicate question of the education of women. Different works, and
in particular the one which he esteemed most, his _Letters on the
Education of Girls_, published after his death in 1879, give proof
of the interest which he took in these questions. These letters are
for the most part real letters which were addressed to women of the
time. Notwithstanding the variety and the freedom of the epistolary
form, the work may be divided into three parts: 1. the principles
of education; 2. the education of young women; 3. free and personal
study in the world. Dupanloup should be thanked for having summoned
woman to a true intellectual culture, and for not consenting to
have her faculties remain “smothered and useless.” Through the
revelations of the confessional and the spiritual direction of
a great number of women, Dupanloup knew exactly what a void an
incomplete education of the mind and heart leaves in the soul. He
is indeed willing to acknowledge that piety is not enough, and with
a certain breadth of spirit which drew upon him the censure of the
ultramontane press, he recommends the serious studies to women.
His counsels, however, are addressed only to women of the middle
classes, to those who, he says, “occupy the third story of houses
in Paris.” His book is rather a reminiscence of the seventeenth
century, of its manners and its habits of thinking, than a living
work of to-day, adapted to the needs of modern society.
[596. ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.--1. The formal discussion of woman’s
education by women marks an important epoch in the history of
education. Had the education of men been wholly, or even chiefly,
discussed by women, it cannot be doubted that it would have been
more or less partial and imperfect.
2. The formal discussion of infant education by women is scarcely
less important; for nothing less than maternal instinct and
affection can divine the nature and the needs of the child.
3. This study calls attention to the need of making the
education of women serious instead of ornamental. Plato based
his recommendation of the equal education of men and women
on equality of civil functions. In modern thought it is the
conception of equal rights and of equal abilities that tends to
prescribe the same course of intellectual training for both sexes.
4. The educational work of the two Englishwomen, Miss Edgeworth
and Miss Hamilton, can be studied with great profit. The first
excels in practical wisdom, and the second in philosophic insight.
5. _The Progressive Education_ of Madame Necker is a classic
which fairly ranks with the _Émile_ of Rousseau, and the
_Education_ of Herbert Spencer.]
FOOTNOTES:
[237] Gréard, _Mémoire sur l’enseignement secondaire des filles_,
p. 78.
[238] French translation by Pictet, 1801.
[239] French translation by Chéron, 2 vols., Paris, 1804.
[240] Stewart, _Elements_, p. 11.
[241] _Letters_, Vol. I. p. 11.
[242] See the two volumes published in 1824 by Barrière, on the
_Éducation, par Madame Campan_, followed by the _Conseils aux
jeunes filles_.
[243] The work of Madame de Rémusat was published in 1824, after
the author’s death, under the direction of Charles de Rémusat.
[244] Joubert, _Pensées_.
[245] The _Annales de l’éducation_ appeared from 1811 to 1814. It
is an interesting collection to consult. In it Guizot published
among other pedagogical works, his studies on the ideas of Rabelais
and Montaigne, afterwards reprinted in the volume, _Études Morales_.
[246] _Éducation domestique ou Lettres de famille sur l’éducation._
2 vols. Paris, 1826.
[247] See in the _Revue pédagogique_, 1883, No. 6, an interesting
study on Madame Guizot, by Bernard Perez.
[248] _L’Éducation progressive ou Étude du cours de la nature
humaine._ 3 vols. 1836-1838.
[249] Preface to the fifth edition of the _Progressive Education_.
Paris. Garnier.
[250] We must include in the educational school of Madame Necker de
Saussure one of her countrymen, the celebrated Vinet (1799-1847),
who, in his excellent book, _L’Éducation, la famille et la société_
(Paris, 1855), has vigorously discussed certain educational
questions.
[251] See the sixth edition, Paris, Hachette, 1877.
[252] See the work entitled _Mademoiselle Sauvan, première
inspectrice des écoles de Paris, sa vie, son œuvre_, par E. Gossot.
Paris, 1880.
[253] _Essai sur l’instruction des femmes._ Tours, 1841.
[254] The first edition is dated 1834. The ninth was published in
1873.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF EDUCATION IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
THE PEDAGOGY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY; VOTES OF THE
COUNCILS-GENERAL (1801); FOURCROY AND THE LAW OF 1802; FOUNDATION
OF THE UNIVERSITY (1806); ORGANIZATION OF THE IMPERIAL
UNIVERSITY; INTENTIONS OF THE DYNASTY; PRIMARY INSTRUCTION
NEGLECTED; ORIGIN OF MUTUAL INSTRUCTION; BELL AND LANCASTER;
SUCCESS OF MUTUAL INSTRUCTION IN FRANCE; MORAL ADVANTAGES;
ECONOMICAL ADVANTAGES; ORGANIZATION OF SCHOOLS ON THE MUTUAL
SYSTEM; VICES OF THIS SYSTEM; STATE OF PRIMARY INSTRUCTION;
GUIZOT AND THE LAW OF 1833; HIGHER PRIMARY SCHOOLS; CIRCULAR OF
GUIZOT; PROGRESS IN POPULAR INSTRUCTION; PROGRAMMES OF PRIMARY
INSTRUCTION; THE THEORISTS OF EDUCATION; JACOTOT (1770-1840); THE
PARADOXES OF JACOTOT; ALL IS IN ALL; THE SAINT-SIMONIANS AND THE
PHALANSTERIANS; FOURIER (1772-1837); AUGUSTE COMTE (1798-1857)
AND THE POSITIVISTS; DUPANLOUP (1802-1878); ANALYSIS OF THE
TREATISE ON EDUCATION; ERRORS AND PREJUDICES; THE SPIRITUALISTIC
SCHOOL AND THE UNIVERSITY MEN; ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.
597. THE PEDAGOGY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.--An effort more
and more marked to organize education in accordance with the
data of psychology and on a scientific basis, and to co-ordinate
pedagogical methods in accordance with a rational plan; a manifest
tendency to take the control of education from the hands of the
Church in order to restore it to the State and to lay society; a
larger part accorded the family in the management of children; a
faith more and more sanguine in the efficacy of instruction, and
an ever-growing purpose to have every member of the human family
participate in its benefits,--such are some of the characteristics
of the pedagogy of the nineteenth century. Education tends more and
more to become a social problem; it is to be an affair of universal
interest. It is no longer to be merely a question of regulating
select studies for the use of a few who are the favorites of
birth and fortune; but science must be placed within the reach of
all, and through the simplification of methods and the universal
distribution of knowledge, it must be adapted to the democratic
spirit of the new society.
We have no intention to follow in this place, in all its details,
and in the diversity of its currents, this educational movement of
a century which has not yet said its last word; but we must limit
ourselves to calling attention to the points which seem to us
essential.
598. LAWS OF THE COUNCILS-GENERAL OF 1801.--Notwithstanding the
efforts of the Revolution, public instruction in France, during
the first part of the nineteenth century, was far from being
flourishing. There was urgent need of introducing reforms. The
Councils-General were summoned in 1801 to give their advice on the
organization of studies. That which is very noticeable in the State
papers of the Councils-General of 1801, is that the departmental
assemblies agree in demanding the establishment of a National
University. The Councils-General complain that the professors,
being no longer united by the ties of solidarity, as were the
members of the religious teaching congregations of the old régime,
march at random, without unity, without concerted direction.
They solicit, then, a uniform organization of instruction. They
even conceive the idea of an official instruction administered
exclusively by the State.
599. FOURCROY[255] AND THE LAW OF 1802.--We have not the space to
dwell long on the bill of Fourcroy, which became the law of 1802,
although this measure, it has been said, was amended twenty-three
times before being submitted to the Corps Législatif and to the
Tribunate.
Fourcroy did not sufficiently recognize the rights of the State.
Doubtless he did not go so far as to assert, with Adam Smith, that
education should be abandoned entirely to private enterprise; but
he thinks that the task of organizing the primary schools must be
left to the communes. In his opinion, that which prevented the
success of these schools was the attempt to impose too great a
uniformity on them. He demands that the teachers be chosen by the
mayors, or by the municipal councillors, who alone are cognizant
of the local interests. The primary school is the need of all.
Then let it be the affair of all. Fourcroy was mistaken. Primary
instruction became a reality in France only on the day when the
State vigorously put its hand on it.
On certain points, however, the law of 1802 prepared the way for
the approaching creation of Napoleon; for example, in giving to the
First Consul the appointment of the professors of the colleges,
and in placing the primary schools under the supervision of the
prefects.
600. FOUNDATION OF THE UNIVERSITY (1806).--The law of May 11,
1806, completed by the decrees of March 17, 1808, and of 1811,
established the University, that is, a teaching corporation, unique
and entirely dependent on the State:--
“There shall be constituted a body charged exclusively with
instruction and public education throughout the whole extent of the
Empire.”
Instruction thus became a function of the State, on the same basis
as the administration of justice or the organization of the army.
At the same time that it lost all autonomy, all independence, the
University gained the formidable privilege of being alone charged
with the national instruction.
“No one can open a school or teach publicly, without being a member
of the Imperial University and without having been graduated from
one of its Faculties.” “No school can be established outside of the
University, and without the authorization of its head.”
We know what protestations were excited, even on the start, by
the establishment of this University monopoly. “It was not enough
to enchain parents; it was still necessary to dispose of the
children. Mothers have been seen hastening from the extremities
of the Empire, coming to reclaim, in an agony of tears, the
sons whom the government had carried off from them.” Thus spoke
Chateaubriand, before lavishing his adulations on the restorer of
altars, and he added, with an extravagance of imagination which
recoils on itself, “Children were placed in schools where they
were taught at the sound of the drum, irreligion, debauchery, and
contempt for the domestic virtues!” Joseph de Maistre was more
just: “Fontanes,”[256] he said, “has large views and excellent
intentions. The plan of his University is grand and comprehensive.
It is a noble body. The soul will come to it when it can. Celibacy,
subordination, devotion of the whole life without religious motive,
are required. Will they be obtained?”[257]
601. ORGANIZATION OF THE IMPERIAL UNIVERSITY.--The Imperial
University comprised, like the present University, Colleges,
Lycées, and Faculties. The Colleges furnished secondary
instruction, like the Lycées, but less complete. There were a
Faculty of Letters and a Faculty of Sciences for each academic
centre; but these Faculties were very poorly equipped, with their
endowment of from five to ten thousand francs at most, and with
their few professors. The professors of the neighboring Lycée
(professors of rhetoric and mathematics) formed a part of the
establishment, and each Faculty included at most but two or three
other chairs.
Latin and mathematics formed the basis of the instruction in the
Lycées. The Revolution had not come in vain, since that which it
had vigorously demanded was now realized; the sciences and the
classical languages were put on a footing of equality.
602. DYNASTIC PREPOSSESSIONS.--That which absorbed the attention
of the founder of the Imperial University was less the schemes of
study than the general principles on which the rising generations
were to be nourished. In this respect the thought of the Emperor is
not obscure. He does not dissemble it. God and the Emperor are the
two words which must be graven into the depths of the soul.
“All the schools of the Imperial University will make as the basis
of their instruction: 1. the precepts of the Catholic religion; 2.
fidelity to the Emperor, to the imperial monarchy, the depository
of the happiness of the people, and to the Napoleonic dynasty,
the _conservator of the unity of France_, and of all the ideas
proclaimed by the Constitution.”
“Napoleon,” as Guizot says, “attempted to convert into an
instrument of despotism an institution which tended to be only a
centre of light.”
603. PRIMARY INSTRUCTION NEGLECTED.--Primary instruction never
occupied the attention of Napoleon I. The decree of 1805 contented
itself with promising measures intended to assure the recruitment
of teachers, especially the creation of one or more normal classes
within the colleges and lycées. Moreover, the Grand Master
was to encourage and to license the Brethren of the Christian
Schools, while supervising their establishments. Finally, the
right to establish schools was left to families or to religious
corporations, the budget of the Empire containing no item of
appropriation for the cause of popular instruction.
The Restoration was scarcely more generous towards the instruction
of the people. By the ordinance of February 29, 1815, it granted
_fifty thousand francs_ as encouragement to the primary schools.
Was this derisive liberality any better than complete silence and
neglect? A more important measure was the establishment of cantonal
committees charged with the supervision of primary schools.
These committees were placed, sometimes under the direction of
the rector, and at others under the authority of the bishop, at
the pleasure of the vicissitudes of politics. Certificates of
qualification were delivered to the members of the authorized
congregations, on the simple presentation of their letters of
permission. We can imagine what a body of teachers could be assured
by such a mode of recruitment.
In anticipation of the monarchy of July, which in its liberal
dispositions was to appear more regardful of popular education,
private initiative signalized itself under the Restoration by
the foundation of the _Society for Elementary Instruction_, and
also by the encouragement it gave to the first attempts at mutual
instruction.
604. ORIGIN OF MUTUAL INSTRUCTION.--Two Englishmen, Bell and
Lancaster, have claimed the honor of having invented mutual
instruction. The fact is, neither of them invented it; they simply
gave it currency. It is in France, if not in India, that we must
look for the real origin of mutual instruction. We have seen that
Madame de Maintenon, Rollin, La Salle, and Pestalozzi, practised
it, and to a certain extent gave it currency. In the eighteenth
century Herbault had employed it in the hospital of La Pitié
(1747), the Chevalier Paulet at Vincennes (1774), and, finally, the
Abbé Gaultier,[258] also a Frenchman, had introduced the use of it
into London, in 1792, some years before Bell brought it from India.
605. BELL (1753-1832) AND LANCASTER (1778-1838).--Bell and
Lancaster are none the less the first authorized propagators of the
mutual method, or, as the English say, of the _monitorial system_.
Bell had used it at Madras, in imitation of the Hindoo teachers,
and in 1798 he introduced it into England. But at the same period,
a young English teacher, Lancaster, applied the same methods
with success, and, so far as it appears, through a suggestion
absolutely personal and original. Lancaster was a Quaker, and Bell
a Churchman, so that public opinion in England was divided between
the two rivals. The truth is that they had applied at the same time
a system which was known before their day, and which must naturally
have been suggested to all teachers who have too large a number
of children to instruct, as a result of the inadequacy of their
resources and the lack of a teaching force sufficiently large.
606. SUCCESS OF MUTUAL INSTRUCTION IN FRANCE.--Mutual instruction,
which was maintained in certain schools of Paris till 1867, for
a long time enjoyed an extraordinary credit in France. Under the
Restoration, its success was so great that it became the fashion,
and even a craze. Patronized by the most eminent men of that day,
by Royer-Collard, by Laisné, by the Duke Decazes, by the Duke
Pasquier, mutual instruction became the flag of the liberal party
in the matter of instruction. Political passions became involved
in it. The new system came into competition with the traditional
instruction of the Brethren of the Christian Schools, and was
fought and denounced as immoral by all the partisans of routine.
“Mutual instruction was charged with destroying the foundation
of social order by delegating to children a power which ought
to belong only to men.... Men held for or against simultaneous
instruction, its rival, as if it were a question of an article of
the Charter.”[259]
607. MORAL ADVANTAGES.--The friends of mutual instruction, in
order to justify their enthusiasm, made the most of moral reasons.
What can be more touching, they said, than to see children
communicating to one another the little that they know? What an
excellent lesson of charity and of mutual aid! The Gospel has
said, _Love one another_. Was it not giving to the divine precept
a happy translation to add, _Instruct one another_! An attempt was
made, moreover, to introduce mutuality into discipline and into
the repression of school faults. The school, on certain solemn
occasions, was converted into a court for trying criminals. “All
this was done very seriously, and it was also very seriously felt
that these practices, passing from a class of children to a class
of adults, would contribute to introduce into society the habits of
a true and useful fraternity.”
608. ECONOMICAL ADVANTAGES.--To tell the truth, mutual instruction
was above all else “a useful expedient,” according to Rollin’s
expression. At a period when teachers were scarce, when the budget
of public instruction did not exist, it was natural that an
economic system which dispensed with teachers, and which reduced
to almost nothing the cost of instruction, should be hailed with
enthusiasm. Let us add that there was also an economy in books,
since “there was need of only one book, which pupils never used,
and which would thus last for several years.”
Jomard calculated that there were 3,000,000 children to instruct,
and that, according to the ordinary system, this would require the
expenditure of more than 45,000,000 francs.[260]
Now, according to the calculations of the Comte de Laborde,[261]
1000 pupils being able to be educated by one single teacher, by
the system of mutual instruction, more easily than 30 could have
been by the old system, a sum of 10,000 francs granted annually
by the State would suffice to educate in twelve years the entire
generation of poor children.[262]
609. ORGANIZATION OF SCHOOLS ON THE MUTUAL PLAN.--Bell defined
mutual instruction as “the method by means of which a whole school
may instruct itself, under the supervision of one single master.”
Here is the picture of a mutual school, as described by Gréard:--
“That was a striking spectacle at the first glance,--those long
and vast structures which contained a whole school, such as the
older generations of our teachers recollect still to have seen at
the Halle aux Draps. In the middle of the room, throughout its
entire length, were rows of tables having from five to twenty
places each, having at one end, at the right, the desk of the
monitor, and the board having models of writing, itself surmounted
by a standard or telegraph which served to secure, by means of
directions easy to read, regularity of movements; at the side of
the room, and all along the walls, there were rows of semi-circles,
about which were arranged groups of children; on the walls, on a
line with the eye, there was a blackboard on which were performed
the exercises in computation, and from which were suspended the
charts for reading and grammar; right at his side, within reach of
his hand, was the stick with which the teacher was provided for
conducting the lesson; finally, at the lower part of the room,
on a wide and high platform, accessible by steps and surrounded
by a balustrade, was the chair of the master, who, employing in
succession, according to fixed rules, voice, _bâton_, or whistle,
surveyed the tables and groups, distributing commendation or
reproof, and directing, in a word, like a captain on the deck of
his vessel, the whole machinery of instruction.”
In respect of systematic movements and exterior order, nothing
is more charming than the appearance of a school conducted on
the mutual plan. It remains to inquire what were the educational
results of the system, and whether the fashion which brought it
into favor was justified by real advantages.
610. VICES OF MUTUAL INSTRUCTION.--The monitor was the mainspring
of the mutual method. But what was the monitor? A child, more
intelligent, doubtless, than his comrades, but too little
instructed to be equal to his task. The mutual school did not open
till ten o’clock. From eight to ten there was a class for the
monitors. There they learned in haste what they were, for the rest
of the day, to teach to the other children. The purpose of the
master being to form good instruments as quickly as possible, they
were fitted up for their trade by the most expeditious methods.
“What sort of teachers could such a preparation produce? To teach
is to learn twice, it has been truly said; but on the condition
of having reflected on that which has been learned and upon that
which is to be taught. To convey light into the intelligence of
another, it is first necessary to have produced the light within
one’s self, a thing which supposes the enlightened, penetrating,
and persevering action of a mind relatively mature and trained.
From the class where they have just been sitting as pupils, the
monitors--masters improvised as by the wave of a wand,--passed to
the classes of children whom they were to indoctrinate” (Gréard).
The instruction, consequently, became purely mechanical. The
monitor faithfully repeated what he had been taught. Everything was
reduced to mechanical processes.
Let us observe, besides, that from the moral point of view, the
mutual system left much to be desired. The monitors, we are told,
did not escape the intoxications of pride. Even in the family they
became petty tyrants. Parents complained of their dictatorial
habits and their tone of authority.
However it may be, mutual instruction has rendered undeniable
services, thanks to the zeal of such teachers as Mademoiselle
Sauvan and Monsieur Sarazin; but its reputation went on diminishing
in proportion as the State became more and more disposed to make
sacrifices, and as it was possible to multiply the services of
teachers.[263]
611. THE STATE OF PRIMARY INSTRUCTION.--Under the title, _Exhibit
of Primary Instruction in France_, a member of the University, P.
Lorain, published in 1837 a _résumé_ of the inquiry, which, by the
orders of Guizot, had been made in 1833 throughout the whole extent
of France, by the labors of more than 400 inspectors. Here are some
of the sad results of this inquiry: all the teachers did not know
how to write; a large number employed the mechanism of the three
fundamental rules without being able to give any theoretical reason
for these operations. “The ignorance was general.”
As under the old régime, the teacher practiced all the trades; he
was day-laborer, shoemaker, innkeeper.
“He had his wife supply his place while he went hunting in the
fields.”
The functions of the teacher, poorly rewarded, exposed to the risk
of a very slender tuition, enjoyed no consideration.
“The teacher was often regarded in the community on the same
footing as a mendicant, and between the herdsman and himself, the
preference was for the herdsman.”
Consequently, the situation of school-master was the most often
sought after by men who were infirm, crippled, unfit for any other
kind of work.
“From the teacher without arms, to the epileptic, how many
infirmities to pass through!”
612. GUIZOT AND THE LAW OF JUNE 28, 1833.--Primary instruction,
so often decreed by the Revolution, was not really organized in
France till by the law of June 28, 1833, the honor of which is due
in particular to Guizot, then minister of public instruction.[264]
Primary instruction was divided into two grades,--elementary and
higher. Henceforth there was to be a school for each commune, or at
least for each group of two or three communes. The State reserved
the right of appointing teachers, and of determining their salary,
which, it is true, in certain places, did not exceed two hundred
francs. Poor children were to be received without pay.
613. HIGHER PRIMARY SCHOOLS.--One of the most praiseworthy purposes
of the legislator of 1833 was the establishment of higher primary
instruction.
“_Higher_ primary instruction,” he said, “necessarily includes, in
addition to all the branches of elementary primary instruction,
the elements of geometry, and its common applications, especially
linear drawing and surveying, information on the physical sciences
and natural history, applicable to the uses of life, singing, the
elements of history and geography, and particularly of the history
and geography of France. According to the needs and the resources
of localities, the instruction shall receive such developments as
shall be deemed proper.”
A higher primary school was to be established in the chief towns
of the department and in all the communes which had a population
of more than six thousand souls. The law was executed in part. In
1841, one hundred and sixty-one schools were founded. But little
by little, the indifference of the government, and, above all, the
vanity of parents who preferred for their children worthless Latin
studies to a good and thorough primary instruction, discouraged
these first efforts.
The legislator of 1833 had good reason for thinking that a good
vest was worth more than a poor coat. His mistake was in thinking
that people would be persuaded to abandon the coat in order to
take the vest.[265] The higher schools were almost everywhere
annexed to the colleges of secondary instruction. To suppress their
independence and their own distinctive features was to destroy
them. The final blow was given them by the law of 1850, which
abstained from pronouncing their name, and which condemned them by
its silence.
614. CIRCULAR OF GUIZOT.--In transmitting to teachers the law of
June 28, 1833, Guizot had it followed by a celebrated circular,
which eloquently stated the proper office of the teacher, his
duties and his rights. Here are some passages from it:
“Do not make a mistake here, Sir. While the career of primary
instruction may be without renown, its duties interest the whole
of society, and it is an occupation which shares the importance
attached to public functions.... Universal primary instruction
is henceforth to be one of the guarantees of order and social
stability.”
The circular next examines the material advantages which the new
law assured to teachers, and it continues thus:--
“However, Sir, as I well know, the foresight of the law and
the resources at the disposal of public authority, will never
succeed in rendering the humble profession of a communal teacher
as attractive as it is useful. Society could not reward him who
devotes himself to this service for all that he does for it. There
is no fortune to gain; there is scarcely any reputation to acquire
in the difficult duties which he performs. Destined to see his life
spent in a monotonous occupation, sometimes even to encounter about
him the injustice and the ingratitude of ignorance, he would often
grow disheartened, and would perhaps succumb did he not draw his
strength and his courage from other sources than from the prospect
of an interest immediate and purely personal. It is necessary
that a profound sense of the moral importance of his work sustain
and animate him, and that the austere pleasure of having served
men and secretly contributed to the public good, become the noble
reward which his conscience alone can give. It is his glory to aim
at nothing beyond his obscure and laborious condition, to spend
himself in sacrifices scarcely counted by those who profit by them,
and, in a word, to work for men and to look for his reward only
from God.”
615. PROGRESS OF POPULAR INSTRUCTION.--It would be an interesting
history to relate in detail the progress of popular education
in France from the law of 1833 to our day. The public bills of
the Republic of 1848, the liberal propositions of Carnot and of
Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, the recoil of the law of March 15, 1850,
the _statu quo_ of the first years of the Second Empire, then
towards the end the praiseworthy efforts and tentatives of Duruy,
and, finally, under the Third Republic, the definite and triumphant
organization,--all this is sufficiently known and too recent to
justify us in dwelling on it here.
For successfully introducing anew into the laws the principles of
gratuity, obligation, and secularization, as proclaimed by the
French Revolution, not less than a century was necessary. And in
particular, the better spirits allowed themselves to be convinced
of the need of obligatory instruction only by slow degrees.
However, in 1833, Cousin, who reported the law of Guizot to the
Chamber of Peers, expressed himself as follows:--
“A law which should make of primary instruction a legal obligation
seems to me to be no more above the powers of the legislator than
the law on the national guard, and that which you have just made
on a forced appropriation for the public good. If reasons of
public utility justify the legislator in appropriating private
property, why do not reasons of a much higher utility justify him
in doing less,--in requiring that children receive the instruction
indispensable to every human creature, to the end that he may not
become dangerous to himself or to society as a whole?”
Cousin added that the commission of which he was the chairman would
not have receded from measures wisely combined to make instruction
obligatory, had it not been afraid of provoking difficulties, and,
in this way, of postponing a law that was awaited with impatience.
The evident necessity of instructing the people, the interests of
society, the interests of families and individuals,--all these
considerations have insensibly overcome the scruples or the
illusions of a false liberality, and it is no longer necessary,
to-day, to repeat the eloquent pleas of Carnot in his bill of 1848,
of Duruy, and of Jules Simon.
In 1873 Guizot expressed himself as follows:--
“The liberty of conscience and that of families are facts and
rights which, in this question, ought to be scrupulously respected
and guaranteed; but, under the condition of this respect and of
these guarantees, it may happen that the state of society and the
state of minds may render legal obligation, in respect of primary
instruction, legitimate, salutary, and necessary. _This is the
condition of things to-day._ The movement in favor of obligatory
instruction is sincere, serious, national. Powerful examples
authorize and encourage it. In Germany, in Switzerland, in Denmark,
in most of the American States, primary instruction has this
character, and civilization has reaped excellent fruits from it.
France and its government have reason to welcome this principle.”
616. PROGRAMMES OF PRIMARY INSTRUCTION.--At the same time that
primary instruction made progress by its ever-growing extension,
and by the participation in it of a greater number of individuals,
its programmes were also extended, and it is interesting to compare
in this respect the different laws which have regulated the matter
of instruction in our century.
The law of 1833 said: “Elementary primary instruction necessarily
comprises moral and religious instruction, reading, writing, the
elements of the French language and of computation, the legal
system of weights and measures.”
The bill presented, June 30, 1848, by Carnot, minister of public
instruction, expresses itself thus:--
“Primary instruction comprises: 1. reading, writing, the elements
of the French language, the elements of computation, the metric
system, the measure of distances, elementary notions of the
phenomena of nature, and the principal facts of agriculture and
of industry, linear drawing, singing, elementary notions on the
history and geography of France; 2. a knowledge of the duties and
the rights of man and citizen, the development of the sentiments
of liberty, equality, and fraternity; 3. the elementary rules of
hygiene, and useful exercises in physical development.”
“The religious instruction is given by the ministers of the
different communions.”
According to the bill of Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire (April 10, 1849),
elementary instruction for boys, necessarily comprised “moral,
religious, and civic instruction, reading, writing, the elements of
the French language, the elements of computation, the legal system
of weights and measures, linear drawing, elementary notions of
agriculture and of hygiene, singing and gymnastic exercises.
“According to the needs and resources of localities, elementary
primary instruction shall receive the developments which shall be
thought proper, and shall comprise, in particular, notions on the
history and geography of France.”
Finally, the law of March 15, 1850, is worded thus:--
“Art. 23. Primary instruction comprises moral and religious
instruction, reading, writing, the elements of the French language,
computation, and the legal system of weights and measures. It may
comprise in addition, arithmetic applied to practical operations,
the elements of history and geography, notions of the physical
sciences and of natural history applicable to the ordinary purposes
of life, elementary instruction on agriculture, trade, and hygiene,
surveying, leveling, linear drawing, singing and gymnastics.”
Progress has especially consisted, since 1850, in rendering
obligatory that which was simply optional. History, for example,
did not become a subject of instruction till 1867.
617. THE THEORISTS OF EDUCATION.--Along with the progress of
primary instruction, the historian of the pedagogy of the
nineteenth century would have also to follow the development of
secondary instruction and of superior instruction. He would have to
write the history of the University, reforming the methods of its
lycées and its colleges, and ever enlarging in a noble spirit of
liberty the studies of its faculties. But we should depart from the
limits of our plan, were we to undertake this order of inquiries,
and were we to enter into details which pertain to contemporary
history.
That which should engage our attention is the theoretical
reflections of the different thinkers who, in our century, have
discussed the principles and the laws of education, of those at
least who have become celebrated for their novel views.
618. JACOTOT (1770-1840).--Jacotot, who has maintained scarcely any
celebrity in France except for the singularity of his paradoxes,
is perhaps of all French educators of the nineteenth century
the one who has received most attention abroad, particularly in
Germany. “Jacotot,” says Doctor Dittes, “has incited a lasting
improvement in the public instruction of Germany. The reform
which he introduced into the teaching of reading is important. He
started with an entire sentence, which was pronounced, explained,
and learned by heart by the children, and afterward analyzed into
its constituent parts.”[266] On the other hand, a French critic,
Bernard Perez, has drawn the following portrait of Jacotot:--
“He was the best and the most lovable of men. He had the firmness,
patience, honesty, and candor of superior minds, an inexhaustible
goodness and a universal charity which make him close all his
letters with this formula, ‘I especially commend to you the poor.’
This ardent philanthropy, as well as his enthusiasm and his zeal
for instruction, pervades even his writings, though full of
inequalities and verbal eccentricities.”[267]
619. PARADOXES OF JACOTOT.--In his principal work, _Universal
Instruction_,[268] Jacotot has set forth his principles, which are
so many paradoxes, “All intelligences are equal”; “Every man can
teach, and even teach that which he himself does not know”; “One
can instruct himself all alone”; “All is in all.”
Doubtless at the basis of Jacotot’s paradoxes there is an element
of truth; for example, the very just idea that the best teaching
is that which encourages young minds to think for themselves.
Doubtless also he qualified the exaggeration of his statement when
he said that the inequality of wills at once destroys the equality
of intelligences. But the violent and unreasonable form which he
gave to his ideas has compromised them in public opinion. That
which is true and fruitful in his system has been forgotten, and we
recall only the whimsical formulas in which he delighted.
620. ALL IS IN ALL.--The most famous of Jacotot’s paradoxes is the
formula, “All is in all.” The whole of Latin is in a page of Latin;
the whole of music is in a piece of music; the whole of arithmetic,
in a rule of computation.
In practice, Jacotot made his pupils learn the first six books of
the _Telemachus_. Upon this text, once learned, and recited twice
a week, there were constructed all sorts of exercises, and these
sufficed for the complete knowledge of the French language. In the
same way the _Epitome Historiæ Sacræ_, put in the hands of pupils,
and learned in two months, was almost the sole instrument for the
study of Latin. In fact, and aside from evident exaggerations,
Jacotot rightly thought that it is necessary, as he said, “to learn
something well, and to connect with this all the rest.”
621. THE FOLLOWERS OF SAINT SIMON AND OF FOURIER.--There is
little of practical value to be gathered from the writings of the
celebrated utopists, who, at the opening of this century, became
known by their plans of social organization. It is the chimerical
which characterizes their systems. Cabet demanded among other
absurdities that all ancient books be burned, and that no new
books be written except by command of the State. Besides, he would
have the school-code established by the children themselves.[269]
Victor Considerant suppressed, not books, but discipline and
authority. “The child,” he said, “shall no longer be disobedient,
because he shall no longer be commanded.”[270]
Saint Simon, in 1816, communicated to the _Society for Elementary
Instruction_, a brief essay which gave proof of his interest in
education. For him and his disciples, education is “the aggregate
of efforts to be employed in order to adapt each new generation to
the social order to which it is called by the march of humanity.”
This was to mark the contrast between modern tendencies which
aspire above all else to an earthly and a social end, with ancient
tendencies which were subservient to supernatural ideas. Æsthetic
sentiments, scientific methods, industrial activity,--such is
the triple development which special and professional education
should consider. But above this the Saint-Simonians place moral
education, too much neglected, as they think, which should consist
particularly in developing in the young the sympathetic and
affectionate faculties. The Saint-Simonians placed but little
dependence on science and abstract principles for assuring among
men the reign of morality. Sentiment, in their view, is the
true moral principle, and education, consequently, ought to be
essentially the education of the heart.
622. FOURIER (1772-1837).--Fourier, like Saint Simon, had
educational pretensions. There is nothing more curious than his
treatise on _Natural Education_. In it there is only here and
there a flash of good sense mingled with a multitude of grotesque
fancies.
Fourier renews the utopias of Plato, and confides infants to public
nurses. He is more reasonable when, in spite of his declamations
on the excellence of nature, he is really willing to recognize in
children a diversity of characters, and divides “the nurslings and
the babies” into three classes,--“the benign, the malign, and the
devilkins.”
We must also commend Fourier for his efforts to encourage
industrial activity. There is perhaps a valuable hint in those
walks which he recommends children to take through manufactories
and shops, so that at the sight of such or such a tool, their
particular vocation may be suggested to them!
The instincts of the child are sacred in the eyes of Fourier, even
the worst, their inclination to destroy, for example, or their
contempt for the rights of property. Far from opposing them, he
turns them to account and utilizes them, by employing destructive
and slovenly children in occupations in accord with their tastes;
for example, in the pursuit of reptiles, and in the cleansing of
sewers.
But it is useless to enter into longer details. The education of
the Fourierites is neither a discipline nor a rule of life; it
is simply a system of complaisant adherence, and even of ardent
provocation, to the instincts which the child inherits from nature.
It is no longer a question either of directing or of training; it
is simply necessary to emancipate and to excite.
623. AUGUSTE COMTE (1798-1857) AND THE POSITIVISTS.--The positivist
school, and its illustrious founder, Auguste Comte, could not
omit, in their encyclopædic works, a question so important as that
of education. The author of the _Course in Positive Philosophy_
had even announced a special treatise on pedagogy, “a great
subject,” he said, “which has not yet been undertaken in a manner
sufficiently systematic.”[271] The promise was not kept, but from
different passages in the writings of Auguste Comte it is possible
to reconstruct, in its principal features, the education which
would be derived from his system.
Comte took for his guide the natural and specific evolution of
humanity.
“Individual education can be adequately estimated only according to
its necessary conformity with collective evolution.”
As positivism represents, in the view of Comte, the supreme degree
of the evolution of humanity, the new education ought to be
_positive_.
“Right-minded men universally recognize the necessity of replacing
our European education, a system essentially theological,
metaphysical, and literary, by a _positive_ education, conformed
to the spirit of our epoch, and adapted to the needs of modern
civilization.”
The teaching of science, then, shall be the basis of education;
but this teaching will bear its fruits only on one condition,
and this is, that at last we renounce “the exclusive specialty,
the too pronounced isolation, which still characterizes our
manner of conceiving and cultivating the sciences.” The precise
purpose of the _Course in Positive Philosophy_ was to remedy the
deleterious influence of a too great specialization of research,
by establishing the relations and the hierarchy of the sciences.
Comte made of mathematics the point of departure in scientific
instruction. This was the very reverse of the modern tendency,
which consists in beginning with the concrete and physical studies.
Auguste Comte, in his project for social reform, demanded universal
instruction, and he bitterly complains of the indifference of the
ruling classes for the instruction of the poor.
“Nothing is more profoundly characteristic of the existing anarchy
than the shameful indifference with which the higher classes of
to-day habitually regard the total absence of popular education,
the exaggerated prolongation of which, however, threatens to exert
on their approaching destiny a frightful reaction.”
Comte does not go so far, however, as to dream of an identical
education for all men, an integral education, as it has been
called. He admits degrees in instruction, “which,” he says, “will
allow varieties of extension in a system constantly similar and
identical.”
624. DUPANLOUP (1803-1878).--Of all the ecclesiastical writers of
our century, he who has the most ardently studied the problems of
education is certainly Bishop Dupanloup. Important works give proof
of the educational zeal of the eloquent prelate. But they were
composed with more spirit than wisdom, and they betray the zeal of
the Christian apologist more than the inspiration of an impartial
love for the truth. Extravagances of language and exaggerations of
thought too often prevent the reader from feeling, as he ought, the
moral and religious inspiration out of which proceeded those books
of ardent and profound faith, but of faith more than of charity.
Notwithstanding their length and their vast proportions, these
books are pamphlets, works of combat. One should be on his guard
against taking them for scientific treatises. Serenity is lacking
in them, and from the very first, we feel ourselves enveloped in an
atmosphere of trouble and storm.
625. ANALYSIS OF THE TREATISE ON EDUCATION.--However, the three
volumes of the _Education_ will be read with profit. The first
volume treats of education in general, and contains three books. In
the first book the author determines the character of education,
which has for its purpose to _cultivate_ the faculties, to
_exercise_ them, to _develop_ them, to _strengthen_ them, and,
finally, to _polish_ them. In the following books the author
studies the nature of the child, of whom he sometimes speaks with
a touching tenderness; and examines the means of education, which
are “religion, instruction, discipline, and physical culture.”
Discipline consists in supporting, preventing, and repressing.
Discipline is to education “that which the bark is to the tree
which it surrounds. It is the bark which holds the sap, and forces
it to ascend to the heart of the tree.”
The general title of the second volume is, _On Authority and
Respect in Education_. Authority and respect, in the eyes of the
author, are the two fundamental things. From this point of view, he
studies what he calls the _personnel_ of education; that is, God,
the parents, the teacher, the child, and the schoolmate.
The third volume, entitled _Educational Men_, treats of
the qualities befitting the head master of an educational
establishment, and of his different colleagues.[272]
626. ERRORS AND PREJUDICES.--Although he wrote a beautiful chapter
entitled, _Of the Respect due the Dignity of the Child and the
Liberty of his Nature_, Dupanloup is still more struck with the
faults than with the virtues of childhood. He shudders in thinking
of his thoughtlessness, of his curiosity, of his sensuality, and
especially of his pride. So he distrusts commendation and rewards.
“In praising your pupils,” he says to the teacher, “do you not fear
to excite their pride? The pride of scholars is a terrible evil;
it begins in the ‘third,’ develops in the ‘second,’ blossoms in
‘rhetoric,’ and becomes established in ‘philosophy.’”[273]
To this mistrust of human nature is joined a singular pessimism
with respect to the functions of the teacher.
“There is found,” he says, “in this service, grave troubles.
Sometimes, if we are worthy of this service, if we sacrifice
ourselves to it, we can find consolations in it, but pleasure,
never!”
The verdict is severe and absolute, but it recoils in part on him
who pronounces it. How not mistrust an educator who declares that
there is no sweetness mingled with the fatigues of teaching, and
who condemns the teachers of youth to a life of complete sacrifice
and bitterness?
The greatest fault in the educational spirit of Dupanloup is that
he does not cross the narrow limits of an education in small
seminaries. Dupanloup wrote only for the middle classes. He had no
interest in popular education; he does not love the lay teacher; he
detests the University. Finally, he is the man who inspired the law
of May 15, 1850.
627. THE SPIRITUALISTIC SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY MEN.--The
philosophers of the French spiritualistic school have not in
general paid great attention to the theory of education. The most
illustrious of them, Cousin (1792-1868), at the same time that
he aided in organizing University instruction, carefully studied
educational institutions abroad, especially in his two works,
_Public Instruction in Holland_ (1837), and _Public Instruction in
Germany_ (1840). The works of Jules Simon have the same practical
character, but with a marked tendency to treat by preference
the questions of primary instruction. The _School_ (1864) is a
manifesto in favor of gratuity and obligation.
The University men, on their part, have, in this century, acted
rather than speculated. They have been intent rather on making
good pupils than on composing theories. There would, however,
be valuable truths to cull from the works of Cournot,[274] of
Bersot,[275] and especially of Michel Bréal.[276]
[628. ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.--1. One of the main characteristics of
the educational thought of this century is doubtless the effort
to deduce the rules of practice from certain first principles.
The principles of instruction are to be found, for the most part,
in the science of psychology, and the principles of education, in
part, in social science and even in jurisprudence.
2. The purpose of Napoleon to secure the perpetuity of his
dynasty through the influence of his Imperial University, is a
striking proof of the belief in the potency of ideas, and of
the belief in the potency of popular instruction as a means of
national strength.
3. The history of mutual instruction exhibits three important
facts: 1. the effect of agitation in arousing public interest
in educational questions; 2. the manner in which peculiar
circumstances suggest an expedient which can be justified on no
absolute grounds; 3. the danger of converting such an expedient
into a “system” for universal adoption.
4. Comenius, Pestalozzi, and Jacotot, attempted to make
instruction universal by simplifying its processes to such a
degree that every mother might be a teacher and every household
a school.
5. In Comte we see the re-appearance of Condillac’s doctrine,
that the historic education of the race is the type of individual
education. The same hypothesis will re-appear in Mr. Spencer’s
_Education_.]
FOOTNOTES:
[255] Fourcroy (1755-1809), a celebrated chemist, was
director-general of public instruction in 1801. He prepared, in the
following years, the decrees relative to the establishment of the
University.
[256] Fontanes (1757-1821), first Grand Master of the University.
[257] _Mémoire politique_ of Joseph de Maistre, Paris, 1858, p. 30.
[258] The Abbé Gaultier (1746-1818), author of a large number of
works on elementary instruction, and almost a reformer in his
way. He employed _teaching by sight_, and recommended varied
exercises, such as games where he introduced _counters_, tickets,
interrogations in the form of _lotteries_.
[259] See Gréard, _L’enseignement primaire à Paris de 1867
à 1877_. A memoir published in 1877, pp. 75-90. See also an
interesting study full of personal recollections of E. Deschamps,
_L’enseignement mutual_. Toulouse, 1883.
[260] Jomard (1777-1862), member of the Society for Elementary
Instruction, author of _Tableaux des écoles élémentaires_.
[261] The Comte de Laborde (1771-1842), author of a _plan
d’éducation pour les enfants_.
[262] Among the other propagators of mutual instruction, mention
should be made of the Abbé Gaultier, Larochefoucauld-Liancourt, De
Lasteyrie, etc.
[263] Two noted attempts to extend and popularize the monitorial
system are exhibited in the following works: Pillans,
_The Rationale of Discipline_ (Edinburgh, 1852); Bentham,
_Chrestomathia_ (London, 1816).
[264] It is at the same period, in 1832, that Gérando published his
_Cours normal des instituteurs_.
[265] Cournot, _Des institutions d’instruction publique_, p. 315.
[266] Dittes, _op. cit._ p. 272.
[267] See _Jacotot et sa méthode d’émancipation intellectuelle_, by
Bernard Perez. Paris, 1883.
[268] _Enseignement universel._ Paris, 1823.
[269] Cabet, _Voyage en Icarie_. Paris, 1842.
[270] Considerant, _Théorie d’éducation rationnelle et attrayante
du dix-neuvième siècle_. Paris, 1844.
[271] _Cours de philosophie positive_, second edition, 1864. Vol.
VI. p. 771.
[272] The principal educational works of Dupanloup are _Éducation_,
1851, three volumes; _De la haute éducation intellectuelle_, 1855,
three volumes; _Lettres sur l’éducation des filles_, 1879, one
volume.
[273] See note to page 131.
[274] Cournot published in 1864 a remarkable book under this title:
_Des institutions d’instruction publique_.
[275] See the _Essais de philosophie et de morale_, by E. Bersot,
and also _Études et discours_ (1879).
[276] See especially the well-known book of Bréal, _Quelques mots
sur l’instruction publique en France_.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE SCIENCE OF EDUCATION.--HERBERT SPENCER AND ALEXANDER BAIN.
THE SCIENCE OF EDUCATION; THE GERMAN PHILOSOPHERS; THE ENGLISH
PHILOSOPHERS; HERBERT SPENCER’S EDUCATION; PLAN OF THE WORK;
DEFINITION OF EDUCATION; HUMAN DESTINY; UTILITARIAN TENDENCIES;
DIFFERENT CATEGORIES OF ACTIVITIES; CRITICISM OF MR. SPENCER’S
CLASSIFICATION; EFFECTS ON EDUCATION; SCIENCE IS THE BASIS
OF EDUCATION; SCIENCE FOR HEALTH AND INDUSTRIAL ACTIVITY;
SCIENCE FOR FAMILY LIFE; SCIENCE FOR ÆSTHETIC ACTIVITY;
EXAGGERATIONS AND PREJUDICES; INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION; LAWS OF
MENTAL EVOLUTION; PERSONAL EDUCATION; MORAL EDUCATION; SYSTEM
OF NATURAL PUNISHMENTS; DIFFICULTIES IN APPLICATION; RETURN TO
NATURE; PHYSICAL EDUCATION; GENERAL JUDGMENT; MR. BAIN AND THE
SCIENCE OF EDUCATION; GENERAL IMPRESSIONS; DIVISIONS OF THE BOOK;
PSYCHOLOGICAL ORDER AND LOGICAL ORDER; MODERN EDUCATION; ERRORS
IN THEORY; UTILITARIAN TENDENCIES; FINAL JUDGMENT; AMERICAN
EDUCATORS; CHANNING; HORACE MANN; CONCLUSION; ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.
629. THE SCIENCE OF EDUCATION.--To-day, thanks to important works,
the science of education is no longer an empty term, an object of
vague aspirations for philosophers, of easy ridicule for wits.
Doubtless it is far from being definitely established; but it
no longer conceals its name and its pretensions; it defines its
purpose and its methods; and manifests its youthful vitality in all
directions.
Up to the present period, philosophers had scarcely thought of
organizing pedagogy, of constructing it on a rational basis. On
the other hand, the practice of education is still less advanced
than the conceptions of philosophers. Here we the more often follow
a thoughtless routine, or the vague inspirations of instinct.
The methods in use are not co-ordinated. They present a curious
mixture of old traditions and modern surcharges. It is this lack of
definiteness, of co-ordination of ideas, and the spectacle of these
contradictions, which caused Richter[277] to say: “The education
of the day resembles the Harlequin of the Italian comedy who comes
on the stage with a bundle of papers under each arm. ‘What do you
carry under your right arm?’ he is asked. ‘Orders,’ he replies.
‘And under your left arm?’ ‘Counter-orders!’”
Quite a number of the philosophers of the nineteenth century have
attempted to remedy this incoherence, and, by appealing to the
scientific spirit, to regulate educational processes that have
fallen into excesses of empiricism or of routine. It is these
attempts which we are summarily to recite.
630. THE GERMAN PHILOSOPHERS.--Since Kant, and by his example, the
most of German philosophers have associated the theory of education
with their speculations on human nature.
Fichte (1762-1814), in his _Discourse to the German Nation_,
proclaimed the necessity of a national education to secure the
regeneration of his country and its restoration to its former
standing. The advocate of a public and common education, because he
would fight against the selfishness which family life encourages,
he contributed by his eloquent appeals to restore the intellectual
and moral grandeur, and consequently, the material grandeur, of
Germany.
Schleiermacher (1768-1834) wrote a _Doctrine of Education_, which
was not published till 1849. In this he develops, among other
ideas, this proposition, that religious education does not belong
to the school, but that it is the affair of the family and the
Church.
Herbart (1776-1841) has composed a series of pedagogical writings
which assign him a special place in the list of educational
philosophers. Let us call attention, in particular, to his _General
Pedagogy_ (1806), and the _Outline of my Lessons on Pedagogy_
(1840). That which distinguishes Herbart is his attempt to reduce
to a system all the rules of pedagogy by giving them for a basis
his own psychological theory. He inaugurated a new method in
psychology, which does not seem, however, to have given the results
that were expected from it,--the mathematical method. For him,
psychology is only the mechanism of the mind, and by means of
mathematical formula calculation may be applied to measure the
force of ideas. The soul does not possess innate faculties; it is
developed progressively.
But it would require long efforts to enter into the secrets of
Herbart’s original thought. Let it suffice to say, that nurtured
from an early period on the ideas of Pestalozzi, whose friend he
was, he has founded a real school of pedagogy.
Beneke (1798-1854) is the author of a _Doctrine of Education
and Instruction_, which is, in the opinion of Doctor Dittes, a
masterpiece of psychological pedagogy. Beneke agrees with Herbart
on a great number of points. His pedagogical methods have been
popularized by J. G. Dressler, director of the normal school at
Bauzen, who died in 1860.[278]
Charles Schmidt, who died in 1864, wrote a large number of works on
pedagogy, in which he is inspired by the phrenology of Gall and his
fantastical hypotheses. Doubtless this inspiration is not happy,
and the works of Schmidt are more valuable for their details,
for their special reflections, than for their general doctrine.
But from his undertaking there issues at least this truth, that
the science of education should have for its basis, not only
psychology, but physiology also, the science of the whole man, body
and mind.
There is no country where pedagogy has received a more
philosophical and a higher development than in Germany. Even the
great poets, Lessing, Herder, Gœthe, and Schiller, have contributed
through certain grand ideas to the construction of a science of
education.
631. THE ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS.--English philosophy, with its
experimental and practical character, and with its positive and
utilitarian tendencies, was naturally called to exercise a great
influence on pedagogy. There are more truths to gather from the
thinkers who, in different degrees, have followed Locke and Bain,
and who have preserved a taste for prudent observation and careful
experiments, than from the German idealists, enamored of hypothesis
and systematic constructions.
Without doubt this explains the considerable success which the
recent books of Herbert Spencer and Alexander Bain have obtained
even in France.
632. THE BOOK OF HERBERT SPENCER.--If it were sufficient to
define with exactness the end to be attained, and to discover the
true method for constructing the science, Herbert Spencer’s book
on _Education, Intellectual, Moral, and Physical_,[279] would
be a satisfactory treatise; but it is one thing to comprehend
that psychology is the only solid basis of a complete and exact
pedagogy, and another thing to determine the real laws of
psychology.
“Education will not be definitely systematized,” says Mr. Spencer,
“till the day when science shall be in possession of a rational
psychology.”
This day has not yet come, and Herbert Spencer, who is the first
to recognize the fact, modestly presents his work only as an
essay. But if it does not yet contain a perfect and fully worked
out theory of education, the essay of the English philosopher is
at least a vigorous effort, and a notable step towards a rational
pedagogy, towards the science of education, which, as Virchow
expresses it, “ought forever to proscribe the gropings of an
ignorant education whose experiments are ever to be gone over anew.”
633. PLAN OF THE WORK.--Every system of education supposes at the
same time an ethics,--I mean a certain conception of life and of
human destiny, and a psychology,--that is, a knowledge more or
less exact of our faculties and of the laws which preside over
their development. There are, in fact, in education, two essential
questions: 1. What are the subjects of study and instruction,
proper to create the qualities, the aggregate of which constitutes
the type of the well-educated man? 2. By what methods shall we
teach the child rapidly and well that which it is proper for him
to learn? There are, in other terms, the question of end and the
question of means. Ethics is necessary to resolve the first, and
psychology, to illustrate the second.
It is in accordance with this plan that Mr. Spencer has arranged
the different parts of his work. The first chapter, entitled _What
Knowledge is of Most Worth?_ is in substance but a series of
reflections on the final purpose, on the different forms, of human
activity, and, consequently, on the relative importance, on the
rank, which should be assigned to the studies which go to compose
a complete education.
In the three other chapters, _Intellectual_, _Moral_, and _Physical
Education_, the author examines the methods which are deemed
the best for instructing the intelligence, perfecting the moral
character, and fortifying the body.
634. DEFINITION OF EDUCATION.--Herbert Spencer begins with a
definition of education:--
“Education,” he says, “is all that we do for ourselves, and all
that others do for us, for the purpose of bringing us nearer the
perfection of our nature.... The ideal of education would be to
furnish man with a complete preparation for life as a whole....
Do not attempt to give an exclusive development of one order of
knowledge at the expense of the rest, however important it may
be. Let us distribute our attention over the whole, and justly
proportion our efforts to their relative value.... In general,
the object of education ought to be to acquire as completely as
possible the knowledge that is best adapted to develop individual
and social life under all its aspects, and to do no more than
glance at the subjects which contribute the least to this
development.”[280]
This definition is wrong in being a little pretentious and in not
adapting itself to all the forms of education. It is true, perhaps,
if it is a question of the ideal to be attained in a complete
instruction, accessible to a few privileged men, but it could not
be applied to popular education. It soars too high above human
conditions and social realities.
635. HUMAN DESTINY.--The conception of human destiny, as Mr.
Spencer outlines it in the opening of his book, has very marked
utilitarian tendencies. His first complaint against the current
education is that it sacrifices the useful to the agreeable; that
as matters now go, everything which pertains to mental adornment
and display has precedence over the knowledge which might increase
our well-being and assure our happiness. As in the history of
dress, with savages for example, it is proved that the ornamental
in dress precedes the useful; so in instruction, ornamental studies
are preferred to useful studies. This is especially the case with
women, who have a decided preference for the qualities of pure
decoration.[281]
In his rather vigorous reaction against the luxuries which in
classical instruction would wrongly substitute themselves for more
necessary studies, Mr. Spencer goes so far as to say:--
“Just as the Orinoco Indian paints and tattooes himself, so the
child in this country learns Latin because it forms a part of the
education of a gentleman.”
However, we do not construe this literally. Mr. Spencer does not
go so far as to suppress the disinterested studies which are as
much the more necessary as they seem to be the more superfluous. He
merely demands that instruction be not reduced to a training in the
trivial elegancies of a dead language, or to a study of trifles in
history, such as the dates of battles, and the birth and death of
princes.
636. UTILITARIAN TENDENCIES.--Utility, that is, the influence
on happiness,--such is the true criterion by which are to be
estimated, admitted or excluded, and finally classified, the
subjects proposed for the study of man as the elements of his
education. It is understood, however, that happiness is to be
considered in its widest and highest sense. Happiness does
not consist in the satisfaction of such or such a privileged
inclination. It consists in being all that it is possible to
be,--in complete living. To prepare us for a complete life,--such
is the function of education.
637. DIFFERENT CATEGORIES OF ACTIVITY.--Complete life supposes
different kinds of activity, which ought to be subordinated one to
another according to their importance and dignity. The following
statement shows how Mr. Spencer proposes to classify these
different categories of activities according to an ascending scale
of progress:--
1. In the first rank is placed the activity which ministers simply
to self-preservation. It would be of no consequence to be an
eminent scholar, or a citizen and a patriot, or a devoted father;
or rather, all this would be impossible, if one did not first know
how to assure his safety and his life.
2. Then comes the series of activities which tend _indirectly_
to the same end of physical well-being, by the acquisition and
production of the material goods necessary for existence, that is,
industry and the different occupations.
3. In the third place, man employs his activities in the service of
his family,--he has children to support and to bring up.
4. Social and political life is the fourth object of his efforts.
This supposes, as a previous condition, the accomplishment of
family duties, just as family life itself supposes the normal
development of the individual life.
5. Finally, human existence is consummated and crowned, so to
speak, in the exercise of the activities which, in a single word,
we might call æsthetic, and which, taking advantage of the leisure
left from care and business, will find satisfaction in the culture
of letters and the arts.
638. CRITICISM OF THIS CLASSIFICATION.--What exceptions can be
taken to this exact and methodical table of the different elements
of an existence complete, normal, and consequently human? Is
it necessary to remark that the happiness thus understood does
not differ from what we call virtue? None of the five elements
distinguished by Mr. Spencer can be safely omitted. The first
could not be neglected without endangering the material reality of
life; nor the last, without impairing its moral dignity. In some
degree they are mutually necessary, in this sense, that the lower,
or selfish activities, are the conditions which make possible the
other parts of human duty; and that the higher, or disinterested
activities, become, as it were, the justification of the toil we
endure in order to exist and to satisfy material necessities.
We have, however, one grave reserve to make. Mr. Spencer is wrong
in putting into the last category of activities that which is the
crown of the others, all that which concerns the moral development
of the individual. Between the second and the third class of
activities we ask to interpolate another form of activity,--that
which constitutes the individual moral life, that which, in every
man, even the humblest and the poorest, calls into exercise the
conscience, the reason, and the will. Mr. Spencer’s system is
decidedly too aristocratic. It seems to reserve the moral life for
men of leisure. In a democratic society, which believes in equality
and which would not have this an empty term, there are efforts
which must be made for the moral development of the human being in
all conditions, and it would be wrong to reduce personal activity
to the care of health and material well-being.
639. EFFECTS ON EDUCATION.--It is now easy to comprehend the duties
of education. Conforming its efforts to nature, distributing its
lessons according to the exact division of human functions, it
will seek the branches of knowledge the most fit for making of the
pupil, first, a sound and healthy man, then a toiler, a workman,--a
man, in a word, capable of earning his livelihood; then it will
train him for the family and the State, by endowing him with all
the domestic and civic virtues; finally, it will open to him the
brilliant domain of art under all its forms.
640. SCIENCE IS THE BASIS OF EDUCATION.--When we have once divided
human life into a certain number of superimposed stages which
education should teach us to ascend one after another, it becomes
necessary to know what are the facts and the branches of knowledge
which correspond to each one of these different steps. To this
question Mr. Spencer replies that in all the grades of human
development that which is pre-eminently necessary, that which is
the basis of education, is science.
641. SCIENCE FOR HEALTH AND INDUSTRIAL ACTIVITY.--It is in
the first part of education, that which has for its object
self-preservation, that science is the least useful. So far,
education may be in great part negative, because nature has taken
it upon herself to lead us to our destination. The child cries at
the sight of a stranger, and throws himself into the arms of his
mother when he feels the slightest sorrow. However, in proportion
to his growth, man has more and more need of science, and he could
not do without physiology and hygiene. By this means will he shun
all those little acts of imprudence, all those physical faults,
which shorten life, or pave the way for infirmities in old age. By
this means he will diminish the interval, which is so considerable,
between the length of life as it might be and the brevity of life
as it is. Evident truths, but too often unheeded!
“How many scholars,” exclaims Mr. Spencer, “who would blush
if caught saying Iphigénia instead of Iphigenía, show not the
slightest shame in confessing that they do not know where the
Eustachian tubes are, and what are the actions of the spinal cord!”
With respect to the activities which might be called lucrative, and
to the kind of instruction which they require, Mr. Spencer still
shows the utility of science. He knows how great a disposition
there is in modern society to promote professional or industrial
instruction; but he thinks, not without reason, that we do not
proceed as we should in order to be completely successful in this
direction. All the sciences, mathematics through its applications
to the arts, mechanics through its connection with industries
where machines play so great a part, physics and chemistry through
the knowledge they furnish on matter and its properties, even
the social sciences by reason of the relations of commerce with
politics,--all the sciences, in a word, contribute to develop the
skill and the prudence of the man who is employed in any trade or
occupation whatever.
642. SCIENCE FOR FAMILY LIFE.--A point in which the originality of
Mr. Spencer’s thought is distinctly marked, and which he develops
with an eloquent earnestness, is the necessity of enlightening
parents, and particularly mothers, upon their obligations and
duties, and of putting them in a condition to direct the education
of their children by teaching them the natural laws of body and
mind: “Is it not monstrous,” he says, “that the fate of a new
generation should be left to the chances of unreasoning custom,
impulse, fancy,--joined with the suggestions of ignorant nurses
and the prejudiced counsel of grandmothers.... In the actual state
of things the best instruction, even among the favored by fortune,
is scarcely more than an instruction of celibates.” We are ever
saying that the vocation of woman is to bring up her children,
and yet we teach her nothing of that which she ought to know in
order to fulfill worthily this great task. Ignorant as she is of
the laws of life and of the phenomena of the soul, knowing nothing
of the nature of the moral emotions or of physical disorders, her
intervention in the education of the child is often more disastrous
than her absolute inaction would be.
643. SCIENCE IN ÆSTHETIC EDUCATION.--Mr. Spencer next shows that
social and political activity also has need of being enlightened
by science. One is a citizen only on the condition of knowing the
history of his country.
That which it is more difficult to grant Mr. Spencer, is that
æsthetic education, in its turn, is based on science. Is there not
some exaggeration, for example, in asserting that poor musical
compositions are poor because they are lacking in truth? and that
they are lacking in truth “because they are lacking in science”?
Does one become a man of letters and an artist as one becomes a
geometrician? To cultivate with success those arts which are as the
flower of civilization, is there not required, besides talent and
natural gifts, a long practice, a slow initiation, something, in
a word, more delicate than the attention which suffices for being
instructed in science?
644. EXAGGERATIONS AND PREJUDICES.--We believe as thoroughly as
any one can in the efficiency and in the educational virtues
of science, and we would willingly make it, as Mr. Spencer
does, the basis of education. We must be on our guard, however,
against cultivating this religion of science until it becomes a
superstition. Our author is not completely exempt from this danger.
That science develops the intellectual qualities, such as judgment,
memory, reasoning, we admit; that it develops them better than
the study of the languages, let even this be granted! But it is
impossible for us not to protest when Mr. Spencer represents
science as endowed with the same efficacy for inspiring moral
qualities, such as perseverance, sincerity, activity, resignation
to the will of nature, piety even, and religion. Science appears
to us an infallible means of animating and exciting the different
energies of the soul; but will it also have the quality of
disciplining them? Thanks to science, man will know that which
it is proper to do, if he wishes to be a workman, a parent, or a
citizen, but on this express condition, that he _wills_; and this
education of the will, is it still science which shall be charged
with it? We may be allowed to doubt it.
Mr. Spencer himself now seems to share this doubt, if we may trust
one of his recent works.[282] “Faith in books and in nature,” it is
there said, “is one of the superstitions of our times.” We deceive
ourselves, says the author, when we establish a connection between
the intelligence and the will, for conduct is determined not by
knowledge but by emotion.
“He who would hope to teach geometry by giving lessons in Latin,
would scarcely be more unreasonable than those who count on
producing better sentiments by means of a discipline of the
intellectual faculties.”
To tell the truth, Mr. Spencer has here fallen into another
extreme, and he seems to us at one time to have granted too much,
and at another too little, to the influence of instruction on
morality.
645. INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION.--So far we have examined along with
Mr. Spencer only the nature of the objects and of the knowledge
which befit the education of man. It remains to inquire how the
mind can assimilate this knowledge. Pedagogy has not only to draw
up in theory a brilliant programme of necessary studies, but it
also searches out the means and the methods to be employed, in
order that these studies may be presented to the mind, and may have
the greater chance of being thus presented with profit.
In this somewhat more practical part of his work, Mr. Spencer
thinks that pedagogy should be guided by the idea of evolution;
that is, of the progressive course of a being who makes himself,
who creates himself little by little, and who develops in
succession, according to fixed laws, powers originally enveloped
in the germs that he has received from nature, or that have been
transmitted to him by heredity.
646. LAWS OF INTELLECTUAL EVOLUTION.--In other terms, Mr.
Spencer shows that the precepts of pedagogy cannot be definitely
deduced until the laws of mental evolution have been accurately
established, and he attempts to determine some of these laws.
He proves that the mind passes naturally from the simple to the
complex, from the indefinite to the definite, from the concrete to
the abstract, from the empirical to the rational; that the genesis
of the individual is the same as the genesis of the race; that the
intelligence assimilates by preference that which it discovers for
itself; finally, that all culture which profits the pupil is, at
the same time, an exercise which stimulates him and delights him.
From this there result these practical consequences: that it
is necessary first to present to the child simple subjects of
study, individual things, sensible objects, for the purpose of
starting him gradually on his way towards complex truths, abstract
generalities, conceptions of the reason; that nothing can be
exacted of the child’s intelligence but vague and incomplete
notions which the travail of the mind will gradually clarify
and elaborate; that education ought to be _in petto_, for each
individual, a repetition and a copy of the general march of
civilization and of the progress of humanity; that it is necessary
to count more on the personal effort of the pupil than upon the
action of the teacher; that, finally, it is necessary to find the
methods which interest, and even those which amuse. Hence the
educator, instead of opposing nature, instead of disconcerting her
in her course and in the insensible steps of her real development,
will restrict himself to following her step by step, and education
will be no longer a force which obstructs, which represses,
which smothers; but, on the contrary, a force which sustains and
stimulates by associating with itself the work of the spontaneous
powers of the soul.
647. SELF-EDUCATION.--Mr. Spencer attaches great importance
to that maxim which recommends us to encourage above all else
self-education:--
“In education the process of self-development should be encouraged
to the fullest extent. Children should be led to 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. Humanity has progressed solely by self-instruction; and
that to achieve the best results, each mind must progress somewhat
after the same fashion, is continually proved by the marked
success of self-made men. Those who have been brought up under
the ordinary school-drill, and have carried away with them the
idea that education is practicable only in that style, will think
it hopeless to make children their own teachers. If, however, they
will call to mind that the all-important knowledge of surrounding
objects which a child gets in its early years is not without
help,--if they will remember that the child is self-taught in the
use of its mother tongue,--if they will estimate the amount of
that experience of life, that out-of-school wisdom which every boy
gathers for himself,--if they will mark the unusual intelligence
of the uncared-for London _gamin_, as shown in all the directions
in which his faculties have been tasked,--if further, they will
think how many minds have struggled up unaided, not only through
the mysteries of our irrationally-planned _curriculum_, but
through hosts of other obstacles besides; they will find it a not
unreasonable conclusion, that if the subjects be put before him in
right order and right form, any pupil of ordinary capacity will
surmount his successive difficulties with but little assistance.”
648. MORAL EDUCATION.--Moral education, without furnishing
occasion for as complete a theory as intellectual education, has,
nevertheless, suggested to Mr. Spencer some important reflections.
Mr. Spencer expressly declares that he does not accept the dogma
of Lord Palmerston, or what would be called in France the dogma of
Rousseau, namely, that all children are born good. He would incline
the rather toward the contrary opinion, which, “though untenable,”
he says, “seems to us less wide of the truth”! Doubtless, we must
not expect too much moral goodness of children; but it may be
found that Mr. Spencer exaggerates a little, and draws too dark
a portrait of the child when he says, “The child resembles the
savage; his physical features, like his moral instincts, recall the
savage.” Taken literally, such pessimism would lead logically to an
over-severe moral discipline, wholly repressive and restraining.
Such, however, is not the conclusion of Mr. Spencer, who recommends
a course of tolerance and mildness, a system of relative letting
alone which we might almost think dictated by the optimism of
Rousseau. He censures the brutal discipline of the English schools.
Finally, he would have the child treated, not as an incorrigible
rebel who is obedient only to force, but as a reasonable being
capable of readily comprehending the reasons and the advantages
of obedience, from the simple fact that he takes into account the
connection of cause and effect.
649. SYSTEM OF NATURAL PUNISHMENTS.--The true moral discipline,
according to Mr. Spencer, is that which puts the child in a state
of dependence on nature, who teaches him to detest his faults
by reason of the natural consequences which they involve. It is
necessary to renounce artificial punishments, which are almost
always irritating and taken amiss, and to have recourse, as a
rule, only to the privations and the inconveniencies which are the
necessary consequences, and, as it were, the inevitable reactions,
of the acts which have been committed.
A boy, for example, puts his room in disorder. In this case, the
method of natural punishment requires that he himself shall repair
the mischief; and in this way he will soon correct himself of a
turbulence from which he will be the first to suffer.
A little girl, through indolence, or through tarrying too long over
her toilet, has made herself late for a walk. Let her be punished
by not waiting for her, by leaving her at home. This is the best
means of curing her in the future of her indolence and coquetry.
The system which tends thus to substitute the lessons of nature
for artificial penalties, certainly offers great advantages. It
subjects the child, not to the authority of a passing teacher, or
of parents who will one day die, but to a law whose action neither
ceases nor ever relents. Artificial punishments often provoke
the resistance of the child because he does not comprehend their
meaning, and because, proceeding from the human will, they can be
taxed with injustice and caprice. Could one as easily refuse to
bow before the impersonal force of nature,--a force which exactly
adjusts the punishment to the fault,[283] which accepts no excuse,
against which there is no appeal, and which, without threats,
without anger, rigorously and silently executes the law?
650. DIFFICULTIES IN APPLICATION.--Mr. Spencer’s principle is
excellent, but the opportunities for applying it are far less
frequent than our philosopher believes. The child, in most cases,
is too little reflective, too little reasonable, to comprehend, and
especially to heed, the suggestions of personal interest.
Let us add that this principle is wholly negative, that it
furnishes at most only the means of shunning evil; that even in
according to it an efficacy it does not have, it would still be
necessary to reproach it with narrowing moral culture by reducing
it to the rather mean solicitude for simple utility; finally,
that it exercises no influence on the development of the positive
virtues, on the disinterested education of morality in what is
noble and exalted.
Finally, the system of natural punishments would incur the danger
of often being cruel, and of causing the child an irreparable
injury. Let pass the pin-cushion, the boiling water, and the
candle-flame,--examples which Mr. Spencer proposes; but what shall
we say of the bar of red-hot iron which he lets the child pick up?
What shall be said, above all, of the grave consequences entailed
by the faults of a young man left to himself?
“Would it not be,” says Gréard justly, “to condemn the child to
a régime so severe as to be an injustice, to count solely on the
effects of natural reactions and inevitable consequences, for the
purpose of disciplining his will? The penalty which they provoke
is the most often enormous as compared with the fault which has
produced them, and man himself demands for his conduct other
sanctions than those of a harsh reality. He desires that we judge
the intention as well as the fact; that he be commended for his
efforts; that in the first instance extreme measures be not taken
against him; that the blow fall on him if needs be, but without
crushing him, and while extending to him a hand to help him
up.”[284]
651. RETURN TO NATURE.--However it may be, Mr. Spencer is to
be commended for having shown that for moral education as for
intellectual education, the method which approaches nature the
nearest is also the best. The return to nature which was the
characteristic of Rousseau’s theories and of Pestalozzi’s practice,
is also the dominant trait of Mr. Spencer’s pedagogy.
If we look closely into the matter, this decided purpose to follow
nature implicates something besides the superficial condemnation
of methods introduced by art and human device. It supposes a
fundamental belief,--the belief in the beneficent purpose of
natural instincts. To have confidence in nature, to fall back on
the spontaneous forces of the soul, because we discern behind
them or in them a higher providence or an internal foresight, is
a belief generally useful and suggestive for conducting human
affairs, but particularly necessary for directing the education
of man. It is not without some surprise that we discover this
belief at the basis of Mr. Spencer’s pedagogy, as though, by a
contradiction which is not new, the evolutionist philosophy,
which seems to exclude final causes from the conception of the
universe, had been practically constrained to bow before them, and
to proclaim, at least in the matter of education, the salutary
efficacy of the theory which admits them.
Thus, in speaking of physical education, Mr. Spencer remarks that
the sensations are the natural guides, which it would be dangerous
not to follow.
“Happily, that all-important part of education which goes to secure
direct self-preservation, is in great part already provided for.
Too momentous to be left to our own blundering, Nature takes it
into her own hands.”
Speaking in another place of the instincts which induce the child
to move himself and to seek in physical exercise the basis of
physical well-being, he declares that to oppose these instincts
would be to go counter to the means “_divinely_ arranged” for
assuring the development of the body.
652. PHYSICAL EDUCATION.--The chapter devoted by Mr. Spencer to
physical education, is such as might be expected from a thinker
who is wholly exempt from idealistic prejudices and who does not
hesitate to write:--
“The history of the world shows that the well-fed races have been
the energetic and dominant races.”
It is necessary first and above all to establish physical force in
man, and to create within him “a robust animal.”
“The actual education of children is defective in several
particulars: in an insufficiency of food, in an insufficiency of
clothing, in an insufficiency of exercise, and in an excess of
mental application.”
Mr. Spencer complains that modern education has become wholly
intellectual, and that it neglects the body. He reminds us that
“the preservation of health is one of our duties,” and that there
exists a thing which might be called “physical morality.”
Here, as everywhere, Mr. Spencer demands that we follow the
indications of nature. He explains on physiological grounds the
apparently inordinate appetite which children show for certain
foods,--sugar, for example. He urgently entreats that preference
shall be given to play and to free and spontaneous exercise, over
gymnastics.
653. GENERAL JUDGMENT.--That which, in our opinion, attests the
truth of the pedagogical laws which we have just discussed, is
that they are in agreement with the general opinions of the great
modern reformers in education. It is thus that Spencer’s ideas are
in close harmony with those which Pestalozzi had employed at Stanz.
The success which he obtained there, as Mr. Spencer has remarked,
depended on two things: first, on the attention which he used in
determining what kind of instruction the children had need of, and
next, on the pains he took to associate the new knowledge with that
which they already possessed.
Mr. Spencer’s essay, then, deserves the attention of educators.
There is scarcely a book in which a keen scent for details comes
more agreeably to animate a fund of solid arguments, and from
which it is more useful to extract the substance. However, it
must not be read save with precaution. The brilliant English
thinker sometimes fails in justness and measure, and his bold
generalizations need to be tested with care.
654. ALEXANDER BAIN AND EDUCATION AS A SCIENCE.--Less brilliant
than the work of Mr. Spencer, the book of Mr. Bain, _Education
as a Science_, recommends itself by merits of studied analysis
and scholarly minuteness. Others surpass Mr. Bain in brilliancy
of imagination, in originality and in enthusiasm; but no one
equals him in richness of details, in acuteness and abundance of
observations. After the more venturesome have taken the lead and
have published the original sketch, Mr. Bain appears and writes
the methodical and complete manual. His own work resembles that
of a conscientious guard who marches in the rear of a victorious
army, and by a wise organization makes sure the positions conquered
by the march of an impetuous commander-in-chief. His book, in
other terms, is but the studious and thorough development of Mr.
Spencer’s principles.
655. GENERAL IMPRESSION.--It is impossible in an analysis to
bring out the merit of a book which is especially valuable for
the multiplicity of the questions which the author discusses
in it, and for the infinite variety of the solutions which he
proposes. There are landscapes which discourage the painter,
because, notwithstanding their beauty, they are too vast, too full
of details, to admit of being crowded into a frame. We may say
the same of Mr. Bain’s book. One must have studied it himself in
order to form an estimate of its value. Professors of all classes
will here find pages of well-considered counsels, and judicious
reflections upon educational methods. The nature of studies, the
sequence of subjects, the gradation of difficulties, the choice
of exercises, the comparison of oral instruction with text-book
instruction, modes of discipline,--nothing escapes a thinker who is
not a mere theorist or an amateur educator, but a professional man,
a competent teacher, an experienced professor.
Indeed, no one should allow himself to be deceived by this fine
phrase, _Education as a Science_, which might disconcert and turn
aside whole classes of readers, such as those who, in works on
education, especially desire a guide for practice. On the contrary,
they will have every reason to commend a book which passes very
quickly from generalities to applications, and which is above all
else a manual of practical and technical pedagogy. The study of it
will be profitable not merely to professors who are teaching the
higher branches of literature and science, but even to the humblest
instructors, and even--for Mr. Bain overlooks no detail--to
teachers of reading and writing.
656. DIVISION OF THE WORK.--_Education as a Science_ comprises
three parts: 1. psychological data; 2. methods; 3. modern education.
The author first inquires in what order the faculties are
developed, and what effect this order should have on the
distribution of studies. This is the psychological part. Then
follows a discussion of what Mr. Bain calls the logical order, that
is, of the relations which exist between the studies themselves
and their different parts. This is the “analytical problem” of
education.[285]
These preliminaries being established, Mr. Bain enters upon the
principal theme,--the methods of instruction. He discusses one
after another the first elements of reading, object-lessons,
“which, more than any other means of instruction, require to be
practised with care, for without this, an admirable process might,
in unskillful hands, be nothing more than a thing of seductive
appearance, but without value”; then methods relating to history,
geography, the sciences, and the languages.
Finally, in his third book, Mr. Bain exhibits a new plan of study,
with particular reference to secondary instruction.
657. PSYCHOLOGICAL ORDER AND LOGICAL ORDER.--In his reflections on
the development of the mind and upon the distribution of studies,
Mr. Bain is inspired by the principles which have guided Mr.
Spencer.
“Observation precedes reflection. The concrete comes before the
abstract.”
In education, then, the sequence should be from the simple to the
complex, from the particular to the general, from the indefinite to
the definite, from the empirical to the rational, from analysis to
synthesis, from the outline to details; finally, from the material
to the immaterial.
Such would be the ideal order in education; but Mr. Bain remarks
that in practice all sorts of obstacles come to disturb this
rigorous sequence.
658. MODERN EDUCATION.--The plan of secondary studies which Mr.
Bain recommends to the reformers of teaching is the result and the
_résumé_ of all these observations.
Intellectual education, common to all young people who receive a
liberal instruction, would henceforth comprise three essential
parts: 1. the sciences; 2. the humanities; 3. rhetoric and the
national literature. We see at once what is to be understood by
this last item; but the two others have need of some explanations.
The sciences are divided into two groups: those which are to be
mastered,--arithmetic, geometry, algebra, physics, chemistry,
biology, psychology; and the natural sciences, which should be
studied only superficially because they would overwhelm the memory
under the weight of too large a number of facts. Geography, which,
one does not know why, is included in the sciences, while history
is attached to the humanities, will complete the programme of
scientific studies.
As to the humanities, Mr. Bain preserves scarcely more than
the name while suppressing the thing; for in the curtailed and
disfigured domain which he persists in calling by this name,
he cuts off precisely that which has always been considered as
constituting its essence,--the study of the dead languages. He
excludes from it even the living languages, and that which he
still decorates with the fine title of humanities, is still
science,--moral science, it is true,--“history and sociology with
political economy and jurisprudence.”
A course in universal literature, but, be it understood, without
original texts, _might_ afterwards be added to this pretended
teaching of the humanities.
Two or three hours a week would be devoted parallelly, during the
whole course of study, which would last six years, to each of the
three departments of instruction which Mr. Bain thinks equally
important.
As to the real humanities, dead or living languages, they should no
longer be included in education save as optional and extra studies,
on the same basis as the accomplishments. And, appealing to the
future, Mr. Bain even predicts that “a day will come when it will
be found that this is still granting them too large a place in
education.”
Mr. Bain, then, gives all his preferences to scientific studies,
and his book might properly be entitled, not only _Education as a
Science_, but also _Science in Education_.
659. THEORETICAL ERRORS.--Mr. Bain reproaches letters with giving
the mind the habit of servility. By what singular revulsion of
thought can the liberal studies _par excellence_ be represented
as a school of intellectual servitude? It is rather to scientific
instruction that we may properly return the accusation of enslaving
the spirit. By their inexorable evidence and by their very
exactness, do not the sciences sometimes smother the originality
and the free flight of the imagination?
This defect, however, does not cut them off from a right to a
place, and to a large place, in the programme of intellectual
education. Let us accept with favor their alliance, let us admit
them to a certain degree of fellowship, but do not let us tolerate
their encroachments. In a word, the object of the sciences is
either pure abstractions or material realities. He who studies
mathematics and physics first acquires real knowledge of high
value; and, on the other hand, he strengthens his mind through
the habits engendered by the rigorous methods which the sciences
employ. We cheerfully grant to Mr. Bain that the sciences are at
the same time admirable sources of useful truths and valuable
instruments of mental discipline. By cultivating them we gain not
only the positive knowledge which they teach respecting the world,
but also the power, rigor, and exactness which they impose on their
adepts.
660. INSUFFICIENCY OF THE SCIENCES.--But the question is to know
whether the sciences, so useful and so necessary for enriching and
disciplining the mind, are also the best agents for training it.
The educator is not in the situation of the farmer who has only
two things to do,--to plow and sow the field which he cultivates.
The work of education is vast in another direction. It has to do
with developing the aptitudes or latent energies, that which the
philosophy of the day hardly allows us longer to call faculties,
but that which they re-establish under another name, that of the
unconscious forces of the soul; it has to do, not with laboring on
a soil almost entirely prepared by nature, but in great part with
creating the soil itself. Now, the sciences are indeed the seed
which it will be proper by and by to sow on the field, but they are
not the substance which nourishes and fertilizes it.
661. SENSUALISTIC TENDENCIES.--If we go to the bottom of Mr. Bain’s
thought and doctrine on the mind, we shall find the secret of his
ardent preference for the teaching of the sciences. His errors in
practical pedagogy proceed from theoretical errors on human nature.
For him, as for Locke, there are not, properly speaking,
intellectual forces independent of the facts which succeed one
another in the consciousness. Consequently, there is not an
education of the faculties. Memory or imagination, considered as a
distinct power, as an aptitude more or less happy, is but a word.
It is nothing apart from the recollections or the images which are
successively graven in the mind. For Mr. Bain, as for Locke, the
best education is that which places items of knowledge side by side
in the mind, which accumulates facts there, but not that which
seeks to enkindle in the soul a flame of intelligence.
That which also warps the theoretical views of Mr. Bain is that
he accords no independence, no individual life, to the mind; and
that for him, back of the facts of consciousness, there come to
view, without any intermedium, the cerebral organs. Now the brain
is developed of itself; it acquires fatally, with the progress
of years, more weight and more volume; it passes from the age of
concrete things to the age of abstractions. Hence a reduction,
an inevitable contraction, of the sphere of education. There is
nothing more to do than to let nature have her way, and to fill the
vase which she charges herself with constructing.
662. UTILITARIAN TENDENCIES.--Finally, to conclude this indication
of the general ideas which dominate and which mar the pedagogy of
Mr. Bain, let us observe that a positive and practical utility, a
vulgar utility, mingles too many of its inspirations with it. The
criterion of utility is sometimes applied to it with an artless
extravagance. Thus, in the languages, only those words should be
learned which occur the most often, and in the sciences, only the
parts which are of the most frequent use. Even in moral education,
as it is conceived by the English philosopher, are to be found, as
we might expect, these utilitarian and narrow views.
Would one believe, for example, that Mr. Bain makes the fear of the
penal code the mainspring of the teaching of virtue?[286] Here,
at least, we must acknowledge that science is insufficient. “To
pretend, for example, that physiology can teach us moderation in
the sexual appetite is to attribute to it a result which no science
has yet been able to give.” But must we count any more, as Mr. Bain
would have us, for example, on social influences and on personal
experience? In this truly experimental education in virtue, ethics
would be learned just as the mother tongue is learned, by use, by
the imitation of others; and moral instruction, properly so called,
would be a sort of grammar which is to rectify vicious practices.
663. FINAL JUDGMENT.--But our criticisms on the general tendencies
of Mr. Bain’s pedagogy subtract nothing from our admiration of
the sterling qualities of his _Education as a Science_. Doubtless
there would also be errors of detail to notice, or some particular
methods to discuss; for example, that of never doing more than
one thing at a time, or the propriety of first teaching to
children the history of their country. Mr. Bain forgets that
mythological history and sacred history, by their legendary and
fabulous character, offer a particular attraction to the childish
imagination, and are better adapted than history proper to infant
minds. But, aside from the portions which are debatable, how
many wise observations to gather on the different processes of
instruction, on the transition from the concrete to the abstract,
on the discretion which must be employed in object-lessons, the
use of which so easily degenerates into abuse! Even through its
absolute theories, _Education as a Science_ will render great
services; for, to illustrate the march of thought, nothing is so
valuable as opinions which are exclusive and sincere. It were even
desirable, if one did not fear to experiment on human souls, _in
anima sublimi_, that according to Mr. Bain’s plan, the experiment
should be tried of an education exclusively scientific.
664. AMERICAN EDUCATORS. CHANNING (1780-1842).--The general
fault of English pedagogy is its aristocratic character. For Mr.
Spencer and Mr. Bain, as for Locke, it is simply a question of
the education of a _gentleman_. It is in America, in the writings
of Channing and Horace Mann, that we must seek the elements of a
theory of democratic education, and of popular instruction.[287]
Channing, a Unitarian minister, associated religious sentiment and
philosophic reason, and desired that in theology itself everything
should issue in the supremacy of the human judgment. The most
interesting of his writings are the public lectures which he
gave in Boston in 1838, and the object of which is the education
one gives himself, and the elevation of the working classes. We
lack the space to give an analysis of these lectures, but a few
quotations will make known the general spirit of the American
reformer:--
“I am not discouraged by the objection that the laborer, if
encouraged to give time and strength to the elevation of his mind,
will starve himself and impoverish the country, when I consider the
energy, and the efficiency of Mind.”
“The highest force in the universe is Mind. This created
the heavens and earth. This has changed the wilderness into
fruitfulness, and linked distant countries in a beneficent ministry
to one another’s wants. It is not to brute force, to physical
strength, so much as to art, to skill, to intellectual and moral
energy, that men owe their mastery over the world. It is mind
which has conquered matter. To fear, then, that by calling forth
a people’s mind, we shall impoverish and starve them, is to be
frightened at a shadow.”
“It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with
superior minds, and these invaluable means of communication are
in the reach of all. In the best books, great men talk to us,
give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into
ours. God be thanked for books. They are the voices of the distant
and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past
ages. Books are the true levellers. They give to all, who will
faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence, of the
best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am; no matter
though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure
dwelling; if the sacred writers will enter and take up their abode
under my roof, if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of
Paradise, and Shakespeare to open to me the worlds of imagination
and the workings of the human heart, and Franklin to enrich me with
his practical wisdom, I shall not pine for want of intellectual
companionship, and I may become a cultivated man though excluded
from what is called the best society in the place where I live.”
665. HORACE MANN (1796-1859).--Horace Mann is not a philosopher who
discusses education, but a politician who reformed and developed
the education of his country. Secretary of the Massachusetts Board
of Education, he opened schools, founded libraries, and pronounced
a great number of discourses, the best known of which is _The
Necessity of Education in a Republican Government_.
“When, then,” he often said, “will men give their thought to
infancy? We watch the seed which we confide to the earth, but we do
not concern ourselves with the human soul till the sun of youth has
set. Were it in my power, I would scatter books over all the earth
as men sow wheat on the plowed fields.”
Speaking to Americans, to working people, and to tradesmen, he made
apparent the positive advantages of instruction:--
“If to-morrow some one were to tell you that a coal mine had been
discovered which would pay ten per cent, you would all rush to
it; and yet there are men whom you let grovel in ignorance when
you might realize from forty to fifty per cent on them. You are
ever giving your thought to capital and to machines; but the first
machine is man, and the first capital, man, and you neglect him.”
But he also interested himself in the moral effects of education,
especially in a democratic society, where each citizen is a
sovereign:--
“The education which has already been given a people makes it
necessary to give them more. By instructing them, new powers have
been awakened in them, and this intellectual and moral energy
must be regulated. In this case we have not to do with mechanical
forces, which, once put in action, accomplish their purpose and
then stop. No; these are spiritual forces endowed with a principle
of life and of progress which nothing can quench.”
666. CONCLUSION.--The labors of Mr. Spencer and Mr. Bain, the
works of Channing and Mann, and others still, will contribute, we
hope, to prepare the definite solutions demanded by our times in
the matter of education. These solutions are important for the
security and the greatness of our country. More than ever it is
necessary that education become something else than an affair of
inspiration, abandoned to caprice and hazard, but that it be a
work of reflection. It is said that the future is uncertain, that
events are leading French society no one knows where, and that
our destinies are at the mercy of the most unforeseen storms. We
do not believe this, since it is within our power that it shall
be otherwise. There is a means, in fact, of assuring the future
of peoples, and this is to give them an intellectual and moral
education which purifies the soul and strengthens character. Do
not let us look for regeneration and progress from a sudden and
miraculous transformation; do not let us demand them even of the
immediate efficiency of such or such a political institution.
Everything here below is accomplished according to the laws of a
slow progression, by trifling and successive modifications. Just as
for the child there is no abridgment which allows us to suppress
the slow steps of the insensible growth which each year brings
forward, so for nations there is no other process than the action,
slow but sure, of a wise and vigorous education, for causing them
to pass from vice to virtue, from abasement to grandeur.
The partisans of evolution sometimes seem to announce to us the
near apparition of a race superior to our own, called to supplant
us, as we shall have supplanted the inferior races. One day or
another we shall be liable, it seems, to meet “at the angle of a
rock” the successor of the human race. We count but little on such
promises, and the coming of this hypothetical race of men, suddenly
evoked by a wave of the magic wand of natural selection, leaves us
very incredulous.
Happily, we know another means, a much surer process, for causing
to appear, not a strange race, until now unknown, but generations
of more worth than our own, which are superior to it in physical
force, as in qualities of mind or virtues of character. This means
is to establish, through reflection and reason, an education
better adapted to our destination; an education broader and more
complete, at once more severe and more liberal, since it will at
the same time exact more toil and permit more scope; in which the
child will learn to count more on himself; in which his indolence
will no longer be encouraged by accustoming him inopportunely to
invoke supernatural aid; in which instruction will no longer be
a formulary recited as lip-service, but an inner and profound
acquisition of the soul, in which the fear of the conscience
will be substituted for the other rules of conduct, and in which
thought and free reflection will no longer be distrusted; finally,
an education more scientific and more rational, because it will
neglect nothing which can develop a human soul and bring it into
likeness with its ideal. Now that education to which the future
belongs, notwithstanding the obstacles which the spirit of the past
will still stir up against it,--that education is not possible,
its laws cannot be established, its methods cannot be practised,
except on one condition; this is, that the psychology of the child
be written, and well written, and that reflection draw from this
psychology all the consequences which it permits.
[667. COMMENT ON MR. SPENCER’S EDUCATION.--Monsieur Compayré
might have emphasized his cautions. Read with caution, and with
a purpose to weigh the truth, Mr. Spencer’s _Education_ is
inspiring and wholesome; but it may be doubted whether there
has been written, since the _Émile_, a book on education which
is so well fitted to deceive an unwary reader by its rhetoric
and philosophic plausibility. The air of breadth and candor
with which the writer sets out is eminently prepossessing, and
the reader is almost obliged to assume that he is being led to
foregone conclusions. The first chapter, in particular, is a
piece of literary art, in which there is such a deft handling
of sentiment and pathos as to unfit the susceptible reader for
exercising his own critical judgment.
In this place I can only indicate in the briefest manner what
seem to be the fundamental errors contained in the book:--
1. Mr. Spencer does not distinguish between the _immediate_ and
the _mediate_ practical value of knowledges. We may admit with
him that science is of inestimable value to the human race; but
it does not follow by any means that every person must be versed
in science. As we need not own everything that is essential to
our comfort, so we need not have as a personal possession all the
knowledge that we need for guidance.
2. It is a very low conception of education that would limit its
function to adapting a man merely to that state in life into
which he chances to be born. The Bushman, the Red Indian, and
the accountant, are unfortunate illustrations of the province of
education. Often the highest function of education is to lift a
man out of his ancestral state.
3. That the value of a subject for guidance is the same as its
value for discipline, is true under only one assumption,--that
the Bushman is always to remain a Bushman, and the Red Indian
always a Red Indian, as by the new philosophy of course they
should. Practical teachers very well know that, as a rule, the
studies that are the most valuable for practical use are the
least valuable for discipline. Mr. Spencer quotes no better proof
of his assumption than “the beautiful economy of Nature.”
4. Mr. Spencer’s proposed education is sordid in its
utilitarianism. He is preoccupied with man as an instrument
rather than with a human being aspiring towards the highest type
of his kind. A liberal education should be preoccupied first with
the training of the man, then with the training of the instrument.
5. Mr. Spencer’s restatement of Condillac’s and Comte’s doctrine,
that individual education should be a repetition of civilization
_in petto_, is at best but a specious generalization. The
doctrine cannot be applied to practice, in any considerable
degree, if we would, and should not be, if we could, for it
ignores one essential factor in progress,--inheritance.
6. The part assigned to “Nature” in the work of education is so
overstrained as to be unnatural and absurd. Physical science has
long since discarded this myth of Nature personified. It is only
in educational science that this fiction is still employed to eke
out an argument.
7. The doctrine of consequences which underlies Mr. Spencer’s
system of moral education is applicable to but a limited number
of cases, or, if applied with thoroughness, is inhuman. Not even
all the fit would survive if they were not shielded from the
consequences of their acts by human sympathy and oversight.]
FOOTNOTES:
[277] J. P. Richter, better known under the name Jean Paul
(1763-1825), the author of a spirited and scholarly book, _Levana,
or the Doctrine of Education_, 1803.
[278] See _The Elements of Psychology, on the Principles of Beneke_
(London, 1871).
[279] The first French translation appeared in 1878.
[280] In this, as in several other instances, Monsieur Compayré
gives a summary of the author’s thought rather than an exact
quotation. (P.)
[281] As, historically, ornament precedes dress, on Mr. Spencer’s
main principle, it need not be till late in life that women dress
sensibly. Or ought not the genesis of dress in the individual to
follow the same order as the genesis of dress in the race? (P.)
[282] _Introduction to Social Science_, p. 390.
[283] So far as experience can testify, this is a pure assumption.
The most trifling injuries are often the most painful, and the most
serious the most painless. (P.)
[284] See the _Esprit de discipline dans l’éducation_, a memoir of
Gréard, published in the _Revue Pédagogique_, 1883, No. 11.
[285] By the “analytical problem” of education, Mr. Bain means the
determining of the education value of subjects. See _Education as
a Science_, Chapter V. (P.)
[286] We might dwell on Mr. Bain’s observations relative to
punishments. Here is what Gréard says of them: “Mr. Bain, with
infinite good sense and disciplinary tact, is much less concerned
with applying the rule than with the conditions according to which
it should be applied. On this point he enters into details full of
scruples. He does not hesitate to call to his aid the knowledge of
the masters of penal jurisprudence, and his recommendations, added
to those of Bentham, comprise not less than thirty articles.”
[287] There should be added to these the works of Swiss, Italian,
and French educators, particularly of Siciliani, and the original
and eminently suggestive studies of Bernard Perez.
APPENDIX.
A.
SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS OF THE HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.
The two aims to be kept in view in the teaching of this subject
are _culture_ and _guidance_. The purpose should be to extend the
intellectual horizon of the teacher, or, to use Plato’s phrase, to
make him “the spectator of all time and all existence”; and, in the
second place, to furnish the teacher with a clew which will safely
conduct him through the mazes of systems, methods, and doctrines.
There is no other profession that has derived so little profit
from capitalized experiences; and there is no profession in which
culture and breadth are more necessary.
For securing the ends here proposed, it is recommended that a plan
somewhat like the following be pursued in the use of this volume:--
1. If there are three recitations a week, assign one chapter
for each of the first two recitations, _to be carefully and
thoughtfully read_, and require each pupil to select one special
topic to present and discuss when he is called upon in the
recitation; and for the _third_ recitation in each week, require
each pupil to select a topic from any part of the book which has
thus far been studied. The purpose of this plan is to bring before
the class, in sharp outline, the salient points of the subject;
and, at the same time, to create a sense of the organic unity of
the theme as a comprehensive whole. When there are more than three
recitations a week, only a part of a chapter need be assigned for
an advance lesson.
2. When the first survey of the subject has been made in the way
just suggested, a _review_ may be conducted as follows:--
(1.) _Biographical._ Following a chronological order, divide the
whole treatise into as many sections as there are recitations to be
devoted to this purpose, and require each pupil to make a careful
study of some educator, as Socrates, Montaigne, or Pestalozzi, and
to present this theme when called upon in recitation. When there
is opportunity, encourage pupils to amplify their themes with
information derived from other sources.
(2.) _Topical._ Require each pupil to select some doctrine, system,
or method, and to show, in a systematic way, its origin, progress,
and termination. In this review, encourage the critical spirit, and
make the recitation to consist, in part, of a free discussion of
principles and doctrines. The value of this subject for _guidance_
will appear in this part of the study.
(3.) _By Chapters._ Require each pupil to prepare a summary of some
chapter in the book, emphasizing the more important truths that
are taught in it, and showing the tendency or drift of educational
thought. The _culture_ value of the subject will appear in this
part of the study. By this mode of treatment, the subject can be
compassed, with good results, in twenty weeks.
3. Where no more than twelve or fourteen weeks can be given to this
subject, it is recommended that the following chapters be selected:
I., II., III., IV., V., VI., VII., X., XII., XIII., XVIII., XIX.,
XX., XXI., XXII.
For use in _Teachers’ Meetings_ held by superintendents, the
following chapters are suggested: II., III., V., VI., VII., X.,
XIII., XVIII., XX., XXII.
For use in _Teachers’ Reading Circles_, either of the above
selections will serve a good purpose.
B.
A SELECT LIST OF WORKS SUPPLEMENTARY TO “COMPAYRÉ’S HISTORY OF
PEDAGOGY.”
1. The Cyclopædia of Education. New York.
2. Buisson. Dictionnaire de Pédagogie. Parts 1-156. Paris.
3. Lindner. Handbuch der Erziehungskunde. Wien and Leipzig.
4. K. Schmidt. Die Geschichte der Pädagogik. Cöthen.
5. G. Compayré. Histoire Critique des Doctrines de l’Éducation
en France. Paris.
6. Barnard. German Teachers and Educational Reformers.
7. Barnard. French Teachers, Schools, and Pedagogy.
8. Barnard. English Teachers, Educators, and Promoters of
Education.
9. Barnard. American Teachers, Educators, and Benefactors of
Education.
10. Barnard. Pestalozzi and Swiss Pedagogy.
11. Biber. Pestalozzi and his Plan of Education. London.
12. Donaldson. Lectures on the History of Education. Edinburgh.
13. Krüsi. Pestalozzi: his Life, Work, and Influence. Cincinnati.
14. Lorenz. Life of Alcuin. London.
15. Mrs. Mann. Life of Horace Mann. Boston.
16. Meiklejohn. Dr. Andrew Bell. London.
17. Morley, J. Rousseau. London.
18. Mullinger. The Schools of Charles the Great. London.
19. Quick. Essays on Educational Reformers. Cincinnati.
20. Shuttleworth. Four Periods of Public Education. London.
21. Arnold. Higher Schools and Universities of Germany.
London.
22. Hart. German Universities. New York.
23. De Guimps. Histoire de Pestalozzi. Lausanne.
24. De Guimps. La Philosophie et la Pratique de l’Éducation.
Paris.
25. Meunier. Lutte du Principe Clérical et du Principe Laïque
dans l’Enseignement. Paris.
26. Gaufrés. Claude Baduel et la Réforme des Études au XVI^e
Siècle. Paris.
27. Bentham. Chrestomathia. London.
28. Drane. Christian Schools and Scholars. London.
29. Ascham. The Scholemaster. Notes by Mayor. London.
30. Locke. Thoughts concerning Education. Notes by Quick.
Cambridge.
31. Laurie. John Amos Comenius. Boston.
32. Lancelot. Narrative of a Tour to La Grande Chartreuse.
London.
33. Schimmelpenninck. Narrative of the Demolition of Port Royal.
London.
34. Hamilton, Elizabeth. Letters on the Elementary Principles
of Education. London.
35. Spencer. Education: Intellectual, Moral, and Physical. N. Y.
36. Rousseau, Émile. Extracts. Boston.
37. Blackie. Four Phases of Morals. N. Y.
38. Aristotle. The Politics and Economics. London.
39. Craik. The State in its Relation to Education. London.
40. Cousin. Report on the State of Public Instruction in Prussia.
41. Gill. Systems of Education. Boston.
42. Souquet. Les Ecrivains Pédagogues du XVI^e Siècle. Paris.
43. Mann. Lectures on Education. Boston.
44. Quintilian. Institutes of Oratory. London.
45. Plato. The Republic and the Laws. London.
46. Xenophon. The Memorabilia of Socrates. N. Y.
47. Plutarch. Morals. Boston.
48. MacAlister. Montaigne on Education. Boston.
49. Pestalozzi. Leonard and Gertrude. Boston.
50. Necker de Saussure. Éducation Progressive. Paris.
51. Cochin. Pestalozzi: sa Vie, ses Œuvres, ses Méthodes.
Paris.
52. Compayré. Cours de Pédagogie. Paris.
53. Milton. Tractate on Education. Cambridge.
54. Fénelon. Fables. Paris.
55. Fénelon. The Education of a Daughter. Dublin.
56. Martin. Les Doctrines Pédagogiques des Grecs. Paris.
57. Jacotot. Enseignement Universel. Paris.
58. Adams. The Free School System of the United States.
London.
59. Conrad. The German Universities for the last Fifty Years.
Glasgow.
60. Capes. University Life in Ancient Athens. N. Y.
61. Mahaffy. Old Greek Education.
62. Chassiotis. L’Instruction Publique chez les Grecs. Paris.
63. Spiers. School System of the Talmud. London.
64. Simon. L’Éducation et l’Instruction des Enfants chez les
Anciens Juifs. Paris.
65. Edgeworth. Practical Education. N. Y.
NOTE.--For other supplementary works, and for a more complete
description of the books in the above list, consult the
Bibliography of G. Stanley Hall (Boston: D. C. Heath & Co.).
INDEX.
Abelard, 75.
Academy, 22; French, 219, 301, 386.
Achilles, 46.
Activity, 57, 72, 92, 93, 171, 191, 207, 461, 476;
categories of, 542;
the divine, 454;
industrial, 544.
Adalberic, 68.
Adaptation, 27, 31, 79, 90, 92, 158, 200, 294, 323, 329, 354, 461,
530, 553.
_Adèle_ and _Théodore_, of Madame de Genlis, 480.
Age, for public instruction, 11, 14, 15, 19, 31, 32, 34, 38, 49, 50,
55, 287, 323, 347, 348.
Agricola, Rudolph, 87.
Agriculture, 420.
Ahriman, 14.
Aix-la-Chapelle, Council of, 73.
Alcuin, 72.
Alexander, 11, 36, 294.
_Alexander_, 118.
Alfred the Great, 73.
_All is in All_, 527.
Amusements, 33, 94, 96, 98, 118, 119, 146, 161, 248, 294, 306, 348,
458, 460.
Amyot, 53, 54.
Analysis, 22, 23, 32, 42, 96, 188, 284, 314, 558.
Anselm, Saint, 76, 77, 119.
Antiquity, education in, 1-16, 18, 37, 320.
Arabic, 102.
Arabs, 77.
Arbogast, 393, 394.
Argovia, 418, 438.
Argument, 19, 52, 74, 80, 145.
Aristophanes, 20, 87.
Aristotle, 10, 11, 22, 42, 46, 52, 59, 66, 74, 321;
plan of education, 36-41;
of music, 20, 39.
Arithmetic, 76, 80, 98, 114, 129, 205, 268, 269, 441;
moral, 471.
Arnauld, 154;
_General Grammar_, 155.
Art, 30, 31, 60, 116, 179, 309, 310, 327, 546;
of education, 22, 39, 60, 85, 91, 122, 310, 476;
industrial, 331, 351, 384, 528, 545;
of creating thought, 23, 91, 156, 157, 315, 316, 471.
Artisans, 15, 28, 40, 98, 118, 134, 135, 209, 300, 565.
Arts, Faculty of, 233, 234, 321, 341, 512;
the Seven Liberal, 75, 119.
Asceticism, 4, 63, 65, 66, 160, 161, 259, 260.
Assembly, Constituent, 371, 372, 390, 395;
Legislative, 371, 373, 390;
National, 369, 391.
Assistant, 10, 131, 267, 327, 424.
Astronomy, 6, 11, 32, 71, 74, 76, 98, 129, 157, 205.
Athens, education at, 17, 40, 43.
_Atlantic Monthly_, 310.
d’Aubigné, 53.
Augustine, Saint, 47, 64, 68, 71, 219, 225.
Augustus, 46, 47.
Aurelius, Marcus, 53, 58.
Austria, 465.
Authority, 15, 74, 81, 110, 122, 136, 172, 191, 264, 309, 518, 528,
532;
basis of, 13, 32, 74, 149, 161.
Auxerre, 342.
Avignon, 139, 263.
Bacon, 32, 123, 124, 133, 136, 192, 211.
Bain, 124, 194, 538, 556-563;
errors of, 559-563.
Barraud, 434.
Barrère, 397.
Barrière, 485.
Basedow, 414.
Basil, Saint, 64.
Bausset, Cardinal de, 178.
Bauzen, 537.
Beauty, 30, 31, 84, 98, 546.
Beauvilliers, 165, 166.
Beckx, 142, 145.
Belief, 74, 143, 191, 304, 381.
Bell, Andrew, 6, 513-517.
_Belles-lettres_, 113, 150, 152, 236, 321, 322, 324, 404.
Benedict, Saint, 69.
Benedictines, 68, 76, 279.
Bentham, _Chrestomathia_, 100, 519, 562.
Berlin, 451, 464.
Bernardin de Saint Pierre, 394.
Bersot, 149, 534.
Bert, Paul, 395.
Berthollet, 405.
Burgdorf, 419, 426, 433, 456, 457.
Bérulle, 150.
Bias, 32.
Bible, 7, 65, 81, 86, 99, 113, 120, 248, 304, 324, 342, 420.
Billom, College of, 141.
Bills, Educational, 390-411, 509-512, 519-525.
Birr, 438.
Blackie, _Four Phases of Morals_, 21.
Blankenburg, 457, 463.
Boarding-schools, 282, 327, 397, 433, 485.
Body, 28, 29, 33, 38, 65, 94, 196-199, 292-315;
exercises for, 18, 19, 28, 94, 135, 289-292.
Bœotia, 53.
Bohemia, 125.
Boileau, 182, 219, 243.
Bonneval, 283.
_Book for Mothers_, Pestalozzi’s, 431.
Books, 70, 86, 105, 132, 240, 298, 369, 393, 528;
use of, 106, 107, 218, 298, 352, 429, 441, 516, 564.
Bossuet, 141, 182-185, 243.
Boufflers, Marquis de, 148.
Bouquier, 379, 391, 400;
Law of, 400, 401.
Bourgogne, 366;
Duke of, 166, 177-182.
Boys, education of, 6, 8, 34, 48, 54, 94, 114, 284-302, 398.
Boze, de, 243.
Brahmins, 4, 5.
Bréal, Michel, 113, 343, 534.
Bretagne, 344.
Brethren of Saint Charles, 255.
Brethren of the Christian Schools, 112, 138, 147, 253-277, 353, 365,
513, 515.
Brinon, Madame de, 228.
Browning, 54.
Brugg, 418, 438.
Buddha, 4.
Buisson, _Dictionnaire de Pédagogie_, 13, 130, 369.
“Bureau of Correspondence,” 358.
Burnier, 163.
Burnouf, _Histoire du Bouddhisme_, 5.
Buss, 428.
Cabanis, 369.
Cabet, 527.
Cabinet, school, 385.
_Cabinet of du Mas_, 239.
Cadet, 246.
Cæsar, 51, 106.
Cæsar de Bus, 139.
Cajet, Dom Joseph, 280.
Calvin, 113.
Cambridge, University of, 77.
Campan, Madame, 485-487.
Campe, 415.
Campus Martius, 44.
Carnot, 501, 521, 524.
Carré, 153.
Carthage, 105.
Caste, 2, 14, 15, 16, 28, 33, 42, 143, 256, 564.
Casuistry, 65, 67, 343.
Catechism, 44, 81, 113, 272, 321, 338, 364.
Catherine II., of Russia, 320.
Catholicism, 139, 253-277.
Cavern, Plato’s, 32.
Centralization, 358, 361, 386, 395, 396, 512;
opposed, 372.
Central Schools, 407.
Ceremonies, 12, 30, 36, 146, 199, 287, 393.
Chaillot, 504.
Chaldee, 95.
Chance, 328, 329.
Channing, 59, 476, 563-565.
Character, 490, 497.
Charicles, 25.
Charity, 37, 61, 281;
condemned, 29, 153.
Charlemagne, 71-73, 106.
Charles the Bold, 68, 73.
Charron, _Wisdom_, 110.
Chastanier, 263.
Chateaubriand, 245, 511.
Chevalier de la Tour-Landry, 79.
Child, 38, 39, 46, 79, 169, 195, 196;
age for study, 11, 39, 49, 287;
development of, 31, 38, 50, 195, 455, 456, 498;
education of, 46, 48, 80, 86, 103, 107, 122, 129, 153, 169, 237,
240, 284-304, 318, 420, 442, 501-504, 520-525;
etiquette, 88, 89, 199, 270;
inclination of, 3, 33, 79, 159, 169, 207, 257, 291, 333, 334, 346,
454, 460, 492, 547, 549;
indulgence of, 50, 172, 173, 206, 551;
moral protection of, 39, 49, 50, 78, 88, 173, 248, 470-475;
punishment of, 6, 7, 12, 33, 76, 77, 78, 102, 271-276, 551;
the property of the State, 27, 397, 398.
Chinese, 11-13;
civil service of, 16.
_Chriæ_, 51.
Christian Doctrine, The Order of the, 139.
Christianity, 8, 61, 116, 174, 228, 248, 304.
_Christian Marriage_, of Erasmus, 90.
Christians, The Early, 61-67.
Chrysale, 212, 213.
Chrysippus, 48, 51.
Church, The, 68, 69, 81, 139, 233, 319, 330, 365, 371, 413.
Cicero, 46, 47, 70, 95, 101.
_Ciceromania_, 85.
_Circular_ of Guizot, 521.
Citharist, 20.
_Civil Government_, 360, 374, 400, 489.
Clarke, 196.
Classes, 267, 501.
Cleanliness, 65, 90, 93, 94.
Clergy, 103, 164.
Clermont, 141.
Cloister, 66, 69, 217, 346.
Co-education, 128, 231, 256, 369, 378, 398.
Colleges, 85, 141, 233, 234, 237, 249, 321, 382, 512.
_Colloquy of the Abbé_, of Erasmus, 90.
Comedy, 30, 39.
Comenius, 106, 112, 118, 121-136, 155, 282, 415, 457.
Communication, 13, 53, 106;
lack of, 70, 161, 217, 266;
of knowledge, 41, 53, 71, 113, 131, 147, 565.
Compayré, 190, 194, 203, 309, 336, 389, 568.
Compulsion, 120, 136, 182, 255, 263, 321, 370, 387, 397, 398, 400,
523, 533.
Comte, 322, 323, 529-531.
Condé, 141.
Condillac, 124, 194, 312-319, 346, 403, 534;
_Grammaire_, 124.
Condorcet, 282, 323, 379-389, 392, 397, 407.
_Conduct of Schools_, La Salle’s, 262-276.
Confucius, 12.
_Conjugal Precepts_, Plutarch’s, 55.
Conscience, 24, 57, 58, 61, 105, 163, 200, 201, 303, 330, 424, 522,
543.
Considerant, Victor, 528.
Constituent Assembly, 372, 390, 395.
Construction, 459, 461, 499.
Convention, The, 390-411.
Convents, 62-70, 214-218, 378, 485.
Conversation, 106, 205, 299;
with Aristodemus, 26;
Art of, 22, 106, 107;
of Buddha and Purna, 4, 5.
_Conversations_, of Madame de Maintenon, 222-229.
Cordova, 77.
Coriolanus, 45.
Corneille, 141, 213.
Cornelia, 45.
Corporal punishment, 6, 7, 8, 12, 33, 51, 76, 77, 78, 102, 147, 148,
152, 160, 202, 203, 251, 271-276, 336, 551.
Coste, P., 196.
Cotton, _Montaigne_, 102.
Council of Carthage, 64.
Council of public instruction, 359, 369, 392, 396.
Councils-General, 392, 509.
_Counsels to her Daughter_, of Madame de Lambert, 176.
Courage, 15, 18, 36, 294, 522.
Cournot, 534.
_Course of Study_, Condillac’s, 214-219.
Courses for adults, 383, 384.
Courses of study, 321, 326, 348, 365, 377, 383, 398, 402, 472, 486,
520-525, 559.
Courtalon, 404.
Cousin, 156, 523, 533.
Coustel, _Education of Children_, 154.
Critias, 25.
Crousaz, 282.
Culture, 8, 31, 41, 47, 55, 60, 69, 111, 158, 325, 388, 543, 565;
Athenian, 18, 30, 31, 43;
Chinese, 13;
Egyptian, 14;
of the imagination, 499, 500;
of the Middle Age, 69;
self, 57, 59, 87, 301, 383, 421, 439, 476, 504, 549, 564;
studies, 40, 60, 157, 324-326, 335, 339.
Curiosity, 106, 130, 170, 184, 247, 347, 503.
_Cyropædia_, Xenophon’s, 14, 34, 35, 36.
Czech, 125, 126.
Dacier, Madame, 213.
D’Alembert, 278, 319, 331.
Dancing, 118, 161, 181, 214, 306, 396.
Darin, 427.
Daubenton, 405.
Daunou, 386, 391, 395, 410, 411.
Dauphin, The, 182-185.
David, 66.
Decazes, 515.
Deism, 99, 304, 305, 454, 476.
De Lasteyrie, 516.
Démia, 254-258.
Demogeot, 203.
Demosthenes, 114.
_De Ratione Studii_, of Erasmus, 88.
De Sacy, 154.
Descartes, 141, 152, 157, 187-192, 213, 234.
Deschamps, 515.
Dessau, 415.
Destiny, of man, 62, 109, 135, 136, 163, 188, 239, 454, 492, 539,
542, 567;
of woman, 500.
De Tocqueville, 491.
Development, 13, 23, 31, 38, 49, 91, 93, 111, 129, 158, 208, 288,
313, 381, 412, 421, 423, 436, 439, 455, 476, 495, 503, 542;
precocious, 50, 240.
Deventer, 86.
Devotion, 214-217, 228, 269, 305, 318, 442.
Dialectics, 32, 42, 45, 52, 75, 76, 118.
Dialogue, 22, 24.
_Dialogues of the Dead_, Fénelon’s, 166, 179.
_Dictionnaire de Pédagogie_, 11, 13, 130, 369, 371, 391, 464.
_Didactica Magna_, 124, 126.
Didactics, 22, 50, 53, 66, 78, 97, 121, 206.
Diderot, 121, 278, 319-327, 344.
Diesterweg, 422, 464, 465.
Dignity, of mother, 291, 384;
of persons, 18, 35, 57, 62, 78, 162, 201, 207, 273, 304, 338.
Diogenes, 292.
Diogenes Laërtius, 37.
Discipline, 6, 7, 11, 20, 33, 36, 38, 41, 44, 50, 51, 76, 77, 81, 88,
101, 102, 111, 119, 145-148, 159-162, 180, 199, 203, 238,
249-252, 263-266, 270-276, 336, 366, 416, 551;
of consequences, 336, 551.
_Discourse on Method_, of Descartes, 188.
Discovery, 124, 157, 435, 549.
Dittes, _Histoire de l’éducation_, 3, 6, 13, 114, 413, 416, 526, 537.
Division of labor, 131, 152, 266, 354, 569.
Doctors, of the Church, 63, 67, 68, 74, 75.
_Doctrinaries_, The, 139, 395.
Domitian, 47, 53.
_Donatus_, 118.
Dordogne, 400, 434.
Drama, 219, 223, 242, 316, 378.
Drane, Augusta F., _Christian Schools and Scholars_, 72.
Drawing, 39, 130, 204, 326.
Dressler, 537.
Dualism, 14;
Socratic, 23, 24.
Dubois, 356.
Duclos, 345.
Dumarsais, 331.
Dumonstier, 404.
Dupanloup, 505, 531, 532.
Dupont de Nemours, 493.
Duruy, 362, 366, 409, 502, 522, 523.
Dussault, 431.
Duty, 200, 333, 337, 338, 490, 493;
of teacher, 50, 199, 257, 291.
_Economics_, 34, 55.
Economy, 36, 398;
in education, 516;
of nature, 3, 31, 286, 290, 553.
Écouen, 485.
Edgworth, Miss, 482.
Education, 30-33, 41, 42, 48, 80, 565;
in antiquity, 1-16;
Athenian, 18, 28, 43;
by the Church, 63, 69, 81, 143, 233, 277;
definition of, 33, 37, 103, 540;
domestic, 7, 8, 35, 48, 54, 55, 127, 227, 378, 422, 485, 498;
extent of, 31, 34, 51, 100, 104, 128, 158, 184, 185, 563, 567;
formal, 12, 145-147, 347;
among the Greeks, 17-42;
higher, 6, 28, 31, 55, 75, 80, 113, 128, 233, 512;
intellectual, 29, 31, 39, 41, 110, 156, 157, 203, 468-475, 496,
548;
moral, 39, 41, 48, 59, 99, 136, 159-162, 177-182, 199-203, 245-252,
280, 380, 381, 465, 550, 567;
national, 340-389, 523, 530, 536, 564-568;
negative, 287-310, 334, 348, 497, 542-555;
the new, 93, 123, 192, 208, 210, 284-310, 343, 347, 456, 460, 542;
obligatory, 8, 13, 16, 42, 115, 120, 136, 182, 255, 263, 321, 370,
371, 387, 400, 409, 411, 523;
the old, 92, 144, 192, 283, 364, 460, 547;
physical, 19, 29, 38, 41, 43, 70, 93, 119, 135, 196-199, 283, 496,
554, 555;
power of, 6, 80, 163, 181, 186, 328, 329, 333, 544, 565;
public, 8, 13, 27, 37, 49, 113-136, 182, 209, 250, 279, 484, 565;
purpose of, 98, 104, 136, 158, 181, 238, 316, 318, 346, 347, 383,
454, 483, 496, 531, 536, 564, 567;
Roman, 43-60;
science of, 22, 48, 53, 59, 535-571;
scientific, 28, 32, 40, 91, 151, 157, 535-555;
self, 57, 59, 87, 299, 383, 421, 439, 476, 504, 549, 564;
Spartan, 18, 34, 37, 43;
systematic, 2, 38, 41, 91, 128, 288, 525, 531, 547;
treatises on, 9, 14, 27, 33, 34, 35, 37, 40, 47, 54, 55, 56, 58,
64, 80, 88, 92, 100, 103, 110, 126, 154, 166, 195, 223, 235,
319, 421, 422, 431, 438, 480, 501-503;
universal, 8, 13, 16, 62, 100, 115, 118, 129, 136, 297, 374, 411,
468, 480, 481, 510, 526-531, 534, 565;
a universal right, 16, 33, 37, 55, 158, 325, 356, 484, 530;
of women, 34, 55, 109, 110, 115, 116, 128, 168, 174-176, 212-231,
241, 282, 305, 307, 378, 385, 478-507.
_Education_, Spencer’s, 3, 100, 124, 507, 534, 538-555.
_Education as a Science_, Bain’s, 124, 194, 556-563.
_Education of Girls_, Fénelon’s, 165-169, 174-177, 184, 212, 229.
_Education of Man_, Frœbel’s, 453-456.
_Education of a Prince_, Nicole’s, 154.
_Education of Women_, of Madame de Rémusat, 487-490.
Egypt, 14.
Elocution, 21, 51, 52, 107.
_Émile_, The, 27, 98, 126, 210, 235, 278-310.
Emotions, 42, 66, 206, 207, 285, 303, 550, 551.
Emulation, 67, 146, 162, 183, 299.
_Encyclopédie_, The, 319.
Encyclopædists, 337, 480.
England, 72, 564.
_Entretiens sur les Sciences_, Lamy’s, 150, 151.
Environment, 3, 39, 58, 70, 194, 258, 310, 339.
Epicureans, 52, 108, 141.
Equality, 61, 190, 328, 374, 380, 400, 565;
of sex, 241, 256, 384, 479, 506.
Erasmus, 85-91, 94;
works of, 86, 385.
Espionage, 147, 258, 276.
_Esther_, 219, 242.
Estouteville, Cardinal d’, 232.
Ethics, 24, 37, 39, 42, 50, 57, 76, 206, 247, 270, 292, 322, 326,
351, 470, 477, 491, 539.
Ethnology, 2.
Etiquette, 88, 94, 161, 199, 227, 270;
of ladies, 90, 227.
_Eudemon_ of Rabelais, 92-100.
_Euthydemus_, The, 24.
Evil, 14, 31, 65, 66, 159, 169;
cause of, 4, 14, 159, 217, 287, 333, 381, 492;
how overcome, 56, 66, 160, 217, 333, 381, 565.
Evolution, 530.
Examinations, 16;
of teachers, 255, 261, 321, 358, 367, 432, 513.
Example, 53.
Exclusiveness, 12, 14, 40, 54, 70, 143, 217, 224, 352, 540.
Excursions, 97, 98, 348, 456.
_Existence of God_, Fénelon’s, 166.
Experience, 10, 32, 53, 92, 93, 97, 106, 136, 485.
Explanation, 11, 133, 156, 299.
Expulsion, 271.
Fables, 190, 240, 244, 295, 315, 335, 348, 494.
_Fables_, Fénelon’s, 166, 173, 177-180, 186.
Faculties, The, 233, 321, 383, 511-513.
_Faire faire_, 497.
Faith, 74, 113, 143, 304, 381.
Family, 7, 12, 35, 36, 37, 45, 54, 60, 128, 129, 291, 378, 509, 534,
542, 545;
sacrificed, 27, 146, 224, 397, 398, 399.
Farrar, Archdeacon, 14.
Fathers, The early, 63, 67, 68.
Fathers, 90, 103, 108, 109, 345, 424, 545.
Faults, in education, 40, 46, 67, 68, 69, 74, 92, 108, 109, 116, 133,
143, 145, 149, 161, 167, 168, 171, 181, 189, 201, 226, 270-276,
292, 302-307, 322, 329, 341, 342, 432, 437, 462, 463, 470, 518,
534, 552, 568;
of Greek pedagogy, 40;
of women, 488, 489.
Fear, 200, 201.
Feelings, 33, 180, 275, 295, 300, 444.
Felbiger, 416.
Fellenberg, _Agricultural Institutes_, 422.
Fencing, 70, 98, 114.
Fénelon, 78, 164-186, 198, 212, 214, 229, 241, 282, 403, 486.
Ferrier, _Greek Philosophy_, 21.
Ferule, 102, 272.
Fichte, 422, 443;
_Discourse to the German Nation_, 536.
Firmness, 33, 101, 274.
Fischer, 439.
Fitch, 336.
Fléchier, 141.
Fleury, The Abbé, 74, 75, 154, 166, 214, 240.
Fontaine, Madame de, 220.
Fontanes, 511.
Form, 430.
Formalism, 12, 36, 74, 91, 145, 211, 263, 342, 445.
Fortoul, 501.
Fourcroy, 478, 510.
Fourier, 527, 529.
Fournier, 459.
France, 72, 218-224;
College of, 85.
Francke, 414.
Frankfort, 448.
Freedom, 40, 61, 101, 166, 310, 565;
annihilated, 3, 4, 74, 92, 403;
of intelligence, 72, 77, 91, 191, 394, 564.
French, 102, 154, 234, 242, 342, 357, 392.
French Revolution, The, 71, 308, 360, 362-389, 522.
Friburg, 465, 467.
Frœbel, 446-465, 501.
Fronto, 58.
Frugality, 14, 15, 36, 65, 169, 197, 199, 229, 258, 418, 452.
Fulneck, 125.
Fustel de Coulanges, 61.
Gall, 538.
Gamala, Joshua Ben, 9.
Gamaliel, 11.
_Gargantua_ of Rabelais, 91-100.
Garnier, 500.
Garot, 240.
_Gaudentius, Letter to_, 64.
Gaultier, The Abbé, 514, 516.
Genesis, of knowledge, 313, 558.
Geneva, College of, 113.
Genlis, Madame de, 176, 479-482.
Geography, 24, 80, 129, 151, 159, 183, 205, 240, 297, 322, 342, 349,
400, 403, 436, 481;
moral, 472.
Geometry, 11, 31, 47, 51, 76, 80, 98, 129, 205, 436.
Gérando, 520.
German, 351.
Germany, 114, 279, 283, 413, 524, 526.
_Germany_ of Madame de Staël, 495.
Gerson, 77, 78.
Gessner, 427.
“Gifts” of Frœbel, 452, 458, 459, 476.
Girard, The Père, 431, 437, 446, 465-475.
Girls, destiny of, 500;
education of, 5, 8, 11, 35, 64, 65, 66, 79, 80, 90, 109, 110, 117,
128, 168, 174, 175, 212-231, 237, 241, 305, 306, 307, 384, 398,
399, 478-507.
Girondists, 391.
God, 61, 63, 99, 174, 182, 286, 288, 454, 522;
belief in, 26, 27, 173, 304, 337;
duty to, 30, 66, 149, 182, 216, 217, 220, 270, 304, 512;
knowledge of, 315, 337;
omnipresence of, 3, 192, 454.
Gœthe, 538.
Goldammer, 459.
Golden rule, example of, 5, 78.
_Gonzagas, Prince of_, 79.
Good, The, 30, 31, 286.
Goodwin, _Plutarch’s Morals_, 54.
_Gorgias_, The, 24.
Gossot, 504.
Gournay, Mademoiselle, 110.
Government, 238, 264, 270-276.
Gracchus, 45.
Grades, 127, 128, 137, 224, 233, 234, 267, 288, 323, 348, 376, 382,
393, 496, 548, 559.
Grammar, 19, 20, 24, 39, 47, 51, 71, 90, 130, 133, 144, 154, 155,
171, 183, 243, 316, 323, 470-475.
Grammarian, 20, 51, 103, 470.
Gratuity, 120, 254, 262, 321, 367, 370, 372, 376, 386, 388, 398, 522,
523, 533, 566.
Gray Friars, 466.
Gréard, 216, 223, 287, 288, 306, 354, 457, 461, 480, 505, 515, 516,
518, 553, 562.
Greek, the study of, 48, 71, 86, 95, 102, 105, 121, 143, 144, 183,
189, 205, 237, 244, 257, 283, 317, 321, 324-326, 351, 352, 481,
512, 547, 559.
Greek pedagogy, 11, 17-42.
Gregory the Great, Saint, 68.
Griesheim, 452.
Grignan, Madame de, 214.
Grimm, 344.
Groot, Gerard, 86.
Grosselin, 135.
Grote, _History of Greece_, 21.
Gruner, 448.
Guienne, College of, 101, 102.
Guidance, as object of instruction, 16, 49, 57, 201, 291, 293, 318.
Guillaume, 391.
Guizot, 490, 512, 519-522;
Madame, 490-494.
Guyon, Madame, 174.
Guyot, 154.
Guyton de Morveau, 343.
Gymnasium, 128, 145;
Greek, 19.
Gymnastics, 19, 28, 29, 39, 44, 79, 94, 135, 195-199, 292, 433;
intellectual, 324, 326;
interdicted, 66.
Habits, 293, 315, 334.
Halle, 414.
Halle aux Draps, _mutual school_, 517.
Hamilton, 194, 404.
Hamilton, Miss, 482-484.
Hannibal, 105.
Happiness, 3, 294, 328.
“Hardening process,” 196-198, 291, 292, 452.
Harmony, 20, 29, 31, 39, 41, 52, 79, 110, 451.
Hartley, 483.
Harvard College, 125.
Health, 29, 39, 65, 79, 94, 169, 222, 542.
Heart, 12, 56, 66, 110, 303, 443, 469, 471-475, 498.
Hebrew, 95, 99, 118, 121.
Hebrews, 7-11.
Hecker, 414.
Hegel, 447.
Heidelberg, University of, 77.
Helvetius, 196, 319, 327-330, 344.
Henry IV., of France, 53, 147, 232, 233.
Herbart, 194, 537.
Herbault, 514.
Herder, 538.
Heredity, 313.
Herodotus, 32.
Hersan, 235.
Hindoos, 2-4.
History, 12, 32, 33, 36, 47, 53, 76, 80, 91, 105, 116, 118, 129, 144,
145, 151, 173, 175, 179, 190, 206;
of education, 85, 126.
Holidays, 393.
Holiness, 63, 68, 100, 214-217, 228.
Holland, 86, 282, 283.
Holland, Philemon, _Plutarch’s Morals_, 54.
Homer, 20, 64, 320, 324.
Honor, 196, 199, 200, 302.
Horace, 45, 59, 87, 324.
_How Gertrude teaches her Children_, Pestalozzi’s, 427.
Huc, 13.
Humanist, 91, 100, 163, 195, 213, 324.
Humanities, The, 73, 80, 91, 144, 151, 324, 325, 326, 351, 558-561.
_Humanities_, Arnauld’s, 154.
_Human Understanding_, Locke’s, 196.
Hume, 194.
Hygiene, 39, 79, 84, 94, 197, 292, 544.
Ideal, 66, 104, 151, 279;
Chinese, 12, 13;
of the Fathers, 66;
Greek, 41;
Hebrew, 7;
Hindoo, 3-5;
Roman, 44, 57;
Persian, 14, 15.
Idealists, 193, 363.
Ideas, 315, 381;
birth of, 23, 325, 326, 381, 439, 471, 503;
grammar of, 471;
innate, 439;
religious, 3, 42, 62;
made significant, 107, 133, 157, 293.
Identity, loss of, 3.
Ignorance, 13, 18, 29, 68, 70, 72, 116, 143, 225, 226, 300, 364, 369,
519;
learned, 92, 104, 107, 117, 189;
Socratic, 22, 24.
Imagination, 42, 97, 98, 133, 135, 174, 176, 191, 285, 347, 403, 499,
500.
Imitation, 12, 49, 50, 84, 144, 462, 467.
_Imitation_, Gerson’s, 77, 78.
Immobility, 16, 18, 145, 342.
Impressions, 208, 295, 328, 334, 461, 484, 492, 503.
India, education in, 6, 514.
Individuality, 3, 15, 37, 57, 84, 85, 123, 136, 158, 207, 310, 313,
338, 381, 439, 452, 461, 489, 549;
loss of, 4, 27, 29, 57, 63, 98, 145, 146, 274, 346.
Induction, 26, 27, 36, 96, 107, 121, 123, 133, 157, 295, 313, 548.
Indulgence, 50;
of teachers, 90, 146.
Inertness, intellectual, 2, 29, 44, 68, 70, 92, 144, 228, 329, 518.
Instinct, 24, 31, 93, 133, 290, 460, 529, 536.
Institute of the Brethren, 112, 138, 153-163, 252-277.
Institutes, 382.
_Institutes of Oratory_, 48, 60, 89.
Instruction, 13, 39, 46, 79, 199, 280, 379;
Christian, 62, 269;
domestic, 7, 27, 45, 46, 55, 127, 129, 227, 378, 384, 485;
ecclesiastical, 63, 69, 81, 139, 167, 218, 233, 345;
gratuitous, 69, 73, 78, 120, 254, 262, 263, 321, 367, 370, 376,
386, 398, 409, 523, 566;
indirect, 170, 177-182, 184, 185, 223, 287-310, 481;
mutual, 6, 53, 131, 267, 392, 424, 513-519, 534;
national, 340-389, 523, 565;
need of, 70, 71, 115, 116, 320, 356, 369, 523, 566;
popular, 8, 130, 415, 438, 480, 487, 522;
primary, 13, 20, 40, 55, 81, 86, 112-136, 139, 142, 153, 177, 209,
239, 240, 253-277, 321, 353, 356, 360, 364, 384, 417, 433,
455-465, 468-475, 506, 524, 525;
public, 8, 9, 11, 20, 27, 38, 46, 49, 73, 78, 114, 128, 182, 209,
321, 330, 522-525;
religious, 98, 111, 113, 115, 118, 257, 303, 336, 346, 380, 438,
452, 466, 554;
secondary, 86, 113, 128, 139, 143, 205, 233, 282;
self, 57, 87, 136, 156, 318, 383, 421, 439, 476, 504, 549, 564;
sense, 193, 283, 403;
simultaneous, 51, 152, 240, 266, 277, 424, 515;
technical, 193, 206, 263, 281, 331, 376, 384, 408, 414, 419, 545.
Intelligence, 38, 58, 71, 72, 80, 93, 101, 191, 192, 296, 316, 320,
354, 370, 436, 440, 455, 498;
disregard for, 44, 68, 70, 92, 143, 171, 403;
works of, 26, 27, 109, 156, 157, 394, 564.
Interpretation, 15, 158, 293.
Intuition, 129, 132, 133, 290-310, 403, 415, 423, 428, 438, 449, 452,
548-555.
Irony, Socratic, 23.
Israelites, 6-11.
Italy, 84, 475.
Jacotot, 190, 526, 527.
Janet, 403.
Jansenists, 110, 153-163, 234.
_Janua linguarum reserata_, of Comenius, 126, 127, 134.
Jealousy, 12, 25, 153, 259.
Jena, Prussians at, 8.
Jerome, Saint, 64, 71.
Jeromites, 86.
Jesuits, 85, 139-150, 189, 232, 234, 258, 279, 340-344, 468;
of the East, 12.
Jewess, education of, 8, 11.
Jews, 8-11, 16.
John of Wessel, 86, 87.
Joly, Claude, 256, 261.
Jomard, 516.
Josephine, The Empress, 467.
Joubert, 489.
Jouffroy, 62, 491.
Judgment, 100, 104, 156, 163, 191, 281, 295, 296, 460, 467, 470.
Juilly, College of, 150.
Justice, 15, 30, 40, 280, 281, 303.
Juvenal, 59.
Kant, 200, 309, 332-338, 415, 422, 536.
Keilhau, 452, 464.
Khung-tsze, 12, 13.
_Kindergartens_, 447, 452, 457-465, 476, 477.
Kindermann, 416.
Klopstock, 422.
Knowledge, 15, 53, 80, 101, 104, 113, 192, 370, 547;
clearness of, 53;
of facts, 75, 129, 290;
a means, 41, 57, 91, 104;
of nature, 91, 96, 129, 295, 440;
source of, 58, 134, 313, 548;
before practice, 32, 57, 71, 135;
value, 60;
for women, 168, 175, 252, 282, 307, 384, 488, 495, 500, 505.
Königsberg, University of, 332.
Krause, 457.
Krüsi, 428, 432.
Labor, 476, 495;
manual, 206, 209, 226, 227, 263, 300, 398, 399, 424, 441, 566.
Laborde, Comte de, 516.
La Bruyère, 329.
La Chalotais, 278, 343-355, 363.
La Condamine, 283.
Lacroix, 407.
_Læta, Letter to_, 64-67.
Lafargue, 473.
Lafayette, Madame de, 213.
La Flèche, 501;
College of, 189.
La Fontaine, 240, 283, 295, 335.
Lagrange, 405.
Laisné, 515.
_Laissez faire_, 160, 208, 293.
Lakanal, 139, 379, 394;
Law of, 402-408.
Lambert, Madame de, 176.
Lambruschini, The Abbé, 475.
Lamoignon, 141.
Lamy, The Père, 150.
Lancaster, 513, 514.
Lancelot, 153, 154, 156, 217.
Langethal, 451, 452.
Language, 2, 70, 82, 116, 118, 126, 134, 189, 323-326, 428, 431, 441,
481, 547;
native, 48, 70, 113, 118, 121, 126, 155, 183, 268, 357, 400,
469-471.
Lanthenas, 391, 392.
Lâo-tsze, 12, 13.
La Pitié, 514.
Larochefoucauld-Liancourt, 516.
Laromiguière, 139.
La Salle, 112, 147, 254-277, 357, 404, 414, 514.
Lateran Council, 69.
Latin, the study of, 48, 70, 71, 90, 91, 95, 101, 102, 105, 118, 121,
131, 140, 144, 154, 183, 189, 205, 237, 244, 257, 281, 317,
324, 326, 481, 512, 547.
Laurie, S. S., _Comenius_, 126.
Lavallée, 218, 222, 226, 230.
Laws, 44, 45, 46, 182, 333, 499;
educational, 399-402, 484, 509;
Plato’s, 30, 33, 34.
Lay teachers, 340-345, 466, 508, 533.
Lecointe, The Père, 150.
Legendre, 394.
Legislative Assembly, 371, 373, 379, 390, 422.
Leibnitz, 136, 141, 196.
Leisure, 87, 377, 381, 543.
Lelong, The Père, 150.
_Leonard and Gertrude_, Pestalozzi’s, 421.
Lepelletier Saint-Fargeau, 391, 397.
Lessing, 538.
_Letters to Lucilius_, 52.
_Letters to Pope Innocent XI._, Bossuet’s, 182, 183.
Lévi Alvarès, 505.
Lewes, George Henry, 41.
L’Hôpital, 53.
_Liberal Education of Children_, of Erasmus, 88.
Liberty, 62, 70, 72, 93, 119, 151, 172, 201, 207, 263, 285, 294, 308,
374, 400, 420, 436, 441, 454, 490, 493, 499, 565;
of teaching, 371-396, 401, 511, 513.
Life, family, 60, 424, 500, 546;
monastic, 66, 146;
practical, 44, 53, 60, 92, 93, 105, 115, 204, 279, 296, 408, 529,
541, 562;
public, 32, 115, 130, 279, 360, 374, 400, 489;
stages of, 455, 456, 542.
Lissa, 125.
Literature, 11, 30, 78, 100, 166, 179, 295, 351, 404, 558, 565;
classical, 73, 80, 86, 95, 189, 324-326, 351, 481, 547, 559;
Greek, 11, 48, 80, 84, 559;
Latin, 46, 59, 84, 324-326;
profane, 64, 86, 87, 175, 219.
Little Schools of Port Royal, 140, 153, 254.
Littré, 69, 233, 234, 383.
_Lives_, Plutarch’s, 53.
Locke, 49, 110, 126, 187, 194-210, 249, 280, 296, 346, 363, 538, 561.
Logic, 6, 24, 31, 52, 75, 76, 315, 316, 321, 351, 470, 558.
_Logic_, Port Royal, 154, 243.
Lorain, P., 519.
Lorenz, _Life of Alcuin_, 72.
Louis XIV., 147, 182, 236, 279, 365, 489.
Louis-le-Grand, College of, 355.
Louis the Pious, 68, 73.
Lourmand, 505.
Love, 31, 37, 66, 89, 162, 216, 302, 440, 443, 455, 504, 515;
of country, 8, 44, 182, 308, 399, 489.
Loyola, 140, 163;
_Constitutions_, 142.
Lubbock, Sir John, 2.
Luccard, 267.
Lucerne, 466, 468.
Lupus of Ferrières, 68, 70.
Luther, 86, 113-120.
Luxembourg, 141.
Luxury, effect of, 36, 50, 182.
Lycée, 131, 205, 327, 372, 382, 512.
Lyceum, 22, 40.
Lycurgus, 34, 56, 397.
Lyons, 254, 255, 285, 368.
Macaulay, 144.
Madras, 514.
_Magdala_, 90.
Magistrates, 25, 28, 31, 71, 72.
Maieutics, 23, 42, 72, 156, 326, 381, 439, 471, 503.
Maine de Biran, 139, 434.
Maintenon, Madame de, 176, 218-231, 307, 486, 514.
Maisonneuve, Madame de, 504.
Maistre, Joseph de, 149, 511.
Malebranche, 187, 192-194, 211.
Man, 61, 62, 104;
conception of, 4, 188, 499, 539;
the perfect, 7, 30, 31, 57, 58, 59, 62, 98, 104, 172, 278, 386,
451, 483, 500, 540.
Mann, Horace, 566, 567.
Manners, 29, 59, 65, 81, 88, 89, 94, 111, 199, 270;
of Chinese, 12;
of Greeks, 21.
Mansel, 194.
Marat, 394.
Marcellus, 105.
Marenholtz, Baroness von, 464, 465.
Maria Theresa, 415.
Marienthal, 464.
Marion, H., 196.
Marmontel, 325, 326, 339.
Marriages, 38, 55, 384, 500.
Marsolier, 243.
Martin, Aimé, 505.
Martin, Alexander, _Les Doctrines Pédagogiques des Grecs_, 18.
Martin, Henry, 183.
Mascaron, 150.
Massillon, 150.
Mathematics, 6, 24, 31, 68, 76, 98, 118, 189, 193, 323, 386, 437,
530;
for women, 56.
Mather, Cotton, 125.
Maturity, 10, 40, 288.
Mauriac, College of, 141.
Mayer, Enrico, 475.
Mean, The, 93, 150, 151.
_Meditations_, Marcus Aurelius, 58.
Melancthon, 113.
Melmoth, _Pliny_, 21.
_Memorabilia_, The, 24, 25, 26, 32.
_Memoriter_, 11, 16, 49, 92, 105, 121, 133, 205, 207.
Memory, 16, 42, 49, 58, 72, 81, 88, 92, 105, 135, 191, 208, 317, 335,
371, 460.
Method, 15, 20, 22, 42, 49, 53, 59, 72, 88, 90, 119, 126, 132, 269,
298, 372, 468, 536, 539, 557;
attractive, 33, 90, 97, 98, 101, 119, 206, 415, 494, 495, 541;
Chinese, 13;
dialectic, 32, 42, 74, 76;
didactic, 22, 72, 97, 111;
_educative_, 467, 469;
intuitive, 127, 132, 295-310, 312, 346, 402-404, 415-445, 452,
461-463;
among the Jews, 11;
Port Royal, 156, 162, 235;
of reading, 49, 107, 240, 241, 502;
repulsive, 33, 119, 494, 495;
Socratic, 22-27, 72, 211, 335, 429, 471;
synthetic, 313, 469.
_Methods_, Lancelot’s, 154.
Meunier, 277.
Michel, 475.
Michelet, 122, 306, 392.
Middendorf, 451, 452.
Middle Age, The, 67-81, 110, 171;
ignorance in, 68, 70.
Mildness, 10, 33, 56, 89, 160, 250, 251, 433;
severe, 101, 161, 202, 216, 264, 452, 492.
Milton, 54.
Mind, 95, 157, 470, 537, 564;
not _tabula rasa_, 58, 208.
Mirabeau, 369-372.
Moderation, 11, 33, 82, 109, 170.
Modesty, 21, 34, 58, 92, 153, 162.
Molière, 141, 176, 213.
Monasteries, 69, 71, 167.
Monge, 433.
Monitors, 131, 147, 258, 276, 514-519.
Montagnards, 391, 394.
Montaigne, 85, 101-110, 183, 202, 280, 301, 490;
of Greek education, 18, 19, 29, 35.
Montaigu, College of, 87.
Montalivet, 395.
Montausier, 147, 219.
Montbrison, 342.
Monteil, 76.
Montesquieu, 20, 245, 329, 373.
Montpellier, 366.
Morality, 100, 105, 135, 370, 375;
good conduct, 15, 41, 57;
Platonic, 30, 31, 34;
utilitarian, 12, 302-305, 554.
Morals, 5, 8, 14, 39, 42, 48, 50-60, 105, 177, 186, 227, 252, 269,
320, 337, 370, 375, 380, 384, 471-475, 547, 565.
Moravian Brethren, 125.
Moreau, Marie, 261.
Mothers, 39, 44, 48, 55, 90, 108, 127, 129, 534;
duties of, 291, 384, 422, 456, 457, 469, 485, 486, 500, 546.
Mother-tongue, 121, 144, 155, 204, 243, 465-471.
Motives, 300, 493.
Moulins, 342.
München-Buchsee, 434.
Museum, 384, 414, 452.
Music, 18, 20, 28, 31, 51, 52, 76, 98, 119, 326, 396;
interdicted, 65, 175.
Mutual instruction, 131, 267, 392, 424, 513-519, 534.
Mysticism, 63, 125, 135, 193, 458, 476;
criticism of, 94, 447, 453.
Mythology, 20, 563.
Naples, University of, 77.
Napoleon I., 360, 433, 443, 485, 486, 510-513.
National Assembly, 369.
_National Education_, of La Chalotais, 344-355.
National holidays, 393.
Native tongue, 48, 85, 89, 119, 121, 144, 155, 204, 243, 351.
Natural history, 11, 40, 96, 97, 114, 322, 350, 424, 433.
Nature, 24, 31, 32, 48, 93, 170, 290, 309, 310, 448, 456, 475, 476,
553;
no commencement in, 496;
economy of, 3, 286, 423, 448, 496;
following, 2, 36, 290, 312, 347, 349, 401, 433, 503, 529, 561;
human, 46, 48, 159, 169, 217, 286, 333, 454, 491, 532, 536, 550;
morality in, 448;
return to, 553;
study of, 91, 93, 96, 118, 121, 132, 133, 290.
Naville, 74, 467.
Necker de Saussure, Madame, 493-500.
Neufchâtel, 434.
Neuhof, 419, 420.
New Education, The, 93, 123, 133, 190, 208, 284-310, 343, 347, 456,
460, 542.
Newspapers, 331.
Nicole, 65, 154-159, 217;
_Logic_, 154;
_Education of a Prince_, 154.
Niederer, 436.
Niemeyer, 414.
Nirvâna, 5.
Nisard, 237.
Normal Schools, 255, 259, 261, 262, 357, 367, 387, 404, 405, 406,
412, 423, 429, 464, 501.
North, Sir Thomas, _Plutarch_, 54.
_Novum Organum_, 123.
Number, 428, 430, 441;
of pupils, 10.
Oberlin, 415.
Object-lessons, 97, 98, 111, 133, 170, 192, 247, 293, 295, 400, 415,
430, 473, 502, 503, 558, 563.
Obligation. _See_ Compulsion, Education, State.
Observation, 75, 96, 97, 98, 123, 133, 136, 192, 293, 461, 558.
Old Education, The, 92, 116, 144, 192, 283, 364, 460, 547.
Olynthiacs, 113.
Optimism, 169, 201, 285, 333, 454, 491, 551.
Oratorians, 150-153, 192, 369, 395.
Oratory, 47, 52.
Oratory, The, 150.
_Orbis sensualium pictus_, of Comenius, 127, 134, 135, 415.
_Order of Study_, of Erasmus, 88.
Organization, 414, 456;
of Christian education, 62, 115, 259;
of instruction, 363, 368, 510;
of schools, 9, 27, 37, 69, 71, 77, 117, 127, 128, 265, 396;
of the State, 27, 35.
Orleans, 103, 120, 342.
Ormuzd, 14.
_Orphan Asylum_, Francke’s, 414.
Ovid, 87.
Oxenstiern, 125.
Oxford, University of, 77, 195.
_Pacatula_, 64.
Padua, University of, 78.
_Pædagogium_, 414.
Painting, 18, 98, 204.
Palatine school, 72.
Palestra, 19.
Pamiers, College of, 141.
Pansophia, 100, 125, 129, 297, 374, 411, 468, 480, 531, 565.
_Pantagruel_, 96.
Pantheism, 453;
of Hindoos, 2-4.
Pape-Carpentier, Madame, 501-504.
Papinian, 95.
Paris, 358, 433;
Normal School at, 405, 406;
University of, 75, 79, 141, 232, 233-235, 356, 404.
_Parish School_, The, 257, 258.
Parliaments, French, 340, 343.
Pascal, 156, 162.
Pascal, Jacqueline, 154, 214-217;
_Regulations for Children_, 154, 215, 216.
Pasquier, 69, 515.
Patak, 125.
Patience, 10, 58, 79, 160, 251, 521.
Paul III., Pope, 141.
_Paula_, 64-67.
Paulet, 514.
Pauline de Meulan, Madame Guizot, 490-494.
Pécaut, 464.
Pedagogics, 358, 372.
Pedagogue, 19, 45, 46, 102, 292.
Pedagogy, 46, 52, 53, 73, 83, 85, 91, 103, 121, 165, 190, 278, 311,
358, 454;
English, 187, 207, 535-570;
German, 413;
of the Jansenists, 158;
of the Jesuits, 148;
modern, 190, 192, 278, 456, 558.
Pedants, 74, 92, 105, 146, 168, 204, 328.
Penances, 260, 272.
People, The, 14, 16, 21, 33, 55, 78, 113, 114, 130, 209, 253, 308,
320, 372, 380, 415, 420, 441, 480, 484, 565;
exclusion of, 15, 28, 40, 54, 70, 80, 143, 352, 540.
Perez, 494, 526, 564.
Perfection, 7, 14, 33, 59, 63, 99, 104, 172, 278, 386, 451, 483, 500,
540.
Pericles, 22, 40, 46.
Perigordian, 102.
Persia, 14;
education by the State, 16, 35, 36.
Personality, 451.
Pessimism, 159-162, 532, 533, 555.
Pestalozzi, 122, 125, 413-445, 448, 501, 514, 537, 553, 555.
Peter the Great, 198.
Philanthropists, 414.
Philip of Macedon, 11.
Philosophers, 21, 22, 45, 55, 57, 311, 479.
Philosophy, 28, 47, 51, 52, 74, 77, 99, 103, 105, 129, 145, 151, 152,
179, 183, 234, 237, 247, 315, 326, 342, 351, 454, 538;
definition, 106;
of education, 126, 136, 158, 163, 188, 279, 310, 459, 497, 535-570;
Greek, 11, 30, 40, 211;
for magistrates, 28.
Phœnix, 46.
Physics, 52, 129, 206, 247, 292, 322, 323, 350, 396.
Piccolomini, Æneas Sylvius, 79, 80.
Pictet, 482.
Pietists, 414.
Pillans, 519.
_Plan of a University_, Diderot’s, 320.
Plato, 11, 22, 24, 27, 42, 46, 52, 56, 59, 91, 95, 324, 397, 529;
aim of, 34;
caste in, 28;
of the drama, 30, 56;
of music, 20, 31.
Platter, Thomas, 132.
Play, 458, 460, 461.
Pleasures, 294, 328.
Plessier, 261.
Plessis, College of, 286.
Pliny, _Letters_, 21, 59.
Pluche, The Abbé, 283.
Plutarch, 45, 53-58, 285;
education of women, 34, 35, 55;
training of children, 54, 89.
Poetry, 30, 56, 87.
Poitiers, 342.
Poland, 125, 308.
Politeness, 29, 88, 89, 161, 227, 270, 467.
Politics, 32, 37, 42, 130, 360, 374, 489, 542;
Aristotle’s, 37, 40;
Plato’s, 28;
versatility in, 373.
Polybius, 47.
_Ponocrates_ of Rabelais, 93-100.
Pontchartrain, de, 217.
Port Royal, 152-163, 215-217;
demolition of, 153.
Portugal, The King of, 341.
Positivists, 529-531.
Pourchot, 235, 261.
Practice, 105, 134, 135, 156, 355, 471;
of education, 85.
Prague, University of, 77.
Praise, 49, 50, 67, 146, 162, 169, 532.
Precision, 188, 240, 264, 325.
Priests, 116;
as educators, 5, 6, 15, 140-163.
Principles, 17, 454;
of education, 33, 37, 46, 83, 121, 135, 158, 190, 191, 309, 313,
346, 430, 439-441, 483, 522, 526, 534, 566-570.
Professors, 21, 22, 75, 233, 358, 377, 512.
Progress, 381;
popular instruction, 8, 12, 38, 112-136, 363, 479.
_Progressive Education_, of Madame Necker, 494-500.
Pronunciation, 11, 51.
Protestantism, 112-136.
Protestants, 85.
Proverbs, 7.
Prudence, 100, 104, 105, 108, 161, 199, 280, 281, 545.
Psychology, 24, 42, 46, 50, 135, 194, 251, 284, 312, 314, 335, 439,
454, 488, 492, 497, 508, 534, 537, 539, 558.
Public schools, 117, 130, 254, 415.
Punishment, 152, 160, 180, 200, 249-252, 270-276, 336, 551-553;
corporal, 6, 21, 51, 102, 122, 147, 148, 194, 201-203, 271-275.
Purity, 30, 48, 66, 451.
Purna, 4, 5.
Pythagoras, 52.
_Quadrivium_, 75, 76.
Questioning, The art of, 22, 23, 25, 42, 72, 170, 267.
Quick, R. H., 208;
_Educational Reformers_, 121.
Quintilian, 46, 47-52, 89, 239, 241;
of indulgence, 50.
Rabaud Saint-Étienne, 393.
Rabbins, 10, 11.
Rabelais, 91-100, 197, 297, 490.
Racine, 176, 213, 219, 243, 316.
Rambouillet, Hôtel de, 219.
Ramsauer, 431, 434.
Ramus, 85, 156, 232.
Rapet, 475.
Ratich, 121.
Rationalism, philosophic, 490, 493.
_Ratio Studiorum_, of the Jesuits, 142.
Reading, 11, 49, 51, 67, 69, 75, 86, 90, 107, 156, 204, 225, 239,
268, 326, 424, 440.
Realism, 91, 204, 211, 308, 309.
Reason, 31, 32, 38, 42, 57, 100, 104, 108, 122, 135, 136, 174, 190,
284, 314, 333, 335, 444, 454, 491, 493.
Reasoning, 23, 74, 82, 123, 165, 191, 267, 296, 316, 403.
Recreation, 87, 93, 94, 119, 146, 248, 251, 294, 393, 441, 458, 460,
461;
mathematical, 348, 350;
physical, 350, 396.
Recruitment of teachers, 367, 513.
Redolfi, 3.
Refinement, conventional, 12, 36, 89, 143, 227.
Reflection, 191, 208, 317, 318, 444, 558.
Reform, 4, 36, 73, 83, 220, 235, 279, 322, 381, 416, 496.
Reformation, The, 80, 84, 93, 99, 113-136.
_Refutation of Helvetius on Man_, Diderot’s, 319.
Reid, 482.
Reims, 259, 260.
Religion, 4, 5, 8, 30, 42, 44, 58, 62, 73, 98, 99, 118, 228, 303,
305, 326, 337, 375, 381, 453, 489, 554.
Rémusat, Madame de, 487-490.
Renaissance, 71, 80, 81, 83-111, 234.
Renan, 325;
_Vie de Jésus_, 11;
education of women, 34.
Repetition, 11, 121, 135, 173.
_Republic_, Plato’s, 27-33.
Respect, for teacher, 6, 10, 181, 184, 200, 532.
Rewards, 67, 147, 194, 249, 250, 276, 352, 493, 522, 532.
Rhetoric, 6, 18, 21, 47, 48, 51, 71, 85, 109, 144, 171, 189, 316,
321.
Rhythm, 20.
Richter, 536.
_Rights of Man_, Talleyrand’s, 375.
Robespierre, 391, 393, 397, 402.
_Robinson Crusoe_, 298.
Rochefoucault, 103.
Rochow, 415.
Rod, The, 6, 7, 51, 76, 102, 147, 148, 202, 273.
Rodez, 141, 368.
Roger de Guimps, 419, 425.
Rolland, 279, 343, 355-359;
Law of, 399, 400.
Rollin, 50, 188, 202, 232-252, 283, 317, 349, 357, 514.
Roman Law, 44.
Rome, 43-60.
Romme, 379, 391, 393, 399;
Law of, 399, 400.
Rouen, 263, 270, 364.
Rousseau, 27, 36, 38, 97, 98, 110, 126, 171, 196, 197, 198, 202, 209,
210, 278-310, 332-337, 348, 363, 368, 415, 426, 442, 448, 481,
496, 553.
Routine, 3, 12, 74, 92, 140, 191, 232, 235, 265, 333, 536.
Royer-Collard, 515.
Rudolstadt, 452, 457.
Rules, 134, 156, 264, 471.
Russell, Doctor, 202.
Sacrifices, 4, 30, 259, 260, 417.
Saint Cyr, 218-231, 307, 486.
Saint Cyran, 153, 160.
Sainte-Beuve, 155, 479, 491.
Saint François de Salles, 225.
Saint Gall, 68.
Saint-Germain, 485.
Saint-Hilaire, Barthélemy, 522, 524.
Saint-Just, 399.
Saint Leu, 481.
Saint Malo, 344.
Saint Pierre, The Abbé, 280-282, 297.
Saint Pierre, Bernardin de, 394.
Saint Simon, 148, 166, 181, 183, 527, 528.
Saint Yon, 263.
Salamanca, 77.
Salary, of teachers, 366, 367, 392, 402, 410, 417, 519, 520.
Salian hymns, 44.
Salzman, 415.
Sauvan, Mademoiselle, 504, 518.
Savages, education of, 1, 13, 292, 541.
_Savoyard Vicar’s Profession of Faith_, Rousseau’s, 305.
Sarazin, 518.
Schiller, 538.
Schleiermacher, 537.
Schmid, 434, 436.
Schmidt, Charles, 538.
Scholasticism, 71, 74;
criticism of, 92, 107, 116, 149, 235.
School-house, 131, 132, 367.
Schools, 113, 116, 117, 401, 422;
adornment of, 103, 131;
at Athens, 19, 20, 21;
_central_, 407, 408;
in China, 13;
claustral, 69, 75, 76, 116, 282, 345;
etymology of the word, 87;
European type of, 131;
infant, 457-465, 501-504;
in India, 6, 514;
Jewish, 9;
Latin, 119, 128, 130, 131, 144, 346;
of the Middle Age, 69, 77, 78;
Palatine, 72;
primary, 120, 128, 190, 234, 254-277, 365, 383, 426, 477, 510,
520-525;
public, 114, 128, 135, 415;
real, 414;
at Rome, 45, 52;
secular, 114, 130, 233, 254, 278, 297, 318, 338, 509, 522.
Schœpfer, Captain, 433.
Schultaus, 146.
Schultess, Anna, 419.
Science, 40, 51, 76, 77, 96, 97, 100, 105, 151, 183, 247, 281, 297,
323, 386, 404, 431, 512, 558, 559;
of education, 22, 33, 37-41, 42, 54, 85, 95, 104, 363, 409,
435-470;
neglect of, 74, 86, 91, 145, 401.
Scipio, 105.
Scudéry, Mademoiselle de, 226.
Sculpture, 98.
Secularization, 114, 130, 233, 254, 278, 297, 318, 319, 338, 340-344,
509, 522.
Séguier, 141.
Self-abasement, 4, 65, 161, 221, 260.
Self-consciousness, 4, 24, 42, 57, 133, 158, 317, 318, 428, 458.
Self-control, 57, 58, 152, 196, 499.
Selfishness, 4, 108, 300, 302, 499, 536, 542.
Self-renunciation, 4, 5, 63, 148, 149, 215, 259, 346.
Seminary for Schoolmasters, 261, 277, 357, 367, 387, 404.
Semler, 414.
Seneca, 52, 53, 59, 91.
Sensationalism, 133, 187, 193, 208, 295, 328, 346, 381, 403, 554,
561.
Senses, 132, 133, 135, 158, 193, 194, 283-310;
education of, 295, 314, 328, 449, 496, 503, 542-555.
Sensibilities, 285, 330;
training of, 2, 38, 133, 193, 200, 201, 301, 329, 330, 403, 503,
554.
Sentenis, 304.
Sentiments, 302-305.
Sequence of studies, 157, 323, 403, 404, 452, 463, 474, 548, 558.
Seven Liberal Arts, The, 75, 76, 119.
Sévigné, Madame de, 152, 198, 213, 489.
Sexes, equality of, 241, 256, 384, 479, 488;
separation of, 8, 34, 256, 378, 396, 402, 466.
Shaftesbury, Lord, 195.
Shakespeare, 54, 320.
Siciliani, 564.
Sidonius, Apollinaris, 68.
Sieyès, 391-396.
Signal, 266, 273.
Silence, 265, 266.
Sill, Miss E. R., 310.
Simon, J., 7, 364, 523, 533.
Simplicity, 121, 157, 158, 221, 228, 229, 403, 439, 474.
Singing, 51, 119, 214, 420, 433.
Site, for schools, 6, 20, 131, 132.
Slaves, 39, 40;
as teachers, 45.
Smith, Adam, 510.
Society, 3, 54, 61, 70, 98, 287, 298, 489, 500, 509, 523;
unity of, 18, 37, 73, 98, 115, 125, 282, 359, 515, 566.
Socrates, 22, 42, 52.
Socratic method, 22-27, 32, 211, 429, 471.
Solomon, 9, 99, 119.
Solon, 19, 21.
_Sophie_, 305-307.
Sophists, 21.
Soul, 3, 38, 315, 451;
culture of, 58, 84, 193, 469, 546;
development of, 18, 19, 28, 29, 33, 38, 57, 91, 99, 136, 192, 288,
329, 468, 495-500, 565.
Spain, 77, 132.
Sparta, 17, 345.
Specialists, 103, 209, 300, 325.
Spelling, 155.
Spencer, Herbert, 29, 66, 100, 194, 207, 313, 322, 325, 507, 538-555;
of caste, 3;
prejudices of, 546, 547, 552, 553-555.
_Sphericity_, of Frœbel, 450, 451, 459.
Spirit, 12, 13, 92, 101, 325, 547;
of Christianity, 61, 62;
national, 359, 401, 489, 490, 523, 565;
of Protestantism, 113, 120.
Spiritual life, 18, 38, 57, 208, 279, 316.
Spiritualistic School, 523, 533.
Spontaneity, 4, 24, 208;
in education, 17, 31, 33, 57, 101, 114, 130, 284-309, 452, 454,
497, 547;
suppressed, 12, 114, 143, 271.
Staël, Madame de, 420, 495.
Stanz, 419, 423.
Stapfer, 466.
State, The, 12, 27, 54, 61, 330, 341;
duty to educate, 13, 16, 27, 38, 42, 50, 81, 115, 233, 235, 238,
250, 252, 255, 277, 282, 321, 345, 353, 360, 363-389, 398, 415,
509, 520-525, 565;
physical education by, 19, 29.
States-General, 120, 366, 368.
Stewart, Dugald, 325, 482, 484.
Stoics, 52, 58, 141, 292.
Strasburg, College of, 85.
Studies, 20, 31, 34, 49, 51, 76, 88, 105, 118, 119, 296, 402, 539,
558;
Baconian, 32, 123;
classical, 143, 162, 163, 204, 211, 252, 283, 317, 321, 324-326,
351, 352, 481, 512, 547;
disciplinary, 40, 60, 80, 98, 118, 203, 204, 211, 296-298, 539,
562;
diversity of, 129, 181, 448;
gradation of, 38, 80, 88, 90, 122, 130, 131, 204, 233, 267, 495,
520, 525, 558, 559;
Jewish, 11;
painful, 33, 171, 207, 217, 252, 346, 476, 495;
pleasurable, 33, 49, 79, 171, 181, 206, 240, 348, 457-465, 495,
541, 549;
sequence of, 157, 323, 403, 452, 463, 474, 548, 558;
simultaneous, 51, 152, 240, 266, 267, 424, 515;
utilitarian, 40, 60, 80, 98, 118, 203, 211, 296-298, 539, 562;
educational value of, 60, 105, 204, 323-326, 339, 388, 469, 557,
558;
for women, 174, 384, 486, 495, 500, 505.
Sturm, 85.
Sweden, 125, 353.
Switzerland, 465, 524.
Summaries, 15, 41, 59, 81, 110, 136, 163, 185, 210, 230, 252, 277,
310, 338, 360, 388, 411, 444, 475, 506, 534, 568.
Supervision, 359, 369, 392, 396, 399, 401, 486, 510.
Syllogism, 74, 80, 85, 149.
Symmetry, 31, 38, 39, 82, 84, 93, 163, 394, 396, 444, 458, 547.
Synthesis, 313.
_Tabula rasa_, 58, 208.
Talent, 3, 42, 57, 93, 158, 286, 328;
encouragement of, 377.
Talleyrand, 369, 372-379, 434.
Talmud, 10, 11.
Teachers, 13, 50, 53, 69, 117, 251, 257, 265, 266, 292, 365, 367,
392, 470, 479, 500, 513, 522, 527;
Aristotle, 36, 41;
faults of, 262;
respect for, 6, 10, 100, 120, 396, 504, 521, 522, 532;
as tradesmen, 367, 519;
training of, 405, 504;
virtues of, 10, 50, 251, 255, 455, 532;
women as, 44, 384, 458, 478-507.
“Teachers’ fairs,” 367.
Teaching, 41, 46, 49, 53, 79, 88, 90, 114, 122, 226, 246, 267, 269,
352, 426, 427;
of geography, 403, 404;
of history, 326, 349;
of objects, 97, 132, 293.
Teaching Congregations, The, 138-163, 192, 253, 486, 509.
_Telemachus_, Fénelon’s, 166, 175, 182, 306.
Temperance, 14, 15, 18, 35, 36, 194, 197, 292, 381.
Tennis, 94, 104.
Terence, 87, 183, 324.
Term, 106, 107, 133, 326.
Tertullian, 64.
Text-books, 132, 173, 352, 360, 368, 393, 403, 429, 441;
uniformity in, 121.
_Theme_, 158, 244.
Themistocles, 20.
Theology, 69, 74, 77, 174, 234, 337.
Theory, 17, 60, 74, 134;
of education, 85, 340, 509, 525-570.
Theresa, Saint, 64.
Théry, 362.
Things, 85, 97, 106, 107, 132, 133, 293, 415.
Thomassin, The Père, 150, 152.
Thought, 3, 57, 74, 97, 107, 157, 316, 469;
life of, 41, 63, 193, 325, 326, 381, 468, 475, 565.
_Thoughts_, Locke’s, 195-208.
Thucydides, 33, 43, 245.
Thuringia, 447.
Tobler, 428.
Tournon, College of, 141.
Trades, 118, 119, 206, 209, 263, 300, 384, 400, 401, 519.
Tradition, 13, 143, 333.
Tragedy, 30, 285.
Training, 41, 111;
of children, 54, 129;
mental, 18, 19, 20, 24, 58, 95, 157, 203, 324-326, 381, 468-475,
496, 548;
physical, 18, 19, 39, 41, 79, 80, 94, 197, 283, 496, 554, 555;
of the senses, 38, 96, 97, 133, 193, 208, 283, 289-308, 503;
of will, 499, 547.
Translation, value of, 327, 330.
_Treatise on Pedagogy_, Kant’s, 332-338.
_Treatise on Studies_, Rollin’s, 235.
_Trivium_, 75, 76.
Truth, 24, 151, 193, 301.
Turgot, 359.
Tutor, 69, 327, 518.
_Twelve Tables_, 44.
Uniformity, 264, 281.
Unity, 18, 450;
of education, 455;
in teaching, 129, 152, 288, 359, 509.
_Universal Instruction_, Jacotot’s, 526, 527.
Universals, 32, 453, 527.
University, 22, 75, 77, 128, 252;
Diderot’s, 326, 327;
for women, 486.
University of France, 233, 243, 321, 341, 343, 356, 360, 509-512,
533.
Unselfishness, 10, 78, 136, 522.
Utility, 40, 44, 60, 115, 136, 189, 196, 200, 201, 296-310, 408, 529,
538, 541, 562;
of culture, 324-326, 381, 523.
Ursulines, 214.
Values, educational, 60, 323-326, 339, 388, 469, 557.
Van Laun, 213.
Varet, 154, 159;
_Christian Education_, 154.
Varro, 47.
Vaughan and Davies, _Republic_, 31.
Venice, 79.
Vernier, 467.
_Version_, 158, 244.
Veturia, 45.
Vice, cause of, 50, 116, 381;
how overcome, 56, 118, 160, 185, 381.
Vienna, University of, 77.
Villemain, 236, 304, 468.
Vincennes, 514.
Vinet, 500.
Virchow, 539.
Virgil, 64, 87, 97, 324.
Virtue, 26, 30, 35, 39, 104, 199, 200, 230, 381;
moral, 280;
passive, 5, 55, 80, 226;
Roman, 44, 52.
Vittorino da Feltre, 78.
Vives, 91, 132.
Vivonne, Catherine de, 219.
Voltaire, 86, 141, 236, 279, 329, 331, 344, 345, 368.
Vulliemin, 435.
Warriors, 15, 28, 31, 70.
Wartensee, 456.
Washington, 422.
Watson, _Quintilian_, 50.
Wessel, John of, 87.
Wittenberg, University of, 113.
Whipping, 6, 7, 51, 76, 102, 147, 148.
Will, 13, 61, 194, 201, 334, 372, 476, 484, 543, 547, 552, 553.
Wine, 194, 292, 381.
Wisdom, 15, 41, 48, 57;
the highest, 3, 57, 104, 106, 135, 295, 381.
Wolker, Doctor, 246.
Women, 5, 16, 34, 44, 48, 60, 90, 488, 506;
education of, 5, 15, 16, 27, 34, 35, 48, 55, 56, 79, 80, 90, 91,
109, 110, 115, 117, 128, 168, 174-176, 212-231, 252, 282,
305-307, 328, 384, 464;
unsexed, 27, 506.
Words, 85, 106, 107, 132, 134, 144, 325, 326, 415, 430.
Wordsworth, 54.
Works, of Comenius, 125-127;
of Diderot, 319;
of Erasmus, 87-90;
of Fénelon, 166;
of Madame de Genlis, 480;
of Madame de Maintenon, 222;
of Madame Pape-Carpentier, 501-503;
of Pestalozzi, 421, 422, 431, 438;
of Plutarch, 53-58.
Worthington, Miss, 171, 336.
Writing, 6, 11, 49, 67, 86, 88, 90, 204, 268;
schools, 120, 254.
Wurtzburg, 466.
Xenophon, 14, 34, 35, 36, 55.
Yverdun, 419, 420, 434, 449.
Zurich, 418.
Zwingli, 113, 114.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Footnote[85] is referenced twice, from §116 and §117.
Footnote[153] has no anchor in the text, but is referenced from the
previous Footnote[152].
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within
the text and consultation of external sources.
Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text,
and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.
Pg xi: ‘of history of pedagogy’ replaced by ‘of a history of
pedagogy’.
§40 Footnote[40]: ‘I thiuk it may’ replaced by ‘I think it may’.
§42: ‘teaching intrument was’ replaced by ‘teaching instrument was’.
§125: Missing -- inserted before ‘The German reformer’.
§233 Footnote[143]: the citation ‘--Johnson’s _Cyclopædia_.’ has been
joined to the quotation, for consistency with other citations.
§520: ‘that true edution’ replaced by ‘that true education’.
§560 Footnote [235]: ‘Monsieurs Rapet and’ replaced by ‘Messieurs
Rapet and’.
§560: ‘Conseil supérieure’ replaced by ‘Conseil supérieur’.
§594 Footnote [252]: ‘Madamoiselle Sauvan’ replaced by ‘Mademoiselle
Sauvan’.
§621: ‘Victor Consedérant’ replaced by ‘Victor Considerant’.
§621 Footnote [270]: ‘Consedérant’ replaced by ‘Considerant’.
Appendix B.
#5: ‘Historie Critique’ replaced by ‘Histoire Critique’.
#25: ‘et de Principe’ replaced by ‘et du Principe’.
Index.
Entry ‘Encyclopedists’ replaced by ‘Encyclopædists’.
Entry ‘Königberg’ replaced by ‘Königsberg’.
Entry ‘Sazarin’ replaced by ‘Sarazin’.
Entry ‘Studies’: ‘Bacon of’ replaced by ‘Baconian’.
Entry ‘Symmetry’: ‘896’ replaced by ‘396’.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The History of Pedagogy" ***
Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.