JOSEPH PAYNE. LECTURES lN • ' ' • ' ON THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION, WITH OTHEE LECTUEEs: BY JOSEPH PAYNE, THE FIRST PROFESSOR OF THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCA- TION IN THE OOIiLEGE OF PBEOEPTORS, LONDON, ENG. NEW YORK: E. L. KELLOGG & CO. 1884. <(^\ COPYRIGHT BY E. L. KELLOGG & CO., 1884. CONTENTS: PAGE Preface. iv. A Sketch of the Life of Joseph Payne. vii. The Science and Art of Education. 6 The Theory or Science of Education. 39 The Practice or Art of Education. 75 Educational Methods. 105 Principles of the Science of Education. 143 Theories of Teaching with their Corresponding Prac- tice. 151 The Importance of the Training of the Teacher. 174 The True Foundation of Science Teaching. 193 Pestalozzi: the Influence of his Principles and Prac- tice or Elementary Education. 207 Froebel and the Kindergarten System of Elementary Education. 232 iii« 543600 PREFACE. Joseph Payne's writings possess a high value on account of the scientific form which his state- ments pertaining to education take on. The crys- talizing process seems to have set in; truths no longer stand separate, but tend to organize. During the latter part of this century the question — Has Education a scientific foundation ? began to be asked, doubtfully by most. The Art of Teaching had been learned by imitation ; the teacher sought no principles, because he never heard they existed. But great men from time to time became teachers. Eabelais, Montaigne, Locke, the Jesuits, Rosseau, Pestalozzi, Froebel, and many others, rolled up a rich mass of teaching-facts, and partially arranged them in order. It needed next a philosophic mind to deal with these discoveries, to state their value and explain them. Joseph Payne seemed raised up for this purpose ; his cast of mind, education and experience, fitted him to investigate this field of thought. Remember that thousands of teachers had read what Pestalozzi and Froebel had done. Joseph Payne saw their work was founded on the growth- iv. PREFACE. V laws of the human mind, and that it was eminent for that very reason. His writings cannot conceal his joy at thus finding a solid ground for methods of teaching. His circle of readers has been stead- ily widening since his death; like other men of genius, he was appreciated by a small circle while living. A growing desire is apparent in this country for a better comprehension of education ; even teach- ers in obscure places, on low salaries, are reading educational books, so that the publishers felt en- couraged to put forth this volume. It contains the most valuable of all of Mr. Payne's pubHshed works. The English edition contains : *1. Theory of Education ; *2. Practice of Educa- tion ; *3. Educational Methods ; *4. Principles of the Science of Education ; 5. Training and Equipment of the Teacher ; *6. Importance of the Training of the Teacher ; *7. Science and Art of Education ; *8. True Foundation of Science Teaching; 9. Preface, etc.. to Miss Youmans' Essay on the Culture of the^ Observing Powers of Children ; 10. Curriculum of Modern Education; 11. Importance of Improving our Ordinary Methods of Sckool Instruction; 12. The Past, Present, etc., of the College of Preceptors ; 13. Proposal for Endowment of Professorship of the Science and Art of Education in College of Pre- ceptors ; 14. A Compendious Exposition of Jacotot's System of Education. This volume contains all of the above that are marked with a star, and besides a lecture on Pes- talozzi and a lecture on Froebel— lectures which did much to make him famous. These lectures are not in the English edition ; so that in this small volume VI. PREFACE. the American reader has all of Mr, Payne's writ- ings that wijl be of practical value to him. Mr. Payne was Professor of the Art and Science of Education in the College of Preceptors in London, and lectures 12 and 13 relate to matters of no im- portance to us. Lecture 5 discusses men and mat- "ters that are only interesting to English teachers. Lecture 9 is a preface to an American book repub- lished in England. Lecture 10 discusses the claims of classics and science. Lecture 11 discusses edu- cation reports and results, and was interesting, per- haps, at the time to English readers. Lecture 14 is the republication of a little pamphlet published by Mr. Payne in 1830, and discusses the teaching of a foreign language. It will be seen, therefore, that this volume con- tains those writings of Mr. Payne that have value to every teacher who seeks the foundation prin- ciples of the noble Art of Teaching, A SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF JOSEPH PAYNE. Joseph Payne, one of the greatest teachers and educational reformers of modern times, was born at Bury St. Edmunds, England, on the 2d of March, 1808. Little is known of his early life, but it must have been comparatively humble for this very reason, as well as for the fact that at an early period he was under the necessity of earning his own living. His boyhood instruction was probably very meagre, as he says that the first teacher under whom he really learned anything was a Mr. Free- man, to whom he went when fourteen years of age. His life at this period must have been a busy one. Stil], like all great heroes, he realized the worth of time ; for several common-place books and various *' extract " pamphlets still exist to bear evidence to his mental industry. At the age of twenty he be- came a tutor at Camberwell, in the family of David Fletcher. Here the young children of his patron were joined in their studies by others of their play- mates, and all became the wards of Payne's enthu- siasm. Indeed he showed so much energy and tact that soon a select school sprang up and gradually vii. Vlil. A SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF JOSEPH PAYISTE. developed into the "Denmark Hill Grammar School." This school shortly became famous, and, in conjunction with ^Mr. Fletcher, was carried on for a number of years. About this time Payne be- came acquainted with a Miss Dyer, who was in charge of a girls' school of high standing, and her tastes and sympathies soon blended in marriage with his, although she continued her school for some years thereafter. In 1845 Mr. Payne con- nected himself with a school at Mansion House, Letherhead. Here he spent eighteen more years of his hf e in winning new laurels as Head Master of one of the best private schools in England. In 1863, having amassed sufficient means for the enjoy- ment of his modest tastes, he withdrew from teach- ing directly, and devoted himself to writing, lec- turing, and advancing the welfare of the College of Preceptors. In this college he took a profound interest, and when in 1873 a Professorship of the Science and Art of Education was founded in that institution, Mr. Payne was called to fill it. This was the first chair of the kind established in any respectable English or American college. During all the years of his active teaching he was not only advancing the cause of education by put- ting forward his own theories, but he became an earnest student of the systems of others. Thus he studied and admired Frcebel, Pestalozzi and Jac- otot. Payno was also a strong supporter of ** wo- men's higher education," and a vigorous student of English and French philology. He died April 30, 1876, having in his life work laid the corner-stone of a monument that will some day be raised to him as one of the eminent founders of the New Education. THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION At the beginning of last year, I delivered, in this room, a lecture intended to inaugurate the Course of Lectures and Lessons on the Science and Art of Education, which the Council of the College of Preceptors had appointed me to undertake. The experiment then about to be tried was a new one in this country ; for, although we have had for some years colleges intended to prepare elementary teach- ers for their work, nothing of the kind existed for the middle class and higher teachers. As I stated in that inaugural lecture, the Council of the College of Preceptors, after waiting in vain for action on the part of the Government, or of the Universities, and attempting, also in vain, to obtain the influen- tial co-operation of the leading scholastic authori- ties in aid of their object, resolved to make a be- ginning themselves. They therefore adopted a scheme laid before them by one of their colleagues — a lady — and offered the first Professorship of the Science and Art of Education to me. We felt that some considerable difficulties lay in the way of any attempt to realize our intentions. Among these, there were two especially on which I will dwell for a few minutes. The first was, the opinion very generally entertained in this coun- 7 8 THE SCIKJ^CE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 'tty, mat thdre'iB no Science of Education, that is, that there are no fixed principles for the guidance of the educator's practice. It is generally admit- ted that there is a Science of Medicine, of Law, of Theology ; but it is not generally admitted that there is a corresponding Science of Education. The opinion that there is no such science was, as we know, courageously uttered by Mr. Lowe, but we also know that there are hundreds of cultivated professional men in England, who silently maintain it and are practically guided by it. These men, many of them distinguished proficients in the Art of teach- ing, if you venture to suggest to them that there must be a correlated Science which determines — whether they are conscious of it or not— the laws of their practice, generally by a significant smile let you know their opinion both of the subject and yourself. If they deign to open their lips at aU, it is to mut- ter about "Pedagogy," "frothy stuff," "mere quackery," or to tell you point-blank that if there is such a science, it is no business of theirs : they do very well without it. This opinion, which they, no doubt, sincerely entertain, is, however, simply the product of thoughtlessness on their part. If they had carefuUy considered the subject in rela- tion to themselves — if they had known the fact that the Science which they disclaim or denounce has long engaged the attention of hundreds of the prof oundest thinkers of Germany — ^many of them teachers of at least equal standing to their own — who have reverently admitted its pretensions, and devoted their great powers of mind to the investi- gation of its laws, they would, at least, have given you a respectful hearing. But great, as we know, THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDITOATION. 9 is the power of ignorance, and it will prevail — for a time. There are, however, even now, hopeful signs which indicate a change of public opinion. Only a week ago, a leader in the Times called atten- tion to Sir Bartle Frere's conviction expressed in one of his lectures in Scotland, that ** the acknowl- edged strength and power of Germany is intimately connected with the admirable education which the great body of the German nation are in the habit of receiving." The education of which Sir Bartle Frere thus speaks, is the direct result of that very science which is so generally unknown, and des- pised, because unknown, by our cultivated men, and especially by many of our most eminent teach- ers. When this educated power of Germany, which has already shaken to its centre the boasted military reputation of France, does the same for our boasted commercial reputation, as Sii* Bartle Frere and others declare that it is even now doing, and for our boasted engineering leputation, as Mr. Mundella predicts it will do, unless we look about us in time, the despisers of the Science of Education will adopt a different tone, and perhaps confess them- selves in error ; at all events, they will betake them- selves to a modest and respectful silence. No later back than yesterday (January 19) the Times con- tained three letters bearing on Sir Bartle Frere's as- sertion that the increasing coromercial importance of Germany is due mainly to the excellence of Ger- man education. One writer refers to the German Realschulen or Thing-Schools and to the High Schools of Commerce, in both of which the prac- tical study of matters bearing on real life is con- ducted. Another writer, an Ex-Chairman of the 10 THE SCIENCEI AND ART OF EDUCATION. Liverpool Chamber of Conunerce, says, — "I have no hesitation in stating that young Germans make the best business men, and the reason is that they are usually better educated ; I mean by this, they have a more thorough education, which im- parts to them accuracy and precision. What- ever they do, is well and accurately done, no detail is too small to escape their attention, and this engenders a habit ot thought and mind, which in after Hfe makes them shrewd and thorough men of business. I think the maintenance of our commercial superiority is very much of a school-master's question." A third writer speaks of the young German clerks sent out to the East as * 'infinitely superior " in education to the class of young men sent out from England, and ends by saying : ** Whatever be the cause, there can be no question that the Germans are outstripping us in the race for commercial superiority in the far East." Some persons, no doubt, will be found to cavil at these statements ; the only comment, however, I think ifc necessary to make is this — "Germany is a country where the Science of Education is widely and profoundly studied, and where the Art is con- formed to the science." I leave you to draw your own inferences. Without, however, dwelling fur- ther on this important matter, though it is inti- mately connected with my purpose, I repeat that this dead weight of ignorance in the pubUc mind respecting the true claims of the Science of Educa- tion, constitutes one of the difficulties with which we have to contend. The writer of a leading arti- cle in the Times, January 10, said emphatically, *' In truth, there is nothing in which the mass of THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 11 Englishmen are so much in need of Education as in appreciating the value of education itself." These words contain a pregnant and melancholy truth, which will be more and more acknowledged as time moves on. But there was another difficulty of scarcely less importance with which we had to contend, and this is the conviction entertained by the general body of teachers that they have nothing to learn about edu- cation. We are now descending, be it remembered, from the leaders to the great band of mere follow- ers, from the officers of the army to the rank and ffie. My own experience, it may well be believed, of teachers, has been considerable. As the net re- sult of it, I can confidently affirm that until I com- menced my class in February last, I never came in contact with a dozen teachers who were not entire- ly satisfied with their own empirical methods of teaching. To what others had written on the prin- ciples of Education, — to what these had reduced to successful practice, — they were, for the most part, profoundly indifferent. To move onward in the grooves to which they had been accustomed in their school days, or if more intelligent, to devise meth- ods of their own, without any respect to the ex- perience, however enlightened, of others, was, and is, the general practice among teachers. For them, indeed, the great educational authorities, whether writers or workers, might as well never have exist- ed at all. In short, to repeat what I said before, teachers, as a class (there are many notable excep- tions), are so contented with themselves and their own methods of teaching that they complacently be- lieve and act on the belief that they have nothing at 12 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. all to learn from the Science and Art of Education ; and this is much to be regretted for their own sakes, and especially for the sake of their pupils, whose educational health and well-being lie in their hands. However this may be, the fact is unquestionable, that one of the greatest impediments to any at- tempt to expound the principles of Education lies in the unwarrantable assumption on the part of the teachers that they have nothing to learn on the subject. Here, however, as is often the case, the real need for a remedy is in inverse proportion to the patient's consciousness of the need. The worst teachers are generally those who are most satisfied with themselves, and their own small perform- ances. The fallacy, not yet displaced from the mind of the public, on which this superstructure of conceit is raised, is that '* he who knows a subject can teach it." The postulate, that a teacher should thorough- ly know the subject he professes to teach, is by no means disputed, but it is contended that the ques- tion at issue is to be mainly decided by considera- tions lying on the pupil's side of it. The process of thinking, by which the pupil learns, is essentially his own. The teacher can but stimulate and direct, he cannot supersede it. He cannot do the thinking necessary to gain the desired result for his pupil. The problem, then, that he has to solve, is how to get his pupil to learn ; and it is evi- dent that he may know the subject without know- ing the best means of making his pupil know it too, which is the assumed end of all his teaching. He may be an adept in his subject, but a novice in THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 13 the art of teaching it— an art which has principles, laws, and processes peculiar to itself. But, again ; a man, profoundly acquainted with a subject, may be unapt to teach it by reason of the very height and extent of his knowledge. His mind habitually dwells among the mountains, and he has, therefore, small sympathy with the toiling plodders on the plains below. The difficulties which beset their path have long ceased to be a part of his own experience. He cannot then easily conde- scend to their condition, place himself alongside of them, and force a sympathy he cannot naturally feel with their trials and perplexities. Both these cases tend to the same issue, and show that it is a fallacy to assert that there is any necessary connec- tion between knowing a subject and knowing how to teach it. Our experiment was commenced on the 6th of February last. On the afternoon of that day, only seventeen teachers had given in their names as members of the class that was to be formed. In the evening, however, to my surprise, I found no fewer than fifty-one awaiting the lecture. This number was increased in a few weeks to seventy, and on the whole, there have been eighty members in the course of the year. Having brought our Uttle his- tory down to the commencement of the lectures of 1873, I propose to occupy the remainder of our time with a brief accoimt of what was intended, and what has been accomplished by them. Generally speaking, the intention was to show (1) that there is a Science of Education, that is, that there are principles derived from the nature of the mind which furnish laws for the educator's 14 THE SCIENCE AND AET OF EDUCATION. guidance ; (2) that there is an Art founded on the Science, which will be efficient or inefficient in pro- portion to the educator's conscious knowledge of its principles. It will be, perhaps, remembered by some now present, that I gave in my Inaugural Lecture a sketch of the manner in which I intended to treat these subjects. As, however, memories are often weak, and require to be humored, and as repetition is the teacher's sheet-anchor, I may, perhaps, be excused if I repeat some of the matter then brought forward, and more especially as I may calculate that a large pro- portion of my audience were not present last year. I had to consider how I should treat the Science of Education, especially in relation to such a class as I was likely to have. It was to be expected that the class would consist of young teachers unskilled in the art of teaching, and perhaps even more un- skilled in that of thinking. Such in fact they, for the most part, proved to be. Now the Science of Education is a branch of Psychology, and both Edu- cation and Psychology, as sciences, may be studied either deductively or inductively. We may com- mence with general propositions, and work down- ward to the facts they represent, or^ upward from the facts to the general propositions. To students who had been mainly occupied with the concrete and practical, it seemed to me much better to com- mence with the concrete and practical ; with facts, rather than with abstractions. But what facts ? That was the question. There is no doubt that a given art contains in its practice, for eyes that can truly see, the principles which govern its action. The reason for doing may be gathered from the THE SCIENCE AND ART OP EDUCATION. 15 doing itself. If, then, we could be quite sure be- forehand that perfect specimens of practical teach- ing based on sound principles, were accessible, we might have set about studying them carefully, with a view to eHcit the principles which underlie the practice, and in this way we might have arrived at a Science of Education. But then this involves the whole question — Who is to guarantee dogmati- cally the absolute soundness of a given method of teaching, and if any one comes forward to do this, who is to guarantee the soundness of his judg- ment ? It appears, then, that although we might evolve the principles of medicine from the general practice of medicine, or the principles of engineering from the general practice of engineering, we cannot evolve the principles of education from the general practice of education as we actually find it. So much of that practice is radically and obviously unsound, so little of sequence and co-ordination is there in its parts, so aimless generally is its action, that to search for the Science of Education in its or- dinary present practice would be a sheer waste of time. We should find, for instance, the same teach- er acting one day, and with regard to one. subject, on one principle, and another day, or with regard to another subject, on a totally different principle, all the time forgetting that the mind really has but one method of learning so as really to know, though multitudes of methods may be framed for giving the semblance of knowing. We see one teacher, who is never satisfied until he secures his pupils' possession of clear ideas upon a given sub- ject ; another, who will let them go off with con- 16 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. fused and imperfect ideas ; and a third, who will think his duty done when he has stuffed them with mere words — with husks instead of grain. It is then perfectly clear that we cannot deduce the principles of true science from varying practice of this kmd ; and if we confine ourselves to inferen- ces drawn from such practice, we shall never know what the Science of Education is. Having thus shut ourselves off from dealing with the subject by the high a priori method, commencing with ab- stract principles, and also from the unsatisfactory method of inference founded on various, but gen- erally imperfect, practice ; and being still resolved, if possible, to get down to a soHd foundation on which we might build a fabric of science, we were led to inquire whether any system of education is to be found, constant and consistent in its working, by the study of which we might reach the desired end. On looking round we saw that there is such a system continually at work under our very eyes, — one which secures definite results, in the shape of positive knowledge, and trains to habit the pow- ers by which these results are gained,— which can- not but be consistent with the general nature of things, because it is Nature's own. Here, then, we have what we are seeking for— a system working harmoniously and consistently toward a definite end and securing positive results — a system, too, strictly educational, whether we regard the develop- ment of the faculties employed, or the acquisition of knowledge, as accompanying the development — a system in which the little child is the Pupil and Nature the educator. Having gained this stand-point, and with it a con- THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 17 viction that if we could only understand this great educator's method of teaching, and see the true connection between the means he employs and the end he attains, we should get a correct notion of what is really meant by education. We next inquire, *' how are we to proceed for this purpose ?'• The an- swer is, by the method through which other truths are ascertained— by investigation. We must do what the chemist, the physician, the astronomer do, when they study their respective subjects. We must examine into the facts, and endeavor to ascer- tain, first, what they are ; secondly, what they mean. The bodily growth of the child from birth is, for instance, a fact which we can all observe for ourselves. What does it mean ? It means that under certain external influences — such as air, light, food — the child increases in material bulk and in physical power ; that these influences tend to inte- gration, to the forming of a whole ; that they are all necessary for that purpose ; that the withhold- ing of any one of them leads to disintegration or the breaking up of the whole. ' But as we continue to observe, we see, moreover, evidences of mental growth. We witness the birth of consciousness ; we see the mind answering, through the senses, to the call of the external world, and giving manifest tokens that impressions are both received and re- tained by it. The child ' ' takes notice" of objects and actions, manifests feelings of pleasure or pain in connection with them, and indicates a desire or will to deal in his own way with the objects, and to take part in the actions. We see that tliis growth of intellectual power, shown by his increasing abil- ity to hold intercourse with things about him, is 18 THE SCIENCE AND ART .OP EDUCATION. closely connected with the growth of his bodily powers, and we derive from our observation one important principle of the Science of Education, that mind and body are mutually interdependent, and CO- operate in promoting growht. We next observe that as the baby, under the combined influences of air, light, and food, gains bodily strength, he augments that strength by con- tinually exercising it ; he uses the fund he has ob- tained, and by using it makes it more. Exercise reiterated, almost unremitting ; unceasing move- ment, apparently for its own sake, as an end in it- self : the jerking and wriggling in the mother's arms, the putting forth of his hands to grasp things near him, the turning of the head to look at bright objects ; this exercise, these movements, constitute his very life. He lives in them, and by them. He is urged to exercise by stimulants from without ; but the exercise itself brings pleasure with it (labor ipse voluptas), is continued on that account, and ends in increase of power. What appUes to the body, applies also, by the foregoing principle, to the intellectual powers, which grow with the in- fant's growth, and strengthen with his strength. Our observation of these facts furnishes us, there- fore, with a second principle of educa>tion— Faculty of whatever kind grows by exercise. Without chang- ing our ground we supplement this principle by another. We see that the great educator who prompts the baby to exercise, and connects pleas- ure with all ,his voluntary movements, makes the exercise effectual for the purpose in view by con- stant reiteration. Perfection in action is secured by repeating the action thousands of times. The THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 19 baby makes the same movements over and over again ; the muscles and the nerves learn to work to- gether, and habit is the result. Similarily in the case of the mind, the impressions communicated through the organs of sense grow from cloudy to clear, from obscure to definite, by dint of endless repetition of the functional act. By the observa- tion of these facts we arrive at a third principle of education : — Exercise involves repetition^ which, as regards bodily actions, ends in habits of action, and as regards impressions received by the mind, ends in clearness of perception. Looking still at our baby as he pursues his educa- tion, we see that this manifold exercise is only ap- parently an end in itself. This true purpose of the teaching is to stimulate the pupil to the acquisition- of knowledge, and to make all these varied move- ments subservient to that end. This exercise of faculty brings the child into contact with the prop- erties of matter, initiates him into the mysteries of hard and soft, heavy and light, etc. , the varieties of form, of round and flat, circular and angular, etc. , the attractive charms of color. All this is knowledge, gained by reiterated exer- cise of the faculties, and stored up in the mind by its retentive power. We recognize the baby as a practical inquirer after knowledge for its own sake. But we further see him as a discoverer, testing the properties of matter by making his own experiments upon it. He knocks the spoon against the basin which contains his food; he is pleased with the sound produced by his action, and more than pleas- ed, dehghted, if the basin breaks under the opera- tion. He throws his ball on the ground, and follows 20 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. its revolution with his enraptured eye. What a wonderful experiment it is ! How charmed he is with the effect he has produced ! He repeats the ex- periment over and over again with unwearied as- siduity. The child is surely a Newton, or a Fara- day in petticoats. No, he is simply one of nature's ordinary pupils, inquiring after knowledge, and gaining it by his own unaided powers. He is teach- ing himself, under the guidance of a great educator. His self -teaching ends in development and growth, and it is therefore strictly educational in its nature. In view of these facts we gain a fourth principle of the Science of Education. The exercise of the child's own powers, stimulated hut not superseded by the educator s interference, ends both in the acquisition of knowledge and in the invigoration of the powers for further acquisition. It is unnecessary to give further illustrations of method. Every one will see that it consists essen- tially in the observation and investigation of facts, the most important of which is that we have before us a pupil going through a definite system of edu- cation. We are convinced that it is education, be- cause it develops faculty, and therefore conduces to development and growth. By close observation we detect the method of the master, and see that it is a method which repudiates cramming, rules and definitions, and giving wordy explanations, and se- cures the pupil's utmost benefit from the work by making him do it all himself through the exercise of his unaided powers. We thus get a clue to the construction of a Science of Education, to be built up, as it were, on the organized compound of body and mind, to which we give the name of baby. THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 21 Continuing still our observation of the phenomena it manifests, first, in its speechless, and afterwards in its speaking condition, we gain other principles of education ; and lastly, colhgating and general- izing our generalizations, we arrive at a definition of education as carried on by Nature. This may be roughly expressed thus : — Natural education consists in the development and training of the learner^s powers^ through influences of vari- ous kinds, which are initiated by action from with- out, met by corresponding action from within. Then assuming, as we appear to have a right to do, that this natural education should be the model or type of formal education, we somewhat modify our definition thus — Education is the development and training of the learner^ s native powers by means of instruction car- ried on through the conscious and persistent agency of the formal educator, and depends upon the es- tablished connection between the world without and the world within the mind — between the objective and the subjective. I am aware that this definition is defective, inas- much as it ignores— or appears to ignore — the vast fields of physical and moral education. It will, however, serve my present purpose, which is espe- cially connected with intellectual education. Having reached this point, and gained a general notion of a Science of Education, we go on to con- sider the Art of Education or the practical appli- cation of the Science. We are thus led to examine the difference between Science and Art, and be- tween Nature and Art. Science tells us what a thing is, and why it is what it is. It deals there- 22 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. fore with the nature of the thing, with its relations to other things, and consequently with the laws of its being. Art derives its rules from this knowl- edge of the thing and its laws of action, and says, " Do this or that with the thing in order to accom- plish the end you have in view. If you act other- wise with it, you violate the laws of its being." Now the rules of Art may be carried out blindly or intelligently. If blindly, the worker is a mere artisan — an operative who follows routine, whose rule is the rule-of -thumb. If intelligently, he is a true artist, who not only knows what he is doing, but why this process is right, and that wrong, and who is furnished with resources suitable for guid- ing normal, and correcting abnormal action. All the operations of the true artist can be justified by reference to the principles of Science. But there is a correlation between Nature and Art. These terms are apparently, but not really, opposed to each other. Bacon long ago pointed out the true dis- tinction when he said, Ars est Homo additus Na- turce— Art is Nature with the addition of Man — Art is Man' s word added to (not put in the place of) Nature's work. Here then is the synthesis of Na- ture and Man which justifies us in saying that natural education is the type or model of formal, or what we usually call, without an epithet, educa- tion, and that the Art of Teaching is the applica- tion by the teacher of laws of Science, which he has himself discovered by investigating Nature. This is the key-stone of our position ; if this is firm and strong, all is firm and strong. Abandon this posi- tion and you walk in darkness and doubt, not know- THE SCIENCE AND ART OP EDUCATION. 23 ing what you are doing or whither you are wander- ing — at the mercy of every wind of doctrine. The artist in education thus equipped, is ready not only to work himself, but to judge of the work of others. He sees, for instance, a teacher coldly or sternly demanding the attention of a little child to some lesson, say in arithmetic. The child has never been led up gi-adually to the point at which he is. He has none but confused notions about it. The teacher, without any attempt to interest the child, without exhibiting affection or sympathy to- wards him, hastily gives him some technical direc- tions, and sends him away to profit by them as he may — simply ''orders him to learn, "and leaves him to do so alone. Our teacher says,— " This transac- tion is inartistic. The element of humanity is al- together wanting in it. It is not in accordance with the Science of Education ; it is a violation of the Art. The great educator, in his teaching, pre- sents a motive and an object for voluntary action ; and therefore excites attention towards the object by enhsting the feelings in the inquiry. He does not, it is true, show sympathy, because he acts by in- flexible rules. But the human educator, as an artist, is bound not only to excite an interest in the work, but to sympathize with the worker. This teacher does neither. His practice ought to exemplify the formula, Ars^Natura + Homo. He leaves out both Natura and Homo. His Ars therefore==0." Another case presents itself. Here the teacher does not leave the child alone ; on the contrary, is continually by his side. At this moment he is copiously " imparting his knowledge" of some sub- ject to his pupil, whose aspect shows that he is 24 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. not receiving it, and who therefore looks puzzled. The matter, whatever it is, has evidently little or no relation to the actual condition of the child's mind, in which it finds no links of association and produces no intellectual reaction, and which there- fore does not co-operate with the teacher's. He patiently endures, however, because he cannot es- cape from it, the downpouring of the teacher's knowledge ; but it is obvious that he gains nothing from it. It passes over his mind as water passes over a duck's back. The subject of instruction, before unknown, remains unknown still. Our ar- tist teacher, looking on, pronounces that this teach- ing is inartistic, as not being founded on Science. *'The efficiency of a lesson is to be proved," he says, ^'bythe part taken in it by the pupil; and here the teacher does all the work, the pupil does nothing at all. It is the teacher's mind, not the learner's that is engaged in it. Our great master teaches by calling into exercise the learner^s pow- ers, not by making a display of his own. The child will never learn anything so as to possess it for himself by such teaching as this, which ac- counts the exercise of his own faculties as having little or nothing to do with the process of learn- ing." Once more, our student, informed in the Science of Education, watches a teacher who is giving a lesson on language — say, on the mother tongue. This mother tongue the child virtually knows how to use already : and if he has been accustomed to educated society, speaks and (if he is old enough to write) writes it correctly. The teacher puts a book into his hand, the first sentence of which is, '* Eng- THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 25 lish grammar is the art of speaking and writing the English language correctly." The child does not know what an ** art" is, nor what is meant by- speaking EngHsh ^' correctly." If he is intelligent he wonders whether he speaks it '* correctly" or not. As to the meaning of '' art," he is altogether at sea. The teacher is aware of the perplexity, and desiring to make him really understand the mean- ing of the word, attempts an explanation. **An art," he says, (getting the definition from the dic- tionary), " is a power of doing something not taught by Nature." The child stares with aston- ishment, as if you were talking Greek or Arabic. What can be meant by a * ' power" — ' ' what by being taught by Nature ?" The teacher sees that his ex- planation has only made what was dark before darker still. He attempts to explain his explana- tion, and the fog grows thicker and thicker. At last he gives it up, pronounces the child stupid, and ends by teUing the child to learn by rote— that is by hurdy-gurdy grind — ^the unintelligible words. That at least the child can do (a parrot could be taught to do the same) , and he does it ; but his mind has received no instruction whatever from the les- son—the intelligence which distinguishes the child from the parrot remains entirely uncultivated. Our teacher proceeds to criticise. '* This is," he says, '' altogether inartistic teaching. Our great master does not begin with definitions— and indeed gives no definitions — ^because they are unsuited to his pupil's state of mind. He begins with facts which the child can understand, because he observes them himself. This teacher should have begun with facts. The first lesson in Grammar (if indeed 2Q THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. it is necessary to teach Grrammar at all to a little child) should be a lesson on the nam^ of the ob- jects which the child sees and handles, and knows by seeing and handling — that is, has ideas of them in his mind. ' ' What is the name of this thing and of that ?" he inquires, and the child tells him. The ideas of the things, and the names by which they are known, are.already associated together in his consciousness, and he has already to learned trans- late things into words. The teacher may tell him (for he could not discover it for himself) that a name may also be called a noun, **What then," the teacher may say, "is a noun ?" The child re- plies, '^A noun is a name of a thiTigy He has con- structed a definition himself —a very simple one certainly — ^but then it it is a definition which he thoroughly understands because it is his own work. This mode of proceeding would be artistic, because in accordance with Nature. There would be no need to commit the definition to memory, as a mere collection of words, because what it means is already committed to the understanding which will retain it, because it represents facts already known and appreciated. Thoroughly Tcnoiving things is the surest way to remember theui." In some such way as this our expert brings the processes commonly called teaching to the touch- stone of his Science, the Science which he has built up on his observation of the processes of Nature. 1 am afraid that, in spite of illustrations, I may still have failed to impress you as strongly as I wish to do with the cardinal truth, that you can- not get the best results of teaching unless you un- derstand the mind with which you have to deal. THE SCIENCE AND ART OP EDUCATION. 27 There are, indeed, teachers endowed with the pow- er of sympathizing so earnestly with children, that in their case this sympathy does the work of knowledge, or rather it is knowledge miconsciously exercising the power proverbially attributed to it. The intense interest they feel in their work almost instinctively leads them to adopt the right way of doing it. They are artists without knowing that they are artists. But, speaking generally, it will be found that the only truly efficient director of intellectual action is one who understands intellec- tual action — ^that is, who understands the true nature of the mind which he is directing. It is this demand which we make on the teacher that consti- tutes teaching as a psychological art, and which renders the conviction inevitable that an immense niunber of those who practice it do so without pos- sessing the requisite qualifications. They under- take to guide a machine of exquisite capabilities, and of the most dehcate construction, without un- derstanding its construction or the range of its capabihties, and especially without understanding the fundamental principles of the science of me- chanics. Hence the teUing, cramming, the endless explaining, the rote learning, which enfeeble and deaden the native powers of the child; and hence, as the final consequence, the melancholy results of instruction in our primary schools, and the scarce- ly less melancholy results in schools of higher aims and pretensions, all of which are the legitimate fruit of the one fundamental error which I have over and over again pointed out. In accordance with these views, it has been in- 28 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. sisted on throughout the entire Course of Lectures, that teaching, in the true sense of the term, has nothing in common with the system of telling, cramming, and drilHng, which very generally usurps its name. The teacher, properly so called, IS a man who, besides knowing the subject he has to teach, knows moreover the nature of the mind which he has to direct in its acquisition of knowl- edge, and the best methods by which this may be accompHshed. He must know the subject of in- struction thoroughly, because, although it is not he bub the child who is to learn, his knowledge will enable him to suggest points to which the learner's attention is to be directed ; and besides, as his prop- er function is to act as a guide, it is important that he should have previously taken the journey himself. But we discountenance the notion usual- ly entertained that the teacher is to know because he has to communicate his knowledge to the learner; and maintain, on the contrary, that his proper func- tions as a teacher does not consist in the communi- cation of his own knowledge to the learner, but rather in such action as ends in the learner's acqui- sition of knowledge for himself. To deny this prin- ciple is to give a direct sanction to telling and cramming, which are forbidden by the laws of edu- cation. To tell the child what he can learn for himself, is to neutralize his efforts; consequently to enfeeble his powers, to quench his interest in the subject, probably to create a distaste for it, to pre- vent him from learning how to learn — to defeat, in short, all the ends of true education. On the other hand, to get . him to gain knoi'dedge for himself stimulates his efforts, strengthens his powers, quick- ens his interest in the subject and makes him take THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 29 pleasure in learning it, teaches him how to learn other subjects, leads to the formation of habits of thinking; and, in short, promotes all the ends of education. The obvious objection to this view of the case is, that as there are many things which the child cannot learn by himself, we must of course tell him them. My answer is, that the things which he cannot learn of himself are things unsuited to the actual state of his mind. His mind is not yet prepared for them ; and by forcing them upon him prematurely, you are injuriously anticipating the natural course of things. You are cramming him with that which, although it may be knowledge to you, cannot possibly be knowledge to him. Knowing, in relation to the training of the mind, is the result of learning ; and learning is the process by which the child teaches himself ; and he teaches himself — he can only teach himself — by personal experience. Take, for instance, a portion of matter which, for some cause or other, interests him. He exercises his senses upon it, looks at it, handles it, etc., throws it on the ground, flings it up into the air; and while doing all this, compares it with other things, gains notions of its color, form, hard- ness, weight, etc. The result is, that without any direct teaching from you, without any telling^ he knows it through his personal experience — he knows it, as we say, of his own knowledge ; and has not only learned by himself something that he did not know before, but has been learning how to learn. But supposing that you are not satisfied with his proceeding thus naturally and surely in the career of self -acquisition, and you tell him some- 30 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. thing which he could not possibly learn by this method of his own. Let it be, for instance, the dis- tance of the sun from the earth, the superficial area of Sweden, etc. When you have told him that the sun is 95 millions of miles from the earth, that the area of Sweden is so many square miles, you have evidently transcended his personal experience. What you have told him, instead of being knowl- edge gained, as in the other case, at first hand, is information obtained probably at tenth or even fiftieth hand, even by yourself, and is therefore in in no true sense of the word ' ' knowledge" even to you, much less is it knowledge to him ; and in tell- ing it to him prematurely you are cramming and not teaching him. Dr. John Brown ("Horse Subsecivase?" Second series, p. 473) well says,— "The great thing with knowledge and the young is to so secure that it shall be their own ; that it be not merely external to their inner and real self, but shall go in succum et sanguinem; and therefore it is that the self- teaching that a baby and a child give themselves re- mains with them forever. It is of their essence, whereas what is given them ab extra^ especially if it be received mechanically, without rehsh, and with- out any energizing of the entire nature, remains pitifully useless and wersh (insipid). Try, there- fore, always to get the resident teacher inside the skin, and who is forever giving his lessons, to help you, and be on your side." You easily see from these remarks of Dr. Brown's that he means what I mean ; — that matters of information obtained by other people's research, and which is true knowl- edge to those who have lawfully gained it, is not knowledge to a child who has had no share in the acquisition, and your dogmatic imposition of it THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 31 upon his mind, or rather memory only, is of the essence of cramming. Such information is merely patchwork laid over the substance of the cloth as compared with the texture of the cloth itself. It is oriy but not of, the fabric. This expansive and com- prehensive principle — which regards all learning by mere rote, even of such matters as the multiplication- table or Latin declensions— before the child's mind has had some preliminary dealing with the facts of Number or of Latin— as essentially cramming, and theref oi^e anti-educational in its nature — will be, of course, received or rejected by teachers, just in proportion as they receive or reject the conception of an art of teaching founded on psychological principles. And this brings me to the next point for special consideration. I said that the teacher who is to direct intellectual operations should understand what they are. He should, especially as a teacher of little children, examine well the method, already referred to, by which they gain all their elemen- tary knowledge by themselves, by the exercise of their own powers. He should study children in the concrete, — take note of the causes which oper- ate on the will, which enlist the feehngs, which call forth the intellect, —in order that he may use his knowledge with the best effect when he takes the place of the great natural educator. To change slightly Locke's words, he is to " consider the opera- tion of the discerning faculties of a child as they are employed about the objects which they have to do with ;" and this because it is his proper func- tion as a teacher to guide this operation. And if he wishes to be an accomplished teacher- a master of 32 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. his art— he should further study the principles of Psychology, the true groundwork of his action, in in the writings of Locke, Dugald Stewart, Bain, Mill, and others, who show us what these princi- ples are. This study will give a scientific compact- ness and co-ordination to the facts which he has learned by his own method of investigation. But it may be said. Do you demand all this pre- paration for the equipment of a mere elementary teacher ? My reply is, I require it because he is an elementary teacher. Whatever may be done in the case of those children who are somewhat ad- vanced in their career, and who have, to some ex- tent at least, learnt how to learn, it is most of all important that in the beginning of instruction, and with a view to gain the most fruitful results from that instruction, the earliest teacher should be an adept in the Science and Art of Education. We should do as the Jesuits did in their famous schools, who, when they found a teacher showing real skill and knowledge in teaching the higher classes, pro- moted him to the charge of the lowest. There was a wise insight into human nature in this. Whe- ther the child shall love or hate knowledge, — whe- ther his fundamental notions of things shall be clear or cloudy, — whether he shall advance in his course as an intelligent being, or as a mere machine, — whether he shall, at last, leave school stuffed with ciTide, undigested gobbets of knowledge, or possessed of knowledge assimilated by his own di- gestion, and therefore a source of mental health and strength, — whether he shall be lean, atrophied, weak, destitute of the power of self-government and self -direction, or strong, robust, and independ- THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 33 ent in thought and action,— depends almost alto- gether on the manner in which his earliest instruc- tion is conducted, and this again on the teacher's acquaintance with the Science and Art of Educa- tion. But besides knowing the subject of instruction, and knowing the Art of Education founded on the Science, the accomphshed teacher should also know the methods of teaching devised or adopted by the most eminent practitioners of his art. A teacher, even when equipped in the manner I have suggest- ed, cannot safely dispense with the experience of others. In applying principles to practice there is always a better or worse manner of doing so, and one may learn much from knowing how others have overcome the difficultiies at which we stumble. Many a teacher, when doubtful of the principles which constitute his usual rule of action, will gain confidence and strength by seeing their operation in the practice of others, or may be reminded of them when he has for the moment lost sight of them. Is it nothing to a teacher that Plato, Aris- totle, Plutarch, QuintilHan, in ancient times; As- cham, Eousseau, Comenius, Sturm, Pestalozzi, Ea- tich, Jacotot, Frcebel, Eichter, Herbart, Beneke, Disterweg, Arnold, Spencer, and a host of others in modem times, have written and worked to show him what education is both in theory and practice? Does he evince anything but his own ignorance by pretending to despise or ignore their labors ? What would be said of a medical practitioner who knows nothing of the works or even the names of Celsus, Galen, Harvey, John Hunter, Sydenham, Bell, etc., and who sets up his empirical practice against the 34 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. vast weight of their authority and experience ? I need not insist on this argument ; it is too obvious. Much time, therefore, has been devoted, during the year to the History of Education in various contries and ages, and to the special work of some of the great educational reformers. In particular, the methods of Ascham, Eatich, Comenius, Pestalozzi, Jacotot, and Froebel have been minutely describ- ed and criticised. And now it is only right to endeavor, in conclu- sion, to answer the question which may be fairly asked, *' After all, what have you really accom- plished by this elaborate exposition of principles and methods ? You have had no training schools for the practice of your students ; it has all ended in talk." In reply to this inquiry or objection, I have a few words to say. The students whom I have been instructing are for the most part teachers already, who are practising their art every day. My object has been so forcibly to stamp upon their minds a few great principles, so strongly to impress them with convictions of the truth of these principles, that it should be impossi- ble, in the nature of things, for them as my disci- ples, to act in contradiction or violation of them. Whenever, in their practice, they are tempted tore- sort to drill and cram, I know, without being there to see ,that the principles which have become a part of their being, because founded on the truths of na- ture recognized by themselves, rise up before them and forbid the intended delinquency. In this way, without the apparatus of a training school, the work of a training school is done. But, in order to show that I am not talking at THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 35 random, I will quote a few passages from exercises written by the students themselves, relative to their own experience, *' Before attending these Lectures, my aim was that my pupils should gain a certain amoimt of knowledge. I now see how far more important is the exercise of those powers by which knowledge is gained. I am therefore trying to make them think for themselves. This, and the principle of repetition, which has been so much insisted upon, prevents us from getting over as much ground as formerly, but I feel that the work done is much more satisfactory than it used to be. I now try to adapt my plan to the pupil, not the pupil to my plan. I used to prepare a lesson (say in history) with great care ; all the information which I thus laboriously gained, I imparted to my pupils in a few minutes. I now see that, though I was bene- fitted by the process, my pupils could have gained but little good from it. The fact of having a defi- nite end in view gives me confidence in my prac- tice. The effect of these Lectures, as a whole, has been to give me a new interest in my work." "" I knew before that the ordinary ' learn by rote ' method was not real education; but being unac- quainted with the Science upon which the true art of instruction is founded, all my ideas on the sub- ject were vague and changeable, and I often missed the very definite results of the * hurdy-gurdy ' sys- tem without altogether securing any better ones. *^ I have learned that the only education worthy of the name is based upon principles derived from the study of child-nature, and from the observation of nature's methods of developing and training the 36 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. inherent powers of children from the very moment of their birth. I have had my eyes opened to ob- serve these processes, and now see much more in the actions of Httle children than I formerly did. More than this, I have learned to apply the prin- ciples of nature to the processes of formal educa- tion, and by them to test their value and rightness, so that I need no longer be in doubt and darkness, but have sure grounds to proceed upon under any variation of circumstances. *' Lastly, I have learned to reverence and admire the great and good, who in different ages and vari- ous countries have devoted their minds to the principles or the practice of education, whose thoughts, whose successors, whose very failures are full of instruction for educators of the present day, especially for those who, having been guided to the sure basis upon which true education rests, are in a position to judge of the value of their different theories and plans, and to choose the good and refuse the evil." *'What you have done for me I endeavor to do for my pupils. I make them correct their own errors; indeed, do their own work as much as possible. Since you have been teaching me, my pupils have progressed in mental development as they have never done in all the years I have been teaching. Though from want of power and early training I have not done you the justice which many of your pupils have, still you have set your seal upon me, and made me aim at being, what I was not formerly, a scientific teacher. " ' ' And now to turn to the modifications introduced into my practice by these lectures. I was delighted THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 37 with them, and was more astonished as each week passed at what I heard. New hght dawned upon me, and I determined to profit by it. I soon saw some of the prodigious imperfections in my teach- ing, and set about remedying them. My ' pupils should be self -teachers,' then I must treat them as such. I left off telHng them so much, and made them work more. I discontinued correcting their exercises, and made them correct them themselves. I made them look over their dictation before they wrote it, and, when it was finished, referred them to the text book to see whether they had written it correctly. . . Time would fail me to give in detail all the alterations introduced into my practice." **In conclusion, considering what my theory and practice were when I entered your class, I am con- vinced that the benefits I have derived as regards both are as follows : — (1) I have learned to observe, (3) to admire, (3) to imitate, and (4) to follow, Nature. My theories have become based on the firm foundation of principles founded on facts ; my practice (falling far short of the perfection that I aim at attaining) is nevertheless in the spirit of it. And although in all probability I shall never equal any of those great teachers whose hves and labors you have described, yet I know that I shall daily improve in my practice if I hold fast to those prin- ciples that you have laid down. I consider you have shown me the value of a treasure that I un- consciously possessed — I mean the power of observ- ing Nature and therefore I feel towards you the same sort of gratitude that the man feels towards the physician who has restored his sight." 38 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. These expressions will show that my labors, how- ever imperfect, have not ended in mere talk. And now it is time to set you free from the long demand I have made on your patience. I have studiously avoided in this lecture tickling your ears with rhetorical flourishes. My great master, Jacotot, has taught me that " rhetoric and reason have nothing in common." I have therefore ap- pealed to your reason. I certainly might have con- densed my matter more ; but long experience in the art of intellectual feeding has convinced me that concentrated food is not easy of digestion. But for this fault—if it be one— and for any other, whether of commission or omission, I throw myself on your indulgent consideration. THE THEORY OR SCIENCE OF EDUCATION, The Science of Education is sometimes called Pedagogy or Paideutics, and the Art of Education, Didactics. There seems, however, no need for these technical terms. The expressions Science and Art of Education are explicit, and sufficiently an- swer the purpose. The Theory or Science, as distinguished from the Practice or Art, embraces an inquiry into the prin- ciples on which the Practice or Art depends, and which give reasons for the efficiency or inefficiency of that practice. I do not profess in this Lecture to construct the Science of Education — ^that still waits for its development. As, however, its ulti- mate evolution depends very much on a general recognition of its value and importance, I propose to indicate a few of its principles, as well as some of the sources from which they may be derived; and further, to show the need for their apphcation to the present condition of the art. In the progress of knowledge, practice ever pre- cedes theory. We do, before we inquire why we do. Thus the practice of language goes before the investigation into its laws, and the Art before the Science of Music. It is the same with Education. The practice has long existed ; but the theory has, as yet, been only partially recognized. As, how- 39 40 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. ever, theory re-acts on practice, and improves it, we may hope to see the same result in Education, when it shall be scientifically investigated. As the terms Education and Instruction will fre- quently occur in these Lectures, it may be con- venient at the outset to inquire into their exact meaning. The verb educare, from which we get the word educate^ differs from its primitive educere in this respect, that while the latter means to draw forth by a single act, the former, as a sort of frequenta- tive verb, signifies to draw forth frequently, re- peatedly, persistently, and therefore strongly and permanently ; and in a secondary sense to draw forth faculties, to train or educate them. An edu- ator is therefore a trainer, whose function it is to draw forth persistently, habitually and permanent- ly, the powers of a child, and education is the pro- cess which he employs for this purpose. Then as to Instruction. The Latin verb instruere^ from which we derive instruct, means to place ma- terials together, not at random, but for a purpose- to pile or heap them one upon another in an order- ly manner, as parts of a preconceived whole. In- struction, then, is the orderly placing of know- ledge in the mind, with a definite object. The mere aggregation, by a teacher, in the minds of his pu- pils, of incoherent ideas, gained by desultory and unconnected mental acts, is no inore instruction than heaping bricks and stones together is bmld- ing a house. The true instructor is never content- ed with the mere collection oO materials, however valuable in themselves, but continually seeks to make them subservient to the end he has in view. THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 41 He is an educational Amphion, under whose in- fluence the bricks and stones move together to the place where they are wanted, and grow into the form of a harmonious fabric. Instruction, thus viewed, is not, as some conceive of it, the antithesis of Education, nor generically distinct from it. Every educator is an mstructor ; for education attains its ends through instruction ; but, as will be shown, the instructor who is not also consciously an educator, fails to accomplish the highest aims of his science. The instruction which ends in itself is not complete education. But wo will now attempt to give a definition of Education. Education, in its widest sense, is a' general expression that comprehends all the in- fluences which operate on the himian being, stimu- lating his faculties to action, forming his habits, moulding his character, and making him what he is. Though so powerfully affected by these mflu- , ences, he may be entirely unconscious of them.v They are to him as *'the wind which bloweth where it listeth; but he knows not whence it Cometh nor whither it goeth." They are not, how- ever, less real on this account. The circumstances by which he is surrounded — the chmate, the natur- al scenery, the air he breathes, the food he eats, the moral tone of the family life, that of the com- munity—all have a share in converting the raw material of human nature, either into healthy, in- telligent, moral and religious man ; or, on the con- trary, in converting it into an embodiment of weak- ness, stupidity, wickedness, and misery. Thus ex- ternal influences automatically acting upon a neu- tral nature, produce, each after its kind, the most 42 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. opposite results. In this sense the poor little gam- in of our streets, who defiles the air with his blas- phemies, whose thoughts are of the dirt, dirty, who picks our pockets with a clear conscience, has been duly educated by the impure atmosphere, the squalid misery, the sad examples of act and speech presented to him in his daily life — to be the outcast that he is. Such instances show the wondrous power of the education of circumstances. It is a noticeable characteristic of this kind of education, that its pupils rarely evince of their own accord any desire for improvement, and are in this respect scarcely distinguishable from bar- barians. The savages of our race remain savages, not because they ha,ve not the same original facul- ties as ourselves— faculties generally capable of im- provement—but because they have no desire for im- provement. Nature does indeed furnish her chil- dren with elementary lessons. She teaches them the use of the senses, language, and the qualities of matter, but she leaves them to procure advanced knowledge for themselves, while she implants in their minds neither motive nor desire for its ac- quisition. The differentia of the savage is, that he has rarely any wish for self-elevation. It is sad to think how many savages of this kind we have ^fcill amongst ourselves ! But education is conscious as well as uncon- scious. Some cause or other suggests the desire for improvement. The teacher appears in the field, and civilization begins its career. The civilization which we contrast with barbarism is simply the result of that action of mind on mind which carries forward the teaching of Nature— in other words, of THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 43 what we call education. Where there is no spe- cific conscious education, there is no civilization. Where education is fully appreciated, the result is high civilization ; and generally, as education ad- vances, civilization advances in proportion, and thus affords a measure of its influence. It follows, then, that all the civilization that exists is ultim- ately due to the educator, including, of course, the educator in religion. Education, then, as we may now more specifical- ly define it, is the training carried on consciously and continuously by the educator, and its object is to convert desultory and accidental force into or- ganized action, and its ultimate aim is to make the child operated on by it capable of becoming a healthy, intelligent, moral and religious man ; or it may be described as the systematization of all the influences which the Science of Education recog- nizes as capable of being employed by one human being to develop, direct, and maintain vital force in another, with a view to the formation of habits. This conception of the end of education defines the function of the educator. He has to direct forces already existing to a definite object, and in proportion as his direction is wise and judicious will the object be secured. He has in the child before him an embodiment of animal, intellectual, and moral forces, the action of which is irregular and fortuitous. These forces he has to develop further, direct, and organize. The child has an animal nature, affected by exter- nal influences, and endowed with vital energies, which may be used or abused to his weal or woe. He has also an intellectual nature, capable of in- 44 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. definite development, which may be employed in the acquisition of knowledge, and gain strength by the very act of acquisition ; but which may, on the other hand, through neglect, waste its powers, or by perversion abuse them. He has, moreover, a moral nature capable by cultivation of becoming a means of usefulness and happiness to himself and others, or of becoming by its corruption the fruit- ful source of misery to himself and the communifcy. It is the business of the educator, by his action and influence on these forces, to secure their bene- ficial and avert their injurious manifestation— to convert this undisciplined energy into a fund of organized self-acting power. In order to do this efficiently, he ought to under- stand the nature of the phenomena that he has to deal with ; and his own training as a teacher ought especially to have this object in view. Without this knowledge, much that he does may be really injurious, and much more of no value. To speak technically, then, a knowledge of what is going on in his pupils' bodies, minds, and hearts, their subjective process, will regulate the means which he adopts to direct the action of those bodies, minds, and hearts, which is his objective process— the one being a counterpart of the other— and the consideration of what this knowledge consists of, and how it may be best appHed, constitutes the Theory or Science of Education. I am well aware that the mention of the words "Theory of Education," and the assumption that the educator ought to be educated in it, is apt to excite some degree of opposition in the minds of those who claim especially the title of "practical THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 45 teachers," and who therefore characterize this theory as ** a quackery." Now a quack, the dic- tionary tell us, is *• one who practices an art with- out any knowledge of its principles. " There seems, then, to be a curious infelicity of language in call- ing a subject which embraces principles, which es- pecially insists on principles, a quackery. If edu- cation, thus viewed, is a quackery, then the same must be said of medicine, law, and theology ; and it would follow that the greatest proficient in the principles of these sciences must be the greatest quack — a remarkable reductio ad dbsurdum. This position, then, will perhaps hardly be maintained. But there is a second line of defence. The prac- tical teachers say— and, doubtless, say sincerely — "We don't want any Theory of Education; our aim is practical, we want nothing but the practi- cal." We agree with them as to the value, the in- dispensable value, of the practical, but not as to the assumed antagonism between theory and prac- tice. So tar from being in any strict sense opposed, they are identical. Theory is the general, practice the particular expression of the same facts. The words of the theory interpret the practice; the propositions of the science interpret the silent lan- guage of the art. The one represents truth in posse, the other in esse ; the one, as Dr. Whewell well remarks, involves, the other evolves, principles. So in Education, theory and practice go hand-in- hand ; and the practical man who denounces theory is a theorist in fact. (Goethe says, "Theory and practice always act upon each other ; one can see from their works what men's opinions are ; and from their opinions predict what they will do.") 46 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. He does not of course drive blindly on, without caring whither he is going ; the conception, then, which he forms of his end, is his theory. Nor does he act without considering the means for securing his object. This consideration of the means as suitable or unsuitable for his purpose, is again his theory. In fact, the reasons which he would give for his actual practice, to account for it or defend it, constitute, whether he admits it or not, his theory of action. All that we ask is, that this con- ception of theory, in relation to education, should be extended and reduced to principles. Mr. Grove, the eminent Q. C, in an address given at St. Mary's Hospital, forcibly expresses the same opinion: *'If there be one species of cant," he says, '* more detestable than another, it is that which eulogises what is called the practical man as contradistinguished from the scientific. If, by practical man, is meant one who, having a mind well stored with scientific and general information, has his knowledge chastened and his theoretic tem- erity subdued, by varied experience, nothing can be better; but if, as is commonly meant by the phrase, a practical man means one whose knowl- edge is only derived from habit or traditional sys- tem, such a man has no resource to meet unusual circumstances ; such a man has no plasticity ; he kills a man according to rule, and consoles him- self, like Moliere's doctor, by the reflection that a dead man is only a dead man, but that a deviation from received practice is an injury to the whole profession." Practical teachers may, however, admit that they have a theory, an empirical theory, of their own THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 47 which governs their practice, and yet deny that the generahzation of this theory into principles would be of any value to themselves or to the cause of education. They may go further still, and deny both that there is or can be any Science of Education. Some do, indeed, deny both these positions. It has already been admitted that the Science of Education is as yet in a rudimentary condition. There is at present no such code of in- disputable laws to test and govern educational ac- tion as there is in many other sciences. Its prin- ciples lie disjointed and unorganized in the sciences of Physiology, Psychology, Ethics, and Logic, and will only be gathered together and codified when we rise to a high conception of its value and im- portance. Even now, however, they are acknowl- edged in the discussion of such questions as, the best method of training the natural faculties of children— the order of their development— the sub- jects proper for the curriculum of instruction — book teaching versus oral — ^the differentia of female education—school discipline— moral training, and a multitude of others which will one day be decid- ed by a reference, not to traditional usage, but to the principles of the Science of Education. The fact, then, that this science is not yet objectively constructed is no argument against our attempting to construct it, and we maintain that the pertina- cious adherence to the notion of the all-sufficiency of routine forms the greatest difficulty in the way of securing the object. It is, however, mainly for thq^sake of the teachers of the next generation, that the importance of a true conception of the value of priQciples in education is insisted on. 48 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. It follows, then, that practical teachers who de- sire to see practice improved — and surely there is need of improvement — ought to admit that there is the same obligation resting on the educator to study the principles of his art as there is on the physician to study anatomy and therapeutics, and on the civil engineer to study mechanics. The art, in each of these cases, has a scientific basis, and the practitioner who desires to be successful in it— to be the master and not the slave of routine — must studiously investigate its fundamental principles. But there is another argument against routine teaching which ought not to be omitted. It is founded on the effect which such teaching produces on the pupil. Those teachers who are themselves the slaves of routine make their pupils slaves also. Without intellectual freedom themselves, they can- not emancipate their pupils. The machine gener- ates machines. They make their pupils mechanic- ally apt and dexterous in processes, and in this way train them to practice ; but not appreciating principles themselves, they cannot train them to principles. Yet this latter training, which essen- tially involves reasoning and thought, ought to be the continual and persistent aim of the educator. He has very imperfectly accomplished the end of his being if he dismisses his pupils as merely mechanical artisans, knowing the how, but ignorant of the why ; expert in processes, but uninformed in principles ; instructed, but not truly educated. It is the possession of principles which gives mental life, courage, and power : the courage which is not daunted where routine fails, the power which not only firmly directs the estab- THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 49 lished machinery, but corrects its apparent eccen- tricities, can repair it when it is deranged, and ad- just its forces to new emergencies. Take the case of a routine pupil to whom you propose an arith- metical problem. His first inquiry is, not what are the conditions of the question, and the principles involved in its solution, but what rule he is to work it by. This is the question of a slave, who can do nothing without orders from his master. Well, you give him the rule. The rule is, in fact, a resume of principles which some scientific man has deduced from concrete facts, and which represents and embodies the net result of various processes of his mind upon them. But what is it to our routine pupil ? To him it is merely an order given by a slave driver, and he hears in it the words, — Do this ; don't do that ; don't ask why ; do exactly as I bid you. He reads his rule, his order, does what he is bid, grinds away at his work, and arrives at the end of it as much a slave as ever, and he is a slave because his master has made him one. Educators, indeed, hke other men, come under two large categories, which maybe described in the pregnant words of the accomplished author of the '* Autocrat of the Breakfast Table." ^'All econ- omical and practical wisdom," he says, *' is an ex- tension or variation of the following arithmetical formula 2 +2=4. Every philosophical proposition has the more general character of the expression a+b=c. We are merely operatives, empirics, and egotists, until we begin to think in letters instead of figures." Now the mere routine teacher belongs to the former, and the true educator to the latter class, 50 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. and each will stamp his own image on his pupils. All that has been said resolves itself, then, into the proposition that a man engaged in a profession, as distinguished from a mere handicraft, ought not only to know ivhat he is doing, but why ; the one constituting his practice, the other his theory. He cannot give a reason for the faith that is in him, unless he examines the grounds of that faith, — unless he examines them per se, and traces their connection with each other and with the whole body of truth. The possession of this higher kind of knowledge, the knowledge of principfes and laws, is, strictly speaking, his only warrant for the pretension that he is a profefisional man, and not a mere mechanic. Society has not, indeed, hitherto demanded this professional equipment for the educator, nor has the educator himself general- ly recognized the obligation, aptly stated by Dr. Arnold, that, *4n whatever it is our duty to act, those matters also it is our duty to study," and hence the present condition of education in Eng- land. Education can never take its proper rank among the learned professions, that proper rank being really the highest of them all, until teachers see that there really are principles of Education, and that it is their duty to study them. But there is another mode of studying principles besides investigating them per se. They may be studied in the practice of those who have mastered them. It is clear that a man may have carefully inves- tigated the principles of an art, and yet fail in the application of them. This generally arises from his not having fully comprehended them. He has THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 51 omitted to notice or appreciate something which, if he knew it, would answer his purpose ; or from want of early training finds it difficult to deduce facts from principles, practice from theory. In f uch a case there is an available resource. Others have seen what he has failed to see, have firmly grasped what he has not comprehended, have made the necessary deductions, and embodied them in their [own practice. Let the learner, then, in the Science of Education, study that practice and trace it in the correspondence between the principles which he but partially appreciates, and th3ir prac- tical appHcation in the methods of those who have thought them out. In other words, let him study the great masters of his art, and learn from them the philosophy which teaches by examples. This study, so far from being inconsistent with the Theory of Education, is, indeed, a necessary part of it. We may all learn something from the suc- cessful experience of others. De Quincy (as quoted by Mr. Quick in his valuable ^^ Essays on Educa- tional Reformers") has pointed out that a man who takes up any pursuit, without knowing what advances others have made in it, works at a great disadvantage. He does not apply his strength in the right direction, he troubles himself about small matters and neglects greiat, he falls into er- rors that have long since been exploded. To this Mr. Quick pertinently adds, — ''I venture to think, therefore, that practical men, in education, as in most other things, may derive benefit from the knowledge of what has been already said and done by the leading men engaged in it both past and present." Notv\dthstanding the obvious common 52 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. sense of this observation, it is undeniably true that the great majority of teachers are profoundly igno- rant of the sayings and doings of the authorities in Education. Their own empirical methods, their own self -devised principles of instruction, general- ly form their entire equipment for their profession. I have myself questioned on this subject scores of middle-class teachers, and have not met with so many as half-a-dozen who knew anything more than the names, and often not these, of Quintilian, Ascham, Comenius, Locke, Pestalozzi, Jacotot, Arnold, and Herbert Spencer. What should we say of a physician who was entirely unacquainted with the researches of Hippocrates, Galen, Harvey, Sydenham, the Hunters, and Bright ? In the foregoing remarks I have endeavored to show that there is, and must be, a Theory of Edu- cation underlying the practice, however manifested, and to vindicate the conception of it from the con- tempt sometimes thoughtlessly thrown upon it by practical teachers. But it is important now to attempt to ascertain what resources, in the shape of principles, hints, and suggestions, it furnishes to the educator in his three-fold capacity of director of Physical, Mental, and Moral education. The conception we have formed of the educator in relation to his work requires him to be possessed of a knowledge of the being whom he has to con- trol and guide. "Whatever questions," says Dr. Youmans, of New York, *^of the proper subjects to be taught, their relative claims, or the true meth- ods of teaching them, may arise, there is a prior and fundamental inquiry into the nature, capabil- THE SCIENCE AND ART OP EDUCATION. 53 ities, and requirements of the being to be taught. A knowledge of the being to be trained, as it is the basis of all intelligent culture, must be the first ne- cessity of the teacher." PHYSICAL EDUCATION. Viewed merely as an animal, this being is a de- pository of vital forces, which may be excited or depressed, well-directed or misdirected. These forces are resident in a complicated structure of limbs, senses, breathing, digesting and blood-cir- culating apparatus, etc. ; and their healthy mani- festation depends much (of course not altogether) upon circumstances under the control of the edu- cator. If he understands the phenomena, he will modify the circumstances for the benefit of the child ; if he does not understand them, the child will suffer from his ignorance. The daily experi- ence of the school-room sufficiently illustrates this point. Place a large number of children in a small room with the windows shut down, and detain them at their lessons for two or three hours to- gether. Then take note of what you see. The im- pure air, breathed and rebreathed over and over again, has lost its vitality — has become poisonous. It reacts on the blood, and this again on the brain. The teacher as well as the children all suffer from the same cause. He languidly delivers a lesson to pupils who more languidly receive it. They are no longer able to concentrate their attention. They answer his half -understood questions carelessly and incorrectly. Not appreciating the true state of the case, he treats them as willfully indifferent, and punishes the offenders, as they feel, unjustly. 54 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. They retain this impression ; the cordial relation subsisting before is rudely disturbed, and his moral influence over them is impaired. We have here a natural series of causes and consequences. The state of the air, a physical cause, acts first on the bodies, then on the minds, and lastly on the hearts of the pupils ; the last being, perhaps, the most important consequence of the three. Now in this case both teacher and pupils suffer from neglect of those laws of health which a knowl- edge of Physiology would have supplied. It is un- necessary to dwell upon the obvious applications of such knowledge to diet, sleep, cleaiUiness, cloth- ing, etc. Knowledge of this kind has been strangely over- looked in the educator's own education, though so much of his efficiency depends on his actmg him- self, and causing others to act, on the full recogni- tion of its value. Education has too generally been regarded in its relation to the mind, and the co- operation of the body in the mind's action has been forgotten. Those who listened to the masterly lecture, delivered a few years ago at this College by Dr. Youmans, on ^' The Scientific Study of Hu- man Nature," will remember his eloquent vindica- tion of the claims of the body to that consideration which educators too frequently deny it, and the consequent importance to them of soimd physio- logical knowledge. With singular force of reason- ing he showed that the healthiness of the brain, as the organic seat of the mind, is the essential basis of the teacher's operations ; that the efficiency of the brain depends in a great degree on the healthy condition of the stomach, lungs, heart and skin; THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 55 and that this condition is very much affected by the teacher's application of the laws of health as founded on Physiology. His general remarks on education, and especially on physical education, are too valuable to be omitted : " The imminent question," he says (p. 406), **is, how may the child and youth be developed health- fully and vigorously, bodily, mentally, and moral- ly ? and science alone can answer it by a statement of the laws upon which that development depends. Ignorance of these laws must inevitably involve mismanagement. That there is a large amount of mental perversion and absolute stupidity, as well as bodily disease, produced in school, by measures which operate to the prejudice oi the growing brain, is not to be doubted ; that dullness, indocility, and viciousness, are frequently aggravated by teachers, incapable of discriminating between their mental and bodily causes, is also undeniable ; while that teachers often miserably fail to improve their pu- pils, and then report the result of their own incom- petency as failures of nature^ —all may have seen, although it is now proved that the lowest imbeciles are not sunk beneath the possibility of elevation." I give one short quotation from Dr. Andrew Combe, to the same effect. *' I cannot," he says, '* regard any teacher, or parent, as fully and con- scientiously quaHfied for his duties, unless he has made himself acquainted with the nature and gen- eral laws of the animal economy, and with the di- rect relation in which these stand to the principles of education." Dr. Brigham also advises those who undertake to cultivate and discipline the mind, to 56 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. acquaint themselves with Human Anatomy and Physiology. AH these authorities agree, then, that educators have a better chance of improving the physical condition of their pupils if they are themselves ac- quainted with the laws of health ; and they insist, moreover, that the health of the body is not only desirable for its own sake, but because, from the interdependence of mind and body, the mena sana depends so much on the corpus sanum. This truth is strikingly, though paradoxically, expressed by Eousseau, when he says, *' The weaker the body is, the more it commands ; the stronger it is the better it obeys ;" and when he also says, *' make your pu- pil robust and healthy, in order to make him reasonable and wise." In short, hundreds of writers have written on this subject for the benefit of educators, thousands of whom have never even heard of, much less read, their writings ; or, if they have, pursue the even tenor of their way, doing just as they did be- fore, and ignorantly laughing at Hygiene and all the aid she offers them. Physical education also comprehends the train- ing of special faculties and fuiictions, with a view to improve their condition. The trainer of horses, dogs, singing birds, boxers, boat crews, and crick- eters, all make a study, more or less profound, of the material they have to deal with — all except the educator, the trainer of trainers, who generally leaves things to take their chance, or assumes that the object will be sufficiently gained by the exer- cises of the playground and the gymnastic appara- tus. It would be easy to show that this self-educa- THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 67 tion, although most valuable, is insufficient, and ought to be supplemented by the appliances of Physiological Science. This science would suggest, in some cases, remedies for natural defects; in others, suitable training for natural weakness ; in others, still graver reasons for checking the injuri- ous tendency, so common amongst children, to over-exertion ; and in all these cases would be di- rectly ancillary to the professed object of the edu- cator as a trainer of intellectual and moral forces. The effect, too, of the condition of the mind on that of the body — the converse reciprocal action — is an important part of this subject ; but there is no time to enter on it. INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. But let us next consider the relation of the edu- cator to the intellectual education of his pupils. However willing he may be to repudiate his re- sponsibility for the training of their bodies, he can- not deny his responsibility for the training of their minds. But here Dr. Youmans' words, already quoted, apply with especial force— "A knowledge of the being to be trained, as it is the basis of in- telligent culture, must be the first necessity of the teacher," and few perhaps will venture to argue against those that follow: '' Education,'' he says, is an art like locomotion, mining, and bleaching, which may be pursued empirically or rationally — as a blind habit, or under intelligent guidance : and the relations of science to it are precisely the same as to all other arts— to ascertain their conditions, and give law to their processes. What it has done 68 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. for navigation, telegraphy, and war, it will also do for culture." The educator of the mind ought, then, to he ac- quainted with its phenomena and its natural oper- ations ; he ought to know what the mind does when it perceives, remembers, judges, etc. , as well as the general laws which govern these processes. He sees these processes in action continually in his pu- pils, and has thus abundant opportunities of study- ing them objectively. He is conscious of them, too, in his own intellectual life, and there may study them subjectively; but the investigation, thus limited, is confessedly difficult, and will be much facilitated by his making an independent study of them as embodied in the science of Psy- chology or Mental Philosophy. This science deals with everything which belongs to the art which he is daily practising, will explain to him some mat- ters which he has found difficult, will open his eyes to others which he has failed to see, will suggest to him the importance of truths which he has hither- to deemed valueless ; and, in short, the mastery of it will endow him with a power of which he will constantly feel the influence in his practice. His pupils are continually engaged in observing out- ward objects, ascertaining their nature by analysis, comparing them together, classifying them, gain- ing mental conceptions of them, recalling these conceptions by memory, judging of their relations to each other, reasoning on these relations, imag- ining conceptions, inventing new combinations of them, generalizing by induction from particulars, verifying these generalizations by deduction to particulars, tracing effects to causes and causes to THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 59 effects. Now, every one of these acts forms a part of the daily mental life of the pupils whom the educator is to train. Will not the educator, who understands them as a part of his science, be more competent to direct them to profitable action than one who merely recognizes them as a part of his empirical routine ? Suppose that the object is to cultivate the power of observation. Now the power of observation may vary in accuracy from the careless glance which leaves scarcely any im- pression behind it, to the close penetrating scrutiny of the experienced observer, which leaves nothing imseen. Mr. J. S. Mill (Logic i. 408) has pointed out the difference between observers. " One man," he says, "from inattention, or attending only in the wrong place, overlooks half of what he sees ; another sets down much more than he sees, con- founding it with what he imagines, or with what he infers ; another takes note of the hind of all the circumstances, but, being inexpert in estimating their degree, leaves the quality of each vague and uncertain; another sees indeed the whole, but makes such awkward division of it into parts, throwing things into one mass which ought to be separated, and separating others which might more conveniently be considered as one, that the result is much the same, sometimes even worse, than if no analysis had been attempted at all. To point out," he proceeds, "what qualities of mind, or modes of mental culture, fit a man for being a good observer, is a question which belongs to the theory of education. There are rules of self -culture which render us capable of observing, as there are arts for strengthening the limbs," 60 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. But to return to our educator, who, having been educated himself in Mental Science, desires to make his pupils good observers. He recognizes the fact that, to make them observe accurately, he must first cultivate the senses concerned in observ- ing; he must train the natural eye to see, that is, to perceive accurately —by no means an instinctive faculty ; for this he must cultivate the power of at- tention ; he must lead them to perceive the parts in the whole, the whole in the parts, of the object observed, calling on the analytical facidty for the first operation, the synthetical for the second ; he must invite comparison with other like and unlike objects, for the detection of difference in the one case, and of similarity in the other, and so on. Is it probable that the teacher entirely ignorant of the science of Psychology, and the educator furnished with its resources, will make their respective pu- pils equally accurate observers ? It would not be difficult to show that a knowl- edge of Logic, as " the science of reasoning " or of the formal laws of thought should also be a part of the equipment of the accomplished educator. The power of reasoning is a natural endowment of his pupils; but the power of correct reasoning, like that of observing, requires training and cultiva- tion. But we cannot dwell on this point. In further illustration of the main argument, I beg to refer my hearers to the very ingenious lec- ture lately delivered at this College by my friend ^ ^jy[r. Lake, on *^The Application of Men tal Science to'Teaching~" and especTally to teachmg writm^, wherein he shows that even that mechanical art may be made a means of real mental training to THE SCIENCE AND ART OP EDUCATION. 61 the pupil. He proves that Muscular Sensibility, Sensation, Thought, Will, as well as the nascent sense of Artistic Taste, are all involved in the sub- jective process of the pupil; that in accordance with this, the educated educator frames the objec- tive process, through which he develops the pupil's mind, and to some extent his moral character, and thus makes him a practical proficient in his art. Mr. Lake rs lecture is probably the first attempt ever made tQ,.ghQW the direct prarctical b^eafiiig oT physiological and psychological knowledge of the art of teaching, and deserves the thoughtful con- sideration of all educators. This same Mental Sci- ence is also applicable to the teaching of Eeading and Arithmetic. Indeed, I am persuaded — and I speak from some experience — ^that these elemen- tary arts may be so taught as to become, not only '* instruction," but true *' education," to the child ; not merely, as they are generally regarded, *^ in- struments of education," but education itself. Ob- servation, memory, judgment, reasoning, inven- tion, and pleasurable associations with the art of learning, may all be cultivated by a judicious ap- pHcation of the principles of Mental Science. Mul- hauser and Manly (of the City of London School), have proved this for Writing, Jacotot for Eeading, and Pestalozzi for Arithmetic. When this truth is acknowledged, it will be felt more generally than it is now, that the most pretentious schemes and curricula of education are, after all, comparatively valueless if they do not secure for the pupil the power of doing common things well. This, how- ever, is a theme which would require a lecture by itself for its adequate treatment. 62 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. MORAL EDUCATION. But the child whom we have considered as the object of the educator's operations has moral as well as physical and intellectual faculties ; and the development of these, with the view of forming character, is a transcendantly important part of the educator's work. This child has feelings, de- sires, a will and a conscience, which are to be de- veloped and guided. Here, too, as in the other cases, Nature has given elementary teaching, and elicited desultory and instinctive action ; but her lessons are msufficient, and require to be supple- mented by the educator's. The child, as already said, is a moral being, but his moral principles are crude and inconsistent. Acted on by the impulse of the moment, he follows out the promptings of his will, without any regard to personal or relative consequences ; and if the will is naturally strong, even the experience of in- jurious consequences does not, of itseJf, restrain him. Self-love induces him to regard everything that he wishes to possess as rightfully his own. He says by his actions, ''Creation's heir, the world — the world is mine." He is therefore indifferent to the rights of others, and resents all opposition to his self-seeking. He is also indifferent to the feel- ings of others, and often tyrannizes over those who are weaker than himself. His unbounded curiosity impels him incessantly to gain knowledge. He ex- amines everything that interests him; acquires both ideas and expressions by listening to conver- sation ; breaks his toys to see how they are made ; displays also his constructive ability by cutting THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 63 out boats and paper figures. But he has sympathy as well as curiosity. He makes friends, learns to love them, to yield up his own inclinations to theirs; imitates their sayings and doings, good and bad ; adopts their notions, becomes like them. He has also a conscience, which, when awakened, de- cides, though in an uncertain maimer, on the mor- al quality of his actions ; and lastly, he has a will, which is swayed by this self-love, curiosity, sym- pathy, and conscience. This is a slight sketch of the moral forces which the educator has to control and direct. Now every teacher is conscious that he can, and does every day, by his personal character, by the economic arrangements of the school, by his general discip- line, by special treatment of individual cases, ex- ercise a considerable influence over these moral phenomena ; and must confess that the extent of this influence is generally measured by his own knowledge of human nature, and that when he fails it is because he forgets or is ignorant of some elementary principle of that nature. If he allows this, he must allow that a larger acquaintance with the principles on which human beings act, — the motives which influence them,— the objects at which they commonly aim, — ^the passions, desires, characters, manners which appear in the world around him and in his own constitution, — ^would proportionately increase his influence. But these are the very matters illustrated by the Science of Morals, or Moral Philosophy, and the educator will be greatly aided in his work by knowing its leading principles. For what is the object of moral traim^ig ? Is it 64 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. not to give a wise direction to the moral powers, — to encourage virtuous inclinations, sentiments, and passions, and to repress those that are evil, —to cul- tivate habits of truthfulness, obedience, industry, temperance, prudence, and respect for the rights of others, with a view to the formation of character ? This enumeration of the objects of moral train- ing presents a wide field of action for the educator ; yet a single day's experience in any large school will probably supply the occasion for his dealing with every one of them. How important it is, then, that he should be well furnished with re- sources. Every earnest educator, moreover, will confess that he has much to learn, especially in morals, from his pupils. To be successful, he must study his own character in theirs, as well as theirs in his own. Coleridge has well put this in these lines : **0'er wayward childhood would'st thou hold firm rule, And sun thee in the light of happy faces ? Love^ Hope and Patience — these must be thy graces ; And in thine own heart let them first keep school.' ' A little story from Chaucer illustrates the same point. I give it in his own words: — ''A philoso- pher, upon a tyme, that wolde have bete his dis- ciple for his grete trespas, for which he was gretly amoeved, and brought a yerde to scourge the child; and whan the child saugh the yerde, he sayde to his maister, ' What thenke ye to do ? ' *I wolde bete the,' quod the maister, ' for thi correc- cioun.' * Forsothe,' quod the child, ' ye oughte first correcte youresilf that han lost al youre patience for the gilt of a child.' ' Forsothe,' quod the mais- ter, al wepying, ' thou saist soth ; have thou the THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 65 yerde, my deere sone, and correcte me for myn im- pacience.'" This master was learning, we see, in the school of his own heart, and his pupil was his teacher. Time does not allow of our entering more in de- tail into the question of moral training, and show- ing that the great object of moral, like that of physical and intellectual education, is to develop force, with a view to the pupil's self-action. Unless this point is gained — and it cannot be gained by preceptive teaching — ^little is gained. Our pupil's character is not to be one merely for holiday show, but for the daily duties of life — a character which will not be the sport of every wind of doctrine, but one in which virtue, — moral strength, — is firmly embodied. Such a character can only be formed by making the child himself a co-operator in the process of formation. If I have not specially referred to religious, as a part of moral education, it is because no truly reli- gious educator can fail to make it a part of his sys- tem of means. As for the case of the teacher whose every-day life shows that he is not influenced him- self by the religion which he, as a matter of form, imposes upon his pupils, I have great difficulty in conceiving of him as a teacher of morals at all. I have now completed the general view I pro- posed to take of the relation of the educator to his work ; and the gist of all that I have said is con- tained in the simple proposition, that he ought to know his business, if he wishes to accomplish its objects in the best way. The deductions from this proposition are,— that, as his business consists in training physical, mental, and moral forces, he 66 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. ought to understand the nature of these forces, both in their statical and dynamical condition, at rest and in action, and should therefore study- Physiology, Psychology, Ethics, and Logic, which explain and illustrate so many of the phenomena ; that he should, moreover, study them, as embodied in the practice of the great masters of his art. (The late Mr. Fletcher, Inspector of Schools, says: **The intellectual faculties can never be exercised thoroughly but by men of sound logical training, perfect in the art of teaching ; hence there exist so few highly-gifted teachers. In fact, there are none but men of some genius who are said to have pecu- liar tact J which it is impossible to imitate: but I am anxious to see every part of the fine art of in- struction redeemed from hopeless concealment un- der such a word, and made the subject of rational study and improved training.") Inspired thus with a noble ideal of his work, he will gradually realize it in his practice, and become an accomplished edu- cator. He will meet with many difficulties in this self -training, but the advantages he gains wiU more than compensate him. None can know bet- ter than himself — none so well — the trials, disap- pointmentP, f aintings of heart, and defeats that his utmost skill cannot always turn into victories, which he will have to encounter ; but then, on the other hand, few can know as he does those mo- ments of wonderful happiness which fall to his lot when he sees his work going on well ; when, in the improved health, the increased intellectual and moral power of his pupils, he recognizes the result of. measures which he has devised, of principles which he has learnt from the school without, from THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 67 the school within, and from, the ripe experience and thought of the fellow-laborers of the craft. At such moments, fraught with the spirit of the great artist, who exclaimed in his enthusiasm, " Ed io anche sono pittore;" he also exclaims, '* And I too am an educator !" This enthusiasm will be more common when educators entertain a more exalted conception of their profession. That the educator cannofc fully realize his concep- tion, is no argument against his keeping it con- stantly in view, to stimulate his zeal and guide his practice. The equation of aims and achievements must, after all, be an indeterminate one ; but we approach nearer and nearer to its solution, by a high assimaption for the aims. *' We strive," as Coleridge says, ^* to ascend, and we ascend in our striving." Nothing has been said of the value of -Physiology, Psychology, etc., to the educator merely as a man, not as a professional man. But it is easy to see that it must be great. Nor have they been pointed out as subjects of direct instruction for his pupils ; yet surely it is important that he should be able to give in his class elementary lessons on all these subjects, particularly on Physi- ology. The nomenclature, at least, and the rudiments of Psychology may be advantageous- ly learned by elder pupils, and the elements of Logic should certainly form a part of the instruction of students of Euclid and grammatical analysis. But beyond the theoretical treatment of the Sci- ence of Education, I have a practical object in view. I wish to show that there is a strong pre- 68 . THE SCIENCE AND ART OP EBTTCATION. sumption that the educator of our day needs educa- tion in his art. Individual teachers may deny this for themselves— they generally do —but they freely admit it with regard to their rivals in the next street, or the next town. Generalize this admission, and all we ask for is granted. But there is a test of a different kind which disposes of the question— the test of results. * ' By their fruits ye shall know them." If the fruit is good, the tree is good. If the large majority of schools are in a satisfactory condition, then the educator is doing his work well; for **as is the master, so is the school" — which meanS; to speak technically, that the results of a system of education are not as the capabilities of the pupil, nor as the external school machinery, but as the professional preparedness of the educa- tor. If, then, the large majority of schools are un- satisfactory,- it is because the teacher is unsatis- factory. And that they are so, is proved by every test that can be applied. All the Commissions on Education — ^whether primary, secondary, or ad- vanced — ^tell the same tale, pronounce the same verdict of failure; and that verdict would have been more decided had the judges been themselves educators. Dealing with a subject which they know mostly as amateurs, not as experts, they are not competent to estimate the results by a scienti- fic standard ; they therefore reckon as good much that is reaUy bad ; for the value of a result in edu- cation mainly depends on the manner in which it has been gained. Yet even these estimators sever- ally declare that the educational machinery of this country is working immensely under the theoretic- al estimate of its power. The *' scandalously THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 69 small " results of the Public School education are paralleled or exceeded by those of the Middle Class and Primary Schools; and in cases of primary schools where this epithet would not apply, we find that the superiority is due to the preliminary train- ing of the teacher. What, again, is to be said of the evidence fur- nished by such a statement as the following, which is extracted from the Athenceum of March 27, 1869 : *' A petition was last week presented to the House of Commons from the Council of Medical Educa- tion, stating that the maintenance of a sufficient medical education is very difficult, owing to the de- fective education given in middle class schools. A similar complaint was made in a petition from the British Medical Association, numbering 4, 000 mem- bers. In a third petition, proceeding from the University of London, it was stated that during the last 10 years 40 per cent, [it has since been more than 50 per cent.] of the candidates at the Matriculation examinations have failed to satisfy the examiners." Once more, Sir John Lefevre, describing, in 1861, the mental condition of the candidates for the Civil Service who came before him for examination, re- fers to *'the incredible failures in orthography , the miserable writing, the ignorance of arithmetic." '*It is comparatively rare," he says, "to find a candidate who can add correctly a moderately long column of figures." Some improvement has taken place, no doubt, during the last ten years under the influence of the examinations of the Col- lege of Preceptors, and those of Oxford and Cam- 70 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. bridge, but the main diflOLCulty remains much the same. This, then, is the evidence, or rather a part of the evidence which attests the unsatisfactory results of our middle-class teaching. But we repeat, *' as are the teachers, so are the schools;" and, therefore, without hesitation make the teachers directly re- sponsible for these results. Had they been masters of their art, these results would have been impos- sible ; and they are not masters of their art, because they have not studied its principles, nor been sci- entifically trained in its practice. The true remedy has been suggested by many eminent men, not merely by teachers. It consists in teaching the teacher how to teach, in training the trainer, in educating the educator. Thus, Dr. Gull, after complaining of the insuffi- cient education of youths who are to study medi- cine, said (Evidence before Schools Enquiry Com- mission) that *' improvement must begin with the teachers. Any one is allowed to teach. There is no testing of the teacher. I think he should be ex- amined as to^his power of teaching and his knowl- edge." *' The subjects (for his preparation) should include the training of the senses, and the intellect, and the teaching of the moral relations of man to himself and his neighbor." Mr. Robson, in his evidence before the same Com- mission, said: '^ We should require certificates of teachers showing that knowledge has been attain- ed, and also some knowledge of Mental Philosophy in connection with the art of .Teaching. Every teacher has to act on the human mind, and unless he knows the best methods of so acting, it is quite THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 71 impossible he can exercise his powers to the best advantage." The evidence of Messrs. Howson, Besant, Goldwin Smith, Best, and others, was to the same effect. The Assistant Commissioners, Messrs. Bryce, Fearon, and especially Mr. Fitch, make the same complaints of the want of training for the teacher. Mr. Fitch — who has every right to be heard on such a point, for he thoroughly knows the subject, practically as well as theoretically— says in his re- port on Yorkshire Endowed and Private Schools, •'Nothing is more striking than the very general disregard on the part of schoolmasters of the Art and Science of Teaching. Few have had any spe- cial preparation in it. Professional training for middle-class schoolmasters does not exist in this country. It is certain that many of them would gladly obtain it, if it were accessible. But at pres- ent it is not to be had." And again. *' It is a truth very imperfectly recognized by teachers, that the education of a youth depends not only on what he learns, but on how he learns it, and that some power of the mind is being daily improved or in- jured by the methods which are adopted in teach- ing him." Mr. Fitch, in another place, also re- marks, ''We aU know instances of men who un- derstand a subject thoroughly, and who are yet utterly incapable of teaching it. We have all seen that waste of power and loss of time continually result from the tentative, haphazard, and unskil- ful devices to which teachers of this kind resort. Yet we seem slow to admit the obvious inference from such experience. The art of teaching, like other arts, must be systematically acquired. The 72 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION profession of a schoolmaster is one for which no man is duly qualified who has not studied it thor- oughly, both in its principles and in their practical application." The Bev. Evan Daniel, principal of Battersea Normal School, aptly describes the two main classes of middle-class teachers. 1st. University men, *^not infrequently of distinguished ability and scholarship. Few of them, however, have had the advantage of professional training. They en- ter on their work with but a slight knowledge of child'life ; they have never studied the psychologic- al principles on which education should be based ; they are almost utterly ignorant of the best modes of teaching, of organizing, and of maintaining dis- cipline." These are the teachers, rather the would- be teachers, who, as a distinguished Head Master told us some time ago in the Times, are to be al- lowed to find out their art by victimizing their pupils for two whole years before they become worth anything to their profession. But Mr. Daniel also refers to the other class of teachers, who, besides wanting everything that the former class want, also want their mental cultivation, and remain "in a state of intellectual stagnation, dis- charging their duties in a half-hearted perfunctory spirit, and finding them twice as hard and dis- agreeable as they need be, from the want of suit- able preparation for them." The arguments then from theory and those from facts meet at this point, and demand with united force that the educator shall be educated for his profession. But how is this to be brought about ? What is doing in furtherance of this most impor- THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 73 tant object ? The answer to the question must be brief, and shows rather tentative efforts than ac- complished facts. 1. The training of teachers for primary schools is going on satisfactorily in the Normal Colleges of the National and British and Foreign School So- cieties, so that what is asked for middle-class teachers is evidently possible. They can be trained into better teachers than they are. 2. This training of middle-class teachers, which some decry as quackery and others as useless, is actually going on in France and Germany most satisfactorily. In both countries, highly cultivated and efficient educators, with whom the majority of English teachers would have no chance of com- peting, are the everyday product of their respective systems of training. 3. Our Government, in the Educational Council Bill, for the present withdrawn, provided "that all teachers of endowed schools should be register- ed, as persons whose qualifications for teaching have been ascertained by examinations, or by proved efficiency in teaching on evidence satisfac- tory to the Council;" and that teachers of private schools might also be entered on the registry, by showing similar qualifications. 4. The Scholastic Eegistration Association, hav- ing for its object " the discouragement of unquali- fied persons from assuming the office of school- master or teacher," has obtained a large share of public approval, and numbers among its members many head-masters of pubHc schools and colleges, as Drs, Hornby, Kennedy, Haig-Brown (President of the Association), Thring, Collis, Weymouth, 74 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. Schmitz, Rigg, Donaldson, Jones, Mitchinson, the Revs. E. A. Abbott and F. W. Farrar, and many other distinguished friends of education. 5. The College of Preceptors, too, by the institu- tion of this Lectureship, by the re-constitution of its Examinations for Teachers, and by its recent memorial to the Government on Training Colleges, is showing itself fully alive to the importance of the subject. Its new examinations have just taken place, and candidates have for the first time been examined on the principles of Physiology, Psychol- ogy, Moral Philosophy and Logic, and their appli- plication to the art of teaching, as well as on their own personal experience as educators. The results have shown how deeply needed is this knowledge of principles ; out of fifteen candidates only three have satisfied the examiners. We still hope, how- ever, by placing a high standard before the candid- ates, and requiring an earnest study of the subjects of examination, to make our diplomas certificates of real qualification, as far as written and viva voce examinations can test it. Yet the real desideratum, after all, is Training Colleges for middle-class teachers, Professorships of Education at our leading Universities, and more, perhaps, than all, a nobler conception of education itself among English teachers. THE PRACTICE OR ART OF EDUCATION. The Theory of Education, as explained in the former Lecture, consists in an appreciation of the influences which must be brought to bear inten- tionally, consciously, and persistently on a child, with a view to instruct him in knowledge, develope his faculties, and train them to the formation of habits. It was shown that this view of Education assumes that the educator must himself study and comprehend the nature of these influences; and that this theoretical study, aided by the lessons of experience, both personal and that of others, con- stitutes his own education. Assuming, then, the education of the educator himself, which involves a due conception of the end in view, we have now to consider some of the means by which he has to realize it, and this con- stitutes the Practice or Art of Education. I have already disclaimed the idea of attempting to construct a systematical science of education, and am not bound, therefore, to deduce a systemat- ical art from a theoretical ideal. Nor is this neces- sary ; for whatever may be said of the Theory, there is no doubt that the Art of Education exists, and that its fundamental principles can be evolved from its practice. 75 76 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. The Art of Education, strictly considered, in- volves all the means by which the educator brings his influence to bear on his pupils, and embraces therefore, organization, discipline, school econo- mics, the regulation of studies, etc. Our limited space, however, forbids our entering on these mat- ters, and the " Art of Education " will in this lec- ture be considered as only another term for Teach- ing or Instruction. If we observe the process which we call instruc- tion, we see two parties conjointly engaged— the learner and the teacher. The object of both is the same, but their relations to the work to be done are different. Inasmuch as the object can only be at- tained by the mental action of the learner, by his observing, remembering, etc., it is clear that what he does, not what the teacher does, is the essential part of the process. This essential part, the ap- propriation and assimilation of knowledge by the mind, can be performed by no one but the learner ; for the teacher can no more think for his pupil than he can walk, sleep, or digest for him. It is then, on the exercise of the pupil's own mind that his acquisition of knowledge entirely depends, and ths subjective process, performed entirely by him- self, constitutes the pupil's art of learning. If, however, every act by which ideas from without become incorporated with the pupil's mind in an act which can only be performed by the pupil him- self, it follows that he is in fact his own teacher, and we arrive at the general proposition that learn- ing is self -teaching. This psychological principle is of cardinal importance in the art of education. We see at once that it defines the function of the THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 77 teacher, the other party in the process of instruc- tion. It appears, from what has been just said, that the only indispensable part of the process — the mental act by which knowledge is acquired — is the pupil's, not the teacher's; aud, indeed, that the teacher cannot, if he would, perform it for the pupil. On the other hand, the experience of man- kind shows that the pupil, however capable, would not generally undertake his part spontaneously, nor, if he did, carry it to a successful issue. The indispensable part of the process cannot, it is true, be done without the mental exertion of the pupil, but it is equally true that it will not be done with- out the action and influence of the teacher The teacher' 8 part then in the process of instruction is that of a guide, director, or superintendent of the operations by which the pupil teaches himself'^ As this view of the correlation of learning and teaching assumes the competency of the pupil to teach himself, it may of course be theoretically dis- puted. It is important then, to add that the child whom the teacher takes in hand has already learned or taught himself a great number of things. He has, in fact, learned the use of his senses, the qualities of matter, and the elements of his mother- tongue, without the aid of any professed teacher. The faculties, however, by the use of which he has *" To teach boys to how instruct themselves— that, after all, is the great end of school-work."— mabkby. "The object of all education is to teach people to think for themselves."—*' University ExtensioUy'* an Address delivered at the request of the Leeds Ladies' Educational Association, by- James Stuart, Fellow and Assistant Tutor of Trinity College, CJambridge. 78 THE SCIENCE AND AKT OF EDUCATION. made these acquisitions, are the same that he must employ in his further acquisitions, when the action and influence of natural circumstances are super- seded by those of the professed teacher. A slight review of the operation of these natural circumstances — which we may for convenience' sake call Nature — will serve to suggest some of the means by which the teacher, as a superintendent of the pupil's process of self -instruction, is to exercise his proper action and influence. How, then, does nature teach ? She furnishes knowledge by object-lessons, and she trains the ac- tive powers by making them act. She has given capability of action, and she developes this capa- bihty by presenting occasions for its exercise. She makes her pupil learn to do by doing, to live by living. She gives him no grammar of seeing, hear- ing, etc. ; she gives no compendiums of abstract principles. She would stop his progress at the very threshold, if she did. Action ! action ! is her maxim of training ; and things ! things ! are the ob- jects of her lessons. She adopts much repetition in her teaching, in order that the difficult may become easy, '' use become a second nature." In physical training, *'use legs and have legs," is one of her maxims, and she acts analogously in regard to mental and moral training. She teaches quietly. She does not continually interrupt her pupil, even when he blunders, by outcries and objurgations. She bides her time, and by prompting him to con- tinued action, and inducing him to think about what he is doing, and correct his errors himself, makes his very blunders fruitful in instruction. She does not anxiously intervene to prevent the THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 79 consequence of his actions ; she allows him to ex- perience them, that he may learn prudence; some- times even letting him burn his fingers, that he may gain at once a significant lesson in physics, and also the moral lesson involved in the ministry of pain. These are some of the features of Nature's Art of Education, and they are all consistent with the assumption that throughout her course of instruc- tion the pupil is teaching himself. We infer, then, from these considerations, that the child whose instruction is to be secured by the guidance of the teacher has already shown his ca- pacity to learn, and to learn, moreover, without ex- planations. We remark, further, that an accurate analysis of this process of self -tuition, based on the combined observations and experiments of teachers, carefully noted and compared together, and gener- alized into principles of education, will, no doubt, in time to come, furnish the true canons of the art of teaching, or, in other words, that the pupil's subjective process of learning, when thoroughly understood, will suggest, with proper limitations, the teacher's counterpart objective process of teaching. The principle I am contending for — that the child is capable of teaching himself without explanations — is indeed very generally acknowledged in word by teachers, who also very generally repudiate it in fact. They allow that it is not what they do for their pupil, but what he does for himself, that gives him strength and independent force ; but the multitude of directions, precepts, warnings, exhor- tations, and explanations, with which they bewil- 80 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. der and enfeeble him, neutralizes their theoretical acknowledgment of the principle. Let such teach- ers say what they will, they virtually deny the pu- pil's native capacity ; they act on the belief that he cannot learn without explanations, and especially without their explanations. This question of the necessity of explanations is a vital point in our argument, and needs further discussion. Explaining is '* flattening,'^ or ** mak- ing level," '^ clearing the ground " so as to produce an even surface ; and, when applied to teaching, as generally understood, means removing obstructions out of the way, so as to make the subject clear to the pupil, and generally to do this by verbal dis- course. But (1) we notice that Nature, who makes her pu- pil teach himself, gives no explanations of this kind. She does not explain the difference between hard and soft objects— she says, '^feel them;" between this and that fact — she says, ^ 'place them side by side, and mark the difference yourself ;" and gener- ally she says to her pupil, don't ask me to teU you anything that you can find out for yourself. (2) The question of explanations essentially in- volves those of the order of studies and the method of teaching. If the subject is unsuited to the pupil's stage of instruction, or if, instead of presenting him with facts which he can understand, we force upon him abstractions which he cannot, we create the need for explanations ; and in this case it is not merely probable, but certain, that most of them^ however elaborate, will be thrown away. We are," in fact, calling on the immature faculties for an ef- fort which is beyond the strength of the trained THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 81 intellect ; for the man has never lived who can un- derstand an abstract general proposition while ut- terly ignorant of the facts on which it is ultimately- founded. But supposing that we admit the value of explanations generally, and that the explana- tions given are admirably clear in themselves, their value to the individual pupil will depend, not on their absolute excellence, but on their relation to the condition of his mind. Unless, then, the teach- er has well studied that mind, so as to know its in- dividual history, its actual condition, and its needs, much of his explanation will *' waste its sweetness on the desert air." That portion only will be re- ceived and assimilated for which the previous in- struction has prepared the mind, and all the rest will flow away and leave no impression whatever behind it. And, in general, it may be laid down as a practical principle of teaching, that long, elabor- ate explanations are entirely out of place in a class of children. They do not generally quicken, but rather quell, attention. The children, indeed, con- sider that, though it may be the teacher's duty to preach, it is no necessary part of theirs to heed the preaching. This work, as they generally take it, is the proper occasion for their play ; and this play, without outward manifestation, may be going on uproariously in that inner playground where the teacher cannot set his foot. Eousseau, in his inter- esting if somewhat romantic "Emile," gives the following opinion on this subject — I adopt Mr. Quick's translation : — "I do not at all admire ex- planatory discourses ; young people give little at- tention, and never retain them. Things! things! I can never enough repeat it, that we make words 82 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. of too much consequence. With our prating modes of education, we make nothing but praters. " Now in these cases the teacher fails because he does not follow Nature. The pupils for whom he ''clears the ground " would have cleared it them- selves if he had known how to direct them, and would have been the stronger for the exercise. Having thus indicated Nature's art of teaching, as, in a general way, the archetype of the educa- tor's, it is important now to say that it is not to be implicitly followed. (1.) Nature's teaching is desultory. She mingles lessons in physics, language, morality, all together. Her main business seems to be the training of fa- culty, and she subordinates to this the orderly ac- quisition of knowledge by her pupils. W.e are to imitate Nature in training faculty, but with a de- finite aim as regards subjects. (2) Nature^ s teaching is of ten. inaccurate ; not, however, from any defect in her method, but from inherited defects in her pupils. If she has not originally given a sound brain, she does not gener- ally herself improve upon her handiwork. The im- pressions received by a feeble brain become blurred, imperfect conceptions, and Nature often leaves them so. It is the educator's business, however, to endeavor to improve upon her labors, — to ascer- tain the original fault, and by apt exercises to amend it. (3) Nature^s teaching often appears to he overdone. She gives ten thousand exercises to develop faculty, but she continues to give them when that purpose is answered. The educator is to imitate THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 83 her in very frequently repeating his lessons, but to cease when the object is gained. (4) Nature does not secure the results of her les- sons with a direct aim to mental and moral im- provement. She exercises various powers to a cer- tain extent and with certain objects; but she does not prompt to their improvement beyond this point, nor exercise them equally upon objects unconnect- ed with animal wants and instincts. We are to imitate Nature in gaining such results for our pu- pils as she gains, but we are to go beyond her in se- curing these results as a means to the attainment of a higher platform of knowledge and power. (5) Nature accustoms her pupils to little, and that the simplest, generalization. For any care that she takes, the materials suitable for this pro- cess may remain unquickened throughout the whole of a man's life. The educator is to imitate Nature in prompting his pupils to generalize on facts, but to surpass her in carrying them forward in practice. (6) Nature is relentless in her discipline. She takes no account of extenuating circumstances. To disobey is to die. She not only punishes the of- fender for his own offence, but often makes him suffer for the offences of others. She involves him in all the consequences of his actions, and often gives him no opportunity for repentence. The educator, on the other hand, while allowing his pu- pil to be visited by the consequences of his actions, is to prevent ruinous consequences — to give him room for repentence, to love the offender while punishing the offence, and to allow for extenuating circumstances. 84 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDTTCATION. Nature's teaching, then, while in general the model of the educator's, requires adaptation, ex- tension, and correction, in order to make the best of it. The old adage, *' Art improves Nature," ap- plies undoubtedly to the art of education, a truth which even Pestalozzi — certainly himself a choice specimen of Nature's teaching, a head boy m her school — failed, as we shall see, to appreciate. The upshot of what has been said hitherto is this, that the natural process by which the mind ac- quires knowledge and power is a process of self- education, — that the educator should recognize that process as a guide to his practice, suggesting both what he should aim at and what he should avoid. To this it is very important to add, that his success m carrying out his object will greatly depend upon his being furnished with the resources of his science. A thousand unforeseen difficulties, arising from the individual personal characteristics of his pupils, will occur in the progress of his work, and demand the exercise of his utmost skill and moral courage for their treatment. It is here, quite as much as in the moral action of the ma- chinery that he is directing, that the value of his own education as an educator will be found. It is the *' unusual circumstances" referred to by Mr. Grove, that call for that * "plasticity" — that multiform power of applying principles, which distinguishes the scientifically trained from the routine teacher. I will now illustrate my subject by presenting two typical specimens of the Art of Teaching. In the first the teacher fully recognizes the compet- ency of his pupils to learn, or teach themselves THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 85 without any explanations whatev^er from him, and accordingly he gives them none ; at the same time, however, he earnestly employs himself in directing the forces under his command, and sees in the self- instruction of his pupils the result of his action and influence. In the second instance the teacher acts on the presumption that the pupil's success depends rather on what is done for him than on what he does for himself. Suppose that the object be to give a lesson on a simple machine — say the pile-driving machine — in its least elaborate form. I scarcely need say that it consists of two strong uprights, well fastened in- to a sohd, broad block of wood, as a basis, and sup- plied with two thick ropes, one on each side, which are laid over pulleys at the top of the uprights, and employed to draw up a heavy mass of iron, the fall of which on the head of the pile drives it into the earth. Two or three men at each rope supply the motive power. Let a large working model of the machine be so placed that all the pupils of the class may see and have access to it. The teacher's object is to make this machine the means of communicating knowl- edge and of drawing forth their intellectual powers. He has no need to tell them to look at it. The im- age of it, as a whole, is at once impressed upon their minds. The teacher need not tax his ingenu- ity to devise methods for gaining their attention. Their attention is already on the full stretch. Their curiosity is largely excited — their eyes wide open, and "unsatisfied with seeing."— -"What can it be ? What will it do ?" He tells them the purpose of it, and nothing more, — " It is a contrivance for driv- 86 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. ing piles into the ground." They are eager to see it in action. It is now at rest, the weight resting on the head of the pile. The teacher directs two of the children, one on each side, to lay hold of the ropes and pull up the weight, telling the clas^ that the weight is called a monkey — a fact which they will certainly remember. [Names and conventionalities which they cannot find out for themselves, he must, of course, tell them ; but telling of this kind is not ex- planation.] Well, the monkey is drawn up gradu- ally until the clutch relaxes its hold, and down it falls, to their immense delight. This is the first ex- periment. Let all the children try it— all pull up the weight with their own hands, and gain an idea, by personal, mdividual experience, of the resist ence of the weight. This experience involves mus- cular sensibility, sensation, and a rudimentary no- tion of force. The children by this time, have an idea of the machine, and begin to conceive the re- lation between the end and the means—between the problem to be solved and the means of solving it. The pile evidently gives way under the repeat- ed blows of the monkey. Let the monkey be weighed, and another substituted heavier or light- er. What is the result now ? Use the measuring scale to see exactly how much the pile moves under the different weights. Why are the results differ- ent ? [These mechanical acts of weighing and measuring exactly are not be depised ; they are fraught with practical instruction.] Next, let the height from which the weight falls be gradually varied, until there is no height^ and the weight merely rests on the head of the pile, as at first. THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 87 What is gained by the motion of the weight ? Try the experiment many times — weigh, measure, judge. When is weight acting alone ?— when alone with motion ? The children form a conception for themselves of momentum ; and when the thing is understood the technical name may be given. Next, let the weight be detached and placed on an inclined plane— a slanting board. Why does it move now less easily than it did when it was free ? Alter the inclination ; try all the possible varieties of slope. When is the motion easiest ? The pupils gain the idea of friction^ and may have the name given them. Let the clutch be examined. How does it act ? Why hold the weight so firmly at one moment, and let it go the next ? Try the experi- ment, handle it, attach it to the weight ? Does it hold the ^Qigh-t firmly f Why does it let the weight go at the right moment ? Again, suppose the weight were made of wood, lead, putty, etc., in- stead of iron. Try these substances for the weight. Wliy are they less suitable for the purpose than iron ? Attach weights to the ropes, and see whether they may be so contrived as to supersede the manu- al labor. What are the diflaculties in doing this ? Can they be overcome ? What is the use of the pulleys ? Eemove them, and pull at the ropes with- out them. What difference is there now in the ease of motion. Could any one devise another machine for driv- ing piles, or any other contrivance for doing the work of this, better ? Let every one think of this before the next lesson, and bring his model with him. The teacher sums up the results of the les- 88 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. son, and tells the pupils to write them down before him. He examines their papers, and makes them correct the blunders themselves. The lesson is con- cluded. Now in this lesson we have a typical specimen of the self -teaching of the pupils under the superin- tendence of the teacher. If teaching means, as stated in books on the subject, the communication of knowledge by the explanations of the teacher, he has taught them nothing. Of that kind of teaching which Mr. Wilson of Eugby calls **the most stupid and most didactic '' — ^meaning that the most didactic is the most stupid — ^we have here not a trace. The teacher has recognized his true func- tion as simply a director of the mental machinery which is, in fact, to do all the work itself ; for it is not he, but his pupils, that have to learn, and to learn by the exercise of their own minds. He has constituted himself, therefore, as (if the expression may be pardoned) a sort of outside will and mind, to act on and co-operate with the wills and minds of his pupils. He is the primum mobile which sets the machinery in motion, and maintains and re- gulates the motion ; but the work that it does, the results that it gains, are not his work nor his re- sults, but the machinery's. In the case of the hu- man machinery — the children's minds, which are not dead matter, but living organisms — he has had to supply motives to action, sympathy and encour- agement — to apply, indeed all the resources of his science. But still he is simply the superintendent or director of the operations which constitute the learning or self -teaching of the pupils ; and the in- trusion of those explanations, which some consider THE SCIENCE AND ART OP EDUCATION. 89 the essence of teaching, would have hindered and frustrated the efficiency of those operations. For, in the case before us, why should he explain, and what has he to explain ? The machine is its own interpreter. It answers those who interrogate it in the emphatic and eloquent language of facts — a language which the children understand without explanations ; and it practises them abundantly in what Prof essor Huxley aptly calls the "logic of experiment;" and if it says nothing about abstrac- tions and first principles, which they could not comprehend, it lays before them the proper ground- work for these mental deductions, ready for the superstructure of science when the proper time comes. And until this groundwork of facts is laid, the teacher may strain his mind and break his heart in his anxiety to give explanations. In fact, none that he can give will be equal in value to those given silently, powerfully, and effectually by the machine itself . It is clear, then, that no- thing would be gained by his explanations, and that they are therefore unnecessary. Without dwelling now on all the points of in- terest contained in the lesson that I have described, which will be summarized hereafter, I invite atten- tion especially to two or three. (1) We notice the pleasurable feeling of the chil- dren thus actively engaged in the free exercise of their own powers — seeing, handhng, experiment- ing, discovering, investigating, and inventing for themselves. This feeling will, by the necessary laws of association, always accompany the re- membrance of the lesson. Is not this in itself an immense gain both for teacher and pupils ? 90 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. (2) But there is another very important gain for the pupils thus educating themselves. It is an ap- proved principle of the science of education, that it should be the aim of the educator not merely to train faculty, but to induce in his pupils the power of exercising it without his aid — ^in other words, to make the pupils independent of the teacher. Now as, in the case before us, the children have gained their knowledge by the exercise of their own facul- ties—have observed, experimented, etc., for them- selves ; they cannot but have gained a rudimentary consciousness that they could, without the teacher, go through the same process in acquiring the knowledge of another machine. The conscious- ness of power, may, as I have said, be, at the end of the first lesson, merely rudimentary ; but it will gain strength as they proceed, and the final result of such teaching will be that they will ac- quire the valuable habit of independent mental self-direction. An eminent French teacher used to be laughed at for saying that he was continually aiming to make himself useless to his pupils. The silly laughers thought that he had made a blunder, and meant to say— useful. But they were the blunderers. (3) It is a noticeable point in the process described that it led the children to discover, investigate, and invent on their own account. They were continu- ally conscious of the pleasure of finding things out for themselves. They were continually making ad- vances, however feeble, in the very path that the first discoverers of knowledge of the same kind, and indeed of every kind, had trod before them. Though only Httle children, they were uncon- THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 91 sciously adopting the method of the scientific in- vestigator, and becoming trained, though as yet but very imperfectly, in his spirit. Should they subsequently give themselves up to scientific in- quiry, they will not change their method, for it is even now essentially that of scientific investiga- tion. The value of this plan of learning is aptly pointed out in a well-known passage from Burke's essay on *'The Sublime and Beautiful." *'I am convinced," he says, *^that the method of teach- ing [or learning] which approaches most nearly to the method of investigation, is incomparably the best ; since, not content with serving up a few bar- ren and lifeless truths [such as abstractions, general propositions, formulae, &:c.], it leads to the stock on which they grew ; it tends to set the reader [or learner] himself on the track of invention, and to direct him into those paths in which the author [or scientific investigator] has made his own dis- coveries." It is obvious that our children, en- gaged in investigating and discovering for them- selves, were precisely in the position, with regard to their subject, which is described in these words. But their native inventive faculty was also exer- cised. They would be sure, before the next lesson, to take the hint given them by the teacher, and would be ready with various contrivances for modifying the pile-driving machine. When I say this I speak from experience, not conjecture. I have myself, when engaged in reading a simple narrative with a class of children, and meeting with a reference to some gate to be burst open by mechanical means, or some bridge to be extem- porized in a difficult emergency, simply said. 92 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. *'Try to invent a contrivance for accomplishing these objects, and show me to-morrow your notions by a drawing and description," and have never failed to receive a number of rude skeches of schemes more or less suited to the purpose, but all showing the intense interest excited by the devotion of their minds to the object. I am persuaded that teachers generally overlook half the powers latent in the minds of their pupils ; they do not credit children with the possession of them, and there- fore fail to call them out. An instructive instance of a different mode of proceeding is furnished by the experience of Professor Tyndall, when he was a teacher in Queenwood School, The quotation is rather long, but it is too valuable to be omitted. **One of the duties," he says, in his Lecture at the Eoyal Institution, On the Study of Physics as a branch of Education, '*was the instruction of a class in mathematics, and I usually found that Euclid, and the ancient geometry generallj^, when addressed to the understanding, formed a very at- tractive study for youth. But [mark the hut /] it was my habitual practice to withdraw the boys from the routine of the book, and to appeal to their self-power in the treatment of the questions not comprehended in that routine. At first, the change from the beaten track usually excited a little aver- sion; the youth felt like a child among strangers; but in no single instance have I found this aversion to continue. When utterly disheartened, I have encouraged the boy by that anecdote of Newton, where he attributes the difference between him and other men mainly to his own patience ; or of Mira- beau, when he ordered his servant, who had stated THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 93 something to be impossible, never to use that stupid word again. Thus cheered, he has returned to his task with a smile, which perhaps had something of doubt in it, but which nevertheless evinced a re- solution to try again. I have seen the boy's eye brighten, and at length, with a pleasure of which the ecstacy of Archimedes was but a simple ex- pansion, heard him exclaim, * I have it, Sir !' The consciousness of self -power thus awakened was of immense value ; and animated by it, the progress of the class was truly astonishing. It was often my custom to give the boys their choice of pursuing their propositions in the book, or of trying their strength at others not found there. Never in a single instance have I known the book to be chosen. I was ever ready to assist when I deemed help needful, but my offers of assistance were habitu- ally decHned. The boys had tasted the sweets of in- tellectual conquest, and demanded victories of their own. I have seen their diagrams scratched on the walls, cut into the beams of the play-ground, and numberless other illustrations of the living interest they took in the subject The experiment was successful, and some of the most delightful hours of my existence have been spent in marking the vigorous and cheerful expansion of mental power when appealed to in the manner I have described." This is indeed a striking illustra- tion of the true art of teaching, as consisting in the mental and moral direction of the pupil's self -edu- cation ; and the result, every one can see, was the acquisition of something far more valuable than the knowledge of geometry. They gained, as an acquisition for life, a knowledge of themselves, a 94 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. consciousness of both mental and moral power, which all the didactic teaching in the world could never have given them. All teachers should learn, and practice, the lesson conveyed by such an ex- ample of teaching as this. Now, taking the former instance as a typical specimen of the art of teaching, let us consider what is involved in it, and gather from it a con- firmation of the views already given of the relation of the educator to his pupil, of the Science of Edu- cation of the Art. We see (1) that the pupil, teaching himself imder the direction of the educator, begins with tangible and concrete facts which he can comprehend, not with abstract principles which he cannot. He sees, handles, experiments upon the machine; observes what it is, what it does, draws his own conclu- sions; and thus healthfully exercises his senses, his powers of observation, his judgment ; and pre- pares himself for understanding, at the proper time, general propositions founded on the knowledge that he has acquired. (2) That, in teaching himself — in gaining his knowledge— he employs a method, the analytical, which lies in his own power, not the synthetical, which would require the teacher's explanations yet that he employs also the synthetical, when called on to exercise his combining and construc- tive faculty. He employs the analytical method in resolving the machine into its parts, its actions into their several constituents and means, and the synthetical when he uses the knowledge thus gained for interpreting other parts and actions of the ma- chine, and when he applies this knowledge to the THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 95 invention of other contrivances not actually con- templated by the machine-maker. (3) That, in being made a discoverer and explorer on his own account, and not merely a passive re- cipient of the results of other people's discoveries, he not only gains mental power, but finds a pleasure in the discoveries made by himself, which he could not find in those made by others. (4) That in teaching himself, instead of being taught by the explanations of the teacher, he pro- ceeds, and can only proceed, in exact proportion to his strength, gaining increased knowledge just at the time that he wants it -at the very moment when the increment will naturally become, to use a happy expression of Mr. ' Fitch, * ' incorporated with the organic life of his mind." It is needless to add, that he advances, in this self -teaching, from the known to the unknown, for the process he em- ploys leaves no other course open to him. (5) That, in teaching himself in this way, he learns to reason both on the relation of facts and the relation of ideas to each other ; and that thus the " logic of experiment " leads him to the logic of thought. (6) That, in this process of self-teaching, he ac- quires a fund of knowledge and of mental con- ceptions, which, by the natural association of ideas, forois the groundwork or nucleus to which other knowledge and other conceptions of the same kind will subsequently attach themselves ; the ma- chine which he knows, becoming a sort of alphabet of mechanics, by meaus of which he will be able to read and understand, in some degree, other ma- chines. 96 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. (7) That the knowledge, thus gained by the ac- tion of his own mind, will be clear and accurate, as far as it goes, because it has been gained by his own powers. He may, indeed, have to modify his first notions ; to acknowledge to himself that his ob- servations were imperfect, his conclusions hasty; but if not interfered with by unseasonable meddling from without, his mind will correct its own aberra- tions, and be much the stronger for being required to do this itself. (You will remember Professor Tyndall's experience in teaching geometry.) (8) That, by teaching himself in this special case, he is on the way to acquire the power of teaching himself generally, to gain the habit of mental self direction, of self power, the very end and consum- mation of the educator's art. In order to illustrate my point still more clearly, by force of contrast, I will give a sketch of another mode of teaching, very commonly known in schools, taking the same subject for the lesson as before. The teacher, whose operations we are now to ob- serve, has a notion— a very common one — that as rules and general principles are compendious ex- pressions representing many facts, he can econo- mise time and labour by commencing with them. They are so pregnant and comprehensive, he thinks, that if (your if is a great peace-maker) he can but get his pupils to digest them, they will have gained much knowledge in a short time. This remarkable educational fallacy I have already referred to. Our teacher, however (not knowing the science of edu- cation, which refutes it), assumes its truth, takes up a book (a great mistake to begin with, to teach science from a book !), and, in order to be quite in THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 97 from (scientific form being the very opposite to this), reads out from it a definition of a machine: '^A machine is an artificial work which serves to apply or regulate moving power;" or another to the same effect: ^*A machine is an instrument formed by two or three of the mechanical powers, in order to augment or regulate force or motion." Now, the men who wrote these definitions were scientific men, already acquainted with the whole subject and they simamed up in these few words the net result of their observation of a great num- ber of machines, so as logically to differentiate a machine from everything else. Their definitions were intended for the mature minds of students of science, and were therefore framed in a scientific manner. This logical arrangement is, however, the very opposite to that in which the science was his- torically developed, and which is the only one pos- sible for the child who teaches himself. Our teacher, uninformed in the science of education which dis- poses of this and so many other questions belong- ing to the art, implicitly follows the good old way, and reads out, as I have said, the definition of a machine. The pupils, who are quite disposed to learn whatever really interests them, listen at- tentively, but not kujwing anything about "mov- ing power" or ** force," nor what is meant by aug- menting or regulating it, nor what *' mechanical powers " are, at once perceive that this is a matter which does not concern them, and very sensibly turn their minds in another direction. The vivid curiosity and sympathy manifested in the other instance are wanting here. These pupils have no curiosity about the entirely unknown, and no sym- 98 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. pathy with the teacher who presents them with the entirely unintelligible. The teacher perceives this, and endeavours to ** clear the ground," evidently filled with stumbling-blocks and brambles, by an explanation: — "A machine," he says, (no machine being in sight) *'is an artificial work, that is, a work made by art." (Boy, really anxious to learn something if he can, thinks, "What is art?" He has heard, perhaps, of the art of painting, but what has a machine to do with painting ?) The teacher proceeds: *'A machine you see [the children see nothing] is an artificial work (that is, a work made by art), which serves to apply, augment (that is, add to) and regulate (that is, direct) moving force or power ; you know what that is of course — [The teacher instinctively avoids explaining the mechanical force of a mere idea]— by combining or putting together two or more of the mechanical powers — that is, levers, pulleys, &c. — I need not explain these common words, everybody knows what they mean; — so now you see what a machine is. What is a machine ?" A. B. answers, " A ma- chine is a moving power." CD., " It is something which adds force." *' Adds force to what ?" C. D. still, ' * to pulleys and 1 overs. " * * How stupid you all are !" groans out the teacher, "there is no teaching you anything !" At that moment, E. F., a prac- tical boy, gets a glimmering of tne truth, and says, " A steam engine is a machine." This is an effort of the boy to dash through the entanglement of the words, and make his way up to the facts. The teacher, however, at once throws him back again into the meshes, by saying, "Well, then, apply the definition." Boy replies, " I don't understand the THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 99 definition." *'Not understand the definition ! Why, I have explained every word of it ; and so on. He reads the definition again, questions his pupils again upon it with the same result. He per- ceives that he has failed altogether in his ohject. all his explanations, which have heen nothing more than explanations of words, not of things (a very common error in teaching) have failed to *' clear the ground," which remains as full of stumhling- hlocks and brambles as ever. A bright thought thought strikes him. He introduces a picture of a machine— say of the pile-driving machine — (not the machine itself), and a considerable enlightenment of the darkness at once takes place. There is now something visible, if not tangible. Curiosity and sympathy are awakened, and some of the ends of teaching are secured, and more would be secured but that the teacher still confines himself to read- ing from his book a description of the machine, though he occasionally interpolates explanations of the technical words that occur. But the picture is, after all, a dead thing ; all its parts are in repose or equilibrium ; and the pupils, after giving their best attention to it, see in it scarcely any illustration of the terms of the definition through which they have labored so painfully. The pictured machine represents '' moving power" by not moving at all, and *' force" by doing nothing, while it leaves the "mechanical powers" an entirely unsolved mys- tery. They depart from the lesson with a number of confused notions of "moving power," ** aug- mentation of force," "mechanical powers," "pile- driving," "monkey?," and "clutches," while the mental discipline they have acquired is an absolute 100 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. nullity. Their minds have indeed never cnce been brought into direct vital contact with the matter they were to learn. The thing itself, the machine, has been withheld from them ; nothing but a repre- sentation, possibly a misrepresentation, of it, has been seen, at a distance, in a state of dead repose. Instead, therefore, of observing themselves its action^ they have been told what somebody else has observed; instead of trying experiments upon it with their own hands, they have been treated with a description of somebody else's experiments ; in- stead of being required to form a judgment of their own on the relation of cause and effect, as seen in the action and re-action of forces, they have been made acquainted with the judgments of others, and the general result of the whole lesson probably is, that while they have been, no doubt, deeply im- pressed with the learning and science of their teacher (and especially of his book), they have left the class still more deeply impressed with the determination that, if this is science, they will have as little as possible to do with it.* Now the teacher, in this case, may be credited with earnestness, zeal, industry, knowledge of his subject (though he had better have thrown away his book,) with all the knowledge in short that gees to the making of a teacher, except (but the exception is rather important) a kuowledge of the art of teaching. * " There is no use, educationally, in telling you simply the re- sults to which I have come. But the true method of education is to show you a road, by pursuing which you cannot help arriving at these results for yourselves."—*' Unvoersity Extension" iibi supra. THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATJEGJ^. 101 These specimens of the art of teaching stfikingly illustrate the principles before insisted on. It has been maintained that there is an inherent capacity in the child who has taught himself to speak and walk, to teach himself other things, provided that they are things of the same kind as he has learnt already. Now all children, not being born idiots, are capable of taking part in such a lesson as I have described— can employ their senses upon the concrete matter of the machine, observe its pheno- mena, make experiments themselves with it, and gain more or less knowledge by this active employ- ment of their minds upon it. And the same would be true of lessons on other concrete matter — on flowers, stones, animals, etc. In fact, these chil- dren have been taught all their lives by contact with concrete matter in some shape or other, and the teacher who understands his science will see that there is no other possible path to the abstract. It is obvious, then, that rudimentary lessons on the properties of matter, in continuation of those already received from natural circumstances, should constitute the earhest instruction of a child ; and our typical lesson conclusively shows that such instruction is attainable, and most valuable, not only for its own sake, but with a view to mental development. It is also shown that when the subject of instruc- tion is judiciously chosen, the pupil needs no verbal explanations. The lesson in question is a specimen ol teaching in which, in accordance with the theory with which we set out, all the work on which the mental acquisition depends is absolutely and solely done by the pupil, while the teacher^ s ac- ,102 THJ3 ^CijENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. tioii and influence, which originate and maintain the pupil's work is confined to guidance and super- intendence. Many arguments might be adduced to show that the principle, that the main business of the teacher is to get the pupil to teach himself lies at the basis of the entire art of instruction. The teacher who, by whatever means, secures this object, is an efficient artist ; he who fails in this point, fails altogether ; and the various grades of efficiency are defined by the degree of approximation to this standard.* The principle itself is recognised unconsciously in the practice of all the best teachers. Such teachers, while earnestly intent on the process by which the pupils are instructing themselves, gen- erally say little during the lesson, and that little is usually confined to direction. Arnold scarcely ever gave an explanation ; and if he did, it was given as a sort of reward for some special effort of * "All the best cultivation of the child's mind," says Dr. Temple, *• is obtained by the child's own exertions, and the master's suc- cess may be measured by the degree in which he can bring his scholars to make such exertions absolutely without aid." *' That diviDO and beautiful thing called teaching ; that ex- cellent power whereby we are enabled to help people to think for themselves; encouraging them to endeavors, by dexterously guiding those endeavors to success; turning them from their error just when, and no sooner than, their error has thrown a luminousness upon that which caused it ; carefully leading them into typical diflSculties, of which the very path we lead them by, shall itself suggest the solution ; sometimes gently leading them, sometimes leaving them to the resource of their own unaided endeavors ; till, little by little, we have conducted them through a process in which it would be almost impossible for them to tell how much is their own discovery, how much is what they have been told."—" UniverMy Eodension,"' uM supra. THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 103 his pupil ; and his son, Mr. Matthew Arnold, tells us that such is the practice of the most eminent teachers of Germany. If further authority for the theoretical argument be needed, it may be found in the words of Rous- seau, who, recommending " self -teaching" (his own word), says, - " ObUged to learn by himself, the pupil makes use of his own reason, and not that of others. From the continual exercise of the pupil's own understanding will result a vigor of mind, like that which we give the body by labor and fatigue. Another advantage is, that we advance only in proportion to our strength. The mind, like the body, carries only that which it can carry. But when the understanding appropriates things before depositing them in the memory, whatever it afterwards draws from thence is properly its own." Again : *' Another advantage, also resulting from this method, is, that we do not accustom ourselves to a servile submission to the authority of others ; but by exercising our reason, grow every day more ingenious in the discovery of the relations of things, in connection with our idea^, and in the contrivance of machines; whereas, by adopting those which are put into our hands, our invention grows dull and indifferent, as the man who never dresses himself, but is served in everything by his servants, and drawn about everywhere by his horses, loses by degrees the activity and use of his Hmbs." (** Essays on Educational Reformers," p. 135,) These views of the fundamental principles in- volved in the Art of teaching, it will be seen, are not novel. The only novelty is in the mode of 104 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. stating them. Practical teachers will candicQy judge, by reference to their own experience, of their value and importance. EDUCATIONAL METHODS. There is a just distinction between a method and an art, and between these and a science. A method is a special mode of administering an art, and an art is a practical display of a science. In education, every teacher must have some mode of exhibiting the notions he has of his art, and this mode is his method. He is practicing his art whenever he calls forth the active powers of his pupils, let the subject on which he exercises them be what it may. A simple machine, a flower, a bit of chalk, oi a por- tion of language, may be the means for displaying his art. But if he contents himself with leading his pupils, in a desultory way, from one point of knowledge to another, from one temporary mental excitement to another, he risks their loss both of instruction and education — the one consisting in the ordinary acquisition of knowledge, the other in the attainment, through instruction, of good men- tal habits. The teacher, then, must define his ob- ject by a special mode or method for securing it. This method will be the exponent of his notions of the art of education, and it will be good or bad just as these notions are sound or unsound ; and this, again, will depend on his knowledge of the science of education — a science, as was before shown, ulti- mately based on that of human nature. 105 106 THE SCIENCE AND ART OP EDUCATION. The principle being once admitted, that the in- struction aimed at can only be gained by the thinking of the pupil, it follows that the direct ob- ject of the teacher is to get the learner to think. The mode of procedure which secures this ob ject in the best way, is the best method of teaching. There may, therefore, be many good methods of teaching ; but no method is good which does not recognize and appreciate the pupil's natural method of learning. This principle, I repeat, serves as the test of the method employed by the teacher ; and it is in this sense that the pupil's subjective process of learning suggests the objective counterpart method of teaching. If the teacher succeeds in getting his pupils to do all the thinking by which the instruc- tion is gained, the method he employs must be a good one; for, to repeat Dr. Temple's words, al- ready quoted, ^' the master's success may be meas- ured by the degree in which he can bring his pupils to make such exertions [i.e., the exertions of their own minds] absolutely without aid." In the sys- tem of agencies, then, by which the work of in- struction is to be accomplished, the principle, that the pupil's own mental effort alone secures the intended result, is the centripetal force which is ever tending to harmonize the the details of the process. Continually actibg in opposition to this are the centrifugal forces — volatility, indolence, indifference, etc., which tend to disturb its normal operation. The teacher who commands both these forces, directing the centripetal and controlling the centrifugal, is a master of educational method, and preserves unity of action amidst the endless diver- sities of his practice. THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 107 It follows from the foregoing observations, that as the characteristics of a good method of teaching are suggested and dictated by the characteristics of a good method of learning, it is important to know what is involved in a good method of learning. In the last lecture I endeavored to show by an illus- trative lesson what the pupil, under the direction of the teacher, does when engaged in teaching himself a machine. The lesson was, however, presented as typical, and may be apphed, mutatis mutandis, to other subjects of instruction. It showed that a child can learn the elements of phys- ical science by the exercise of his own mind, " ab- solutely without the aid " of the teacher, except that aid which consists in maintaining the mental force by which the pupil acquires his knowledge. The teacher throughout recognized the native ca- pacity of his pupils to learn, and his method con- sisted in stimulating that capacity to do its proper work. He gave no explanations, because, the ma- chine being its own interpreter, none were needed. He gave no definitions, because all definitions given in anticipation of the facts on which they are founded, would have been unintelligible; and he properly considered that the true basis of all sci - ence is a knowledge of facts. He recognized, in short, throughout the entire lesson, the principle which I have so often insisted on, that his pupils were teaching themselves, and that he was the di- rector of the process. In order to show what the method of the pupil was, it is necessary briefly to recapitulate the main points of the process. We notice, then : — 1. That he began his self -teaching with tangible 108 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. and concrete matter, on which he could exercise his natural senses. 2. That he employed analysis in gaining his knowledge, and synthesis in displaying and apply- ing it. 3. That he was an explorer, experimenter, and inventor on his own account — a true, however fee- ble, disciple of the method of scientific investiga- tion. 4. That he proceeded in proportion to his strength, and consequently from the known to the unknown. 5. That the ideas that he gained, being derived by himself from facts present to his senses, were clear and accurate as far as they went. 6. That by teaching himself -relying on his own powers — in a special case, he was acquiring the power of teaching himself generally ; and was there- fore on the way to gain the habit of independent mental self -direction — ^the real goal of all the teach- er's efforts. 7. That he dispensed with all explanations on the part of the teacher, though he was told the conven- tional and technical names for things which he al- ready knew. These are not all, but they are the main charac- teristics of the pupil's method of learning elemen- tary science, and indeed of learning everything — language, geometry, arithmetic, for instance — which admits of analysis or decomposition into parts, or which ultimately rests on concrete mat- ter. In learning the imitative arts, the process will be somewhat varied, but the principles remain es "sentially the same; for it is the same human mind THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 109 engaged in teaching itself under the direction of the teacher. All the main characteristics, then, of a good method of teaching are involved in those of the pu- pil's natural method of learning; that is to say, the teacher must begin his instructions in science, language, etc., with concrete matter — with facts; must exercise his pupil's native powers of observa- tion, judgment and reasoning ; call on him to prac- tice analysis and synthesis ; make him explore, in- vestigate, and discover for himself; and soon. Now, it is obvious that, in order to maintain that action and influence by which the pupil's method is to end in complete and accurate knowledge, the teacher must be well furnished with that knowl- edge of mental and moral phenomena — of human nature, in short — which, as I showed in the first lecture, should constitute his own equipment as an educator. He must know what the mind does while thinking, in order to get his pupils to think correctly. He must also know the normal action of moral forces before he can effectually control the moral forces of his pupils. In short he must know what education is, and what it can be expected to accompUsh, before he can make it yield its best re- sults. Without this knowledge, much of his labor may be misapplied, and, even, if not altogether wasted, will be much less productive than it would otherwise have been. In order to show that these notions respecting the characteristics of a good method are not merely theoretical, I will now quote from an independent source — Mr. Marcel's valuable treatise on teaching * * " Language as a Means of Mental Culture and International 110 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. —what he considers to be the main features of such a method generally. "First," says Mr. Marcel, " A good method favors self-teaching ;" and on this point he makes the fol- lowing apt remarks : *' One of the chief characteristics of a good meth- od consists in enabling learners to dispense with the assistance of a teacher when they are capable of self-government. It should be so contrived as to excite and direct their spontaneous efforts, and lead them to the conviction that they have the power, if they have the will, to acquire whatever man has acquired. The prevailing notion that we must be taught everything [that is, by ' the most stupid and didactic method '] is a great evil The best informed teacheis and the most elaborate methods of instruction can impart nothing to the passive and inert mind. If even a learner succeeded in retaining and applying the facts enumerated to him, the mental acquisition would then be vastly inferior to that which the investigation of a single fact, the analysis of a single combination [e.gr., the fact of the pile-driving machine the com- binations it afforded] by his unaided reason would achieve." 2. **A good method is in accordance with nature,''^ He adds: "The natural process by which the vernacular idiom is acquired demonstrates what can be done by self-instruction, and presents the Communication ; a Manual of the Teacher and the Learner of Languages." By C. Marcel, Knt. Leg. Hon: French Consul; 2 vols. 12mo.; Chapman and Hall, 1853— a work of conspicuous ex- cellence on the whole art of teaching, and well deserving to Ibe reprinted. ^ THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. Ill best mjodel for our imitation in devising a method of learning languages. " [This is only another way of stating the main proposition, that the method of teaching is suggested by the natural method of learning. 3. ''A good method comprises Analysis and Syn- thesis.''^ "Analysis is the method of Nature, presents a whole, subdivides it into its parts, and from partic- lars infers a general truth. By analysis we discover truths ; by synthesis we transmit them to others. Analysis, consis ently with the generation of ideas and the process of nature, makes the learner pass from the known to the unknown ; it leads him by inductive reasoning to the object of study, and is both interesting and improving, as it keeps the mind actively engaged. Synthesis [Mr. Marcel here means the synthetic process of the teacher ; there is a little confusion in his statement], on the contrary, which imposes truths, and sets out with abstractions, presents little interest, and few means of mental activity in the first stages of in- struction It is, however, necessary for completing the work commenced by analysis. In a rational method we should follow the natural course of mental investigation ; we should proceed from facts to principles, and then from pHnciples down to consequences. We should begin with an- alysis, and conclude with synthesis, In the study of the arts, decomposition and recom- position, classification and generalization, are the groundwork of creation [i.e., of invention]." 4. *' A good method is both practical and compar- ative*^^ 112 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. Mr. Marcel, who has in view especially the learn- ing of language, means, that there should be both practice founded on imitation and comparison, conducted by the exercise of the reasoning pow- ers. *' The former," he says, " exercises the powers of perception, imitation and analogy; the latter, those of reflection, conception, comparison and reasoning ; the first leads to the art, the second to the science, of language The one teaches how to use a language, the other how to use the h-gher faculties of the mind. The combination of both would constitute the most efficient system." [It is needless to say that our model lesson on teach- ing elementary science presented both these charac- teristics.] 5. "A good method is an instrument of intellect- ual culture.'''' This is little more than a repetition of the pre- vious statements. However, Mr. Marcel, in insist- ing that a good method should cultivate all the in- tellectual faculties, further remarks, that ''through such a method the reasoning powers will be un- folded by comparing, generalizing and classifying the facts of language, by inferring and applying the rules of grammar, as also by discriminating between different sentiments, different styles, dif- ferent writers and different languages ; whilst the active co-operation of attention and memory will be involved in the action of all the other faculties." Such are, according to Mr. Marcel, who only rep- resents all the writers of any authority on the sub- ject, the main criteria of a good method of teaching. It is obvious that, though he has chiefly in view the teaching of languages, they strikingly coincide THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 113 with the deductions we gathered from observing the pupil's own method of learning elementary sci- ence. The conclusion, then, appears inevitable, that the characteristics of a good method must be the same whatever the subject of instruction, and that its goodness must be tested by its recognition or non recognition of the natural laws of the process by which the human mind acquires knowledge for itself. Having thus indicated the main criteria of a good method of teaching, I shall employ the re- mainder of our time in the exposition and criticism of the methods of a few of the masters of the art. I begin with Roger Ascham's method of teaching Latin, a method characterized by Mr. J. B. Mayor (himself a high authority on education), in his re- cently published valuable edition of *' The Schole- master," as " the only sound method of acquiring a dead language." Ascham gave his pupils a little dose of grammar to begin with. He required them to learn by heart about a page of matter containirg a synopsis of the eight parts of speech, and the three concords. This was the grammatical equipment for their work. He then took an easy epistle of Cicero. What he did with it may be best learnt from Ids own words. " First," he said, *' let the master teache the childe, cherefullie and plainlie, the cause and matter of the letter [that is, what it is about], then let him construe it into Englishe, so oft as the childe may easilie carie awaie the understanding of it, Lastlie, parse it over perfitlie. [The teacher, ifc is seen, sup- plies conventional knowledge— the English words corresponding to the Latin— which the child could 114 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. not possibly find out for himself, and strictly ap- plies the the modicum of grammar already learnt.] This done thus, let the childe, by and by, both con- strue and parse it over againe; so that it may ap- peare, that the childe douteth in nothing that his master taught him before. [This is the repro- ductive part of the process, involving a partial, mechanical synthesis.] After this, the childe must take a paper booke, and, sitting in some place where no man shall prompte him, by him self, let him translate into Englishe his former lesson. [This is is a test of sound acquisition, and involves a more definite synthesis.] Then showing it [his transla- tion] to the master, let the master take from him hi? Latin booke and pausing an houre, at the least, than let the childe translate his owne Enghshe into Latin againe, in another paper booke. [This is the critical test, the exact reproduction by memory, aided by judgment, of the knowledge gained by observation and comparison.] When the childe bringeth it tuined into Latin [his retranslation] the master must compare it with Tullies booke [the Latin text of the epistle], and laie them both to- gither ; and where the childe doth well, either in chosing or true placing of Tullies words, let the master praise him, and saie, Here ye do well. For I assure you there is no such whetstone to sharpen a good witte and encourage a will to learninge, as is praise." [This last part of the process is espe- cially valuable, involving the correction of faults in the presence of the model, the pupil being really taught, not by the arbitrary dictum of the master, but by the superior authority of the masters's mas- ter, the author, himself.] THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 115 In this way, supplying additional grammatical knowledge by the law of exigence, just when it is needed, the teacher finds in the text thus carefully ''lessoned," studied and known by the pupil, "the ground," as Ascham puts it, "of almost all the rewles that are so busilie [anxiously] taught by the master, and so hardlie learned by the scholer, in all common scholes ; which after this sort the mas- ter shall teach without all error [because founded on facts present to view], and the scholer shall learn withoute great paine ; the master being led by so sure a guide, and the scholer being bi?ought into so plaine and easie a waie. And, therefore" he pro- ceeds, "we do not contemne rewles, but we gladlie teache rewles ; and teache them more plainlie, sen- sibile, and orderHe than they be commonlie taught in public scholes." We see in Ascham's method, that the concrete preceded the abstract ; the particulars, the general- ization ; the examples of language, the grammatical rules. He was thus carrying out the spirit of Dean Colet and Cardinal Wolsey, who had insisted, to use the words of the former, that if a man desires " to attain to understand Latin books, and to speak and to write clean Latin, let him above all busily [carefully] learn and read good Latin authors of chosen poets and orators, and note wisely how they wrote and spake, and study alway to follow them, desiring none other rules but their example." After much more to the same effect, ho ends his instruc- tions to the masters of St. Paul's School, by urging that "busy [careful] imitation with tongue and pen more availeth shortly to get the true eloquent speech, than all the traditions, rules, and precepts 116 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. of masters." Cardinal Wolsey uses nearly the same words in his directions to the masters of Ips- wich school. Into the further details of Ascham's method, so quaintly described in the *' Scholemaster," I cannot enter, except to say that, after a long training in double-translations, with the constant application of grammar rules as they are wanted (''the gram- mar booke being ever in the scholer's hand, and also used by him as a dictionarie, for everie present use"), the master translates himself easy portions of Cicero into English, and then requires the pupil, who has not seen the original^ to turn them into Latin. The pupiFs work is then to be carefully compared with, and corrected by, the original, ''for of good heedtaking springeth chiefly knowl- edge." This exercise prepares the scholar for inde pendent composition in Latin. There is one feature especially in this method, as described by Ascham, worthy of careful notice, and that is the close study of a small portion of lit- erary matter, ending in a com^plete mastery of it. The various exercises of the method require the pupil, as Ascham shows, to go over this portion at least a dozen times; and, he adds significantly, " always with pleasure ; for pleasure allureth love, love hath lust to labour, labour always attaineth his purpose. " By continually coming into direct contact with the phraseology of the text, the pupil masters the form, and through the form penetrates into the spirit of the author ; or, as Ascham phrases it, ' ' by marking dailie and following diligentHe the footsteps of the best authors, the pupil understands their invention of argument, their arrangement THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. Il7 of topics, and hereby," he adds, ''your scholer shall be brought not only to like [similar] eloquence, but also to all true understanding and rightful judgment for speaking and writing." It appears, then, that Ascham's pupil proceeds firmly on a broad basis of facts, which he has made his own by mental conquest, and that this has been possible because the field of conquest has been intentionally limited. It is obvious that no method of teaching which consists in bringing a bit of this thing (or author), a bit of that thing (or author), transiently before the pupiFs mind, creating ideas, like dissolving views, each of which in its turn displaces its predecessor, which makes acquisitions only to abandon them before they are "incorporated with the organic life of the mind," can possibly be a good method. Hence the very general result of our system of edu- cation, so called, is a farrago of facts partially hatched into principles, mingled in unseemly jum- ble with rules half understood, exceptions claiming equal rank with the rules, definitions diplocated from the objects they define, and technicalities which clog rather than facilitate, as they should do, the operations of the mind. It would be easy to sh( w that the valuable ends of instruction and education can only be gained by doing a little well ; that the ambition to grasp many things ignobly ends in the loss ^f a large majority of them {qui trop embrasse mal etreint) ; that apprehension is not comprehension, and gener- ally, that to the characteristics of a good method of teaching we must add this, that it aims at se- curing multum, but not multa. If the object of education is training to faculty, to mental self- 118 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDtJCATION. direction, his principle must be constantly insisted on. I see, however, with the deepest regret, that our educational amateurs— men of the best intentions, but of no practical experience — are con- tinually violating it in their persistent attempts to extend the curriculum of elementary instruction, A little bit of this knowledge, a little bit of that — some information on this point, and some on that — is so "useful." They forget that the most use- ful thing of all is the formation of good mental habits, and that these can only be formed by con- centrating the mind on a few subjects, and mak- ing them the basis of training. When this supreme- ly useful object has been gained, the curriculum may be extended ad libitum; but not till then. What is really wanted in primary, and indeed all classes of schools, is not so much, more subjects to teach, but the power of teaching the ordinary sub- jects well. Ascham's method, then, with some slight modifications, presents all the characteris- tic features of a good method of teaching, and is, I need not point out, identical in principle with that already illustrated. It is natural, simple, effective, although so widely different, in most of its features, from the ^traditional methods of our grammar schools ; which are indeed, in most respects, suited to the mental condition of the ambitious, active- minded, inventive few, but not at all to the ordin- ary mental condition of the many ; We too of ter forget that the raison d'etre of the schoolmaster is the instruction, not of the minority who will and can teach themselves, but of the majority who can but will not. Our teaching force should regulate THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 119 the movements rather of the ordinary planets than of the comets of the system. In t£Le seventeenth century, a nimiber of thought- ful men — Germans — ^unsatisfied with the methods of education then in vogue, began almost simul- taneously to investigate the principles of education ; and, as the result, arrived virtually at the conclu- sion on which I have so often insisted, that the teacher's function is reaUy defined by that of the pupil, and that it is by understanding what he is, and what he does, that we learn how to treat him wisely and effectively. The eminent names of Eatich, Sturm, and especially Comenius, are con- nected with this movement. I can do no more than refer those who are interested in the details to Von Eaumer's valuable ''Geschichte der Pada- gogik," or to Mr. Quick's exposition of them in the *' Essays on Educational Reformers. The results may be stated in Mr. Quick's words : '*1. They [the reformers in question] proceed from the concrete to the abstract, giving some knowledge of the thing itself before the rules which refer to it. 2. They employ the student in analyz- ing matter put before him, rather than in working synthetically according to precept. 3. They re- quire the student to teach himself, under the super- intendence of the master, rather than be taught by the master, and receive anything on the master's authority. 4. They rely on the interest excited in the pupil by the acquisition of knowledge ; and re- nounce coercion. 5, Only that which is under- stood may be committed to memory." The methods, then, of these reformers present 120 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. the same characteristics which we have deductive- ly gained by other means. In a lecture on Methods, it is impossible to omit the names of Locke and Kousseau. As, however, it is easy to read through the short and very inter- esting " Treatise on Education" and the capital di- gest of the **Emile"in Mr. Quick's book, I may pass them over. We come next to Pestalozzi —a name of world- wide renown, of still increasing influence. He differed essentially from Comenius, whom he prac- tically succeeded in the history of education, in being a comparatively uneducated man. When once reproached by his enemies (of whom ; from various causes, he had many) with being unable to read, write, and cipher respectably, he frankly ac- knowledged that the charge was true. On another occasion he confessed to an *' unrivalled incapacity to govern'' — a confession which discovered a most accurate self-knowledge on his part ; and generally, his whole educational hfe bore witness to the defi- ciency of his mental equipment and training. He often bitterly deplored, when he could not remedy, this ignorance and incapacity. His mind, however, was remarkably active and enterprising, and his moral power truly immense. A thousand criti- cisms on his want of knowledge, of judgment, of the power of government, even of common sense (as men usually estimate that quality), fall power- less as attacks on a man whose unfailing hope, love, and patience not only formed his inward support under trials and disappointments, but combined with that intense necessity of action, which was the essence of his nature, in stamping his moral THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 121 influence on all around him. Virtue, with him was not a mere word ; it was an energetic, ever-acting force.* To instruct and humanize the poor wretch- ed children who were generally his pupils, — to re- lieve their physical wants and sufferings,— to sym- pathize with them under their difficulties, — ^was to him not only a duty but a delight. To accomplish these objects, he worked like a horse (only harder), fagging and slaving sometimes from three in the morning till eleven at night, dressed himself like a mechanic, almost starved himself, became, as he tells us, **the children's teacher, trainer, paymas- ter, man-servant, and almost house-maid" ; and all this to gain the means for instructing, boarding, sometimes even clothing children who not unf re- quently rewarded his labors with ingratitude and scorn. Pestalozzi was indeed the Howard of school- masters. It was his unbounded philanthropy that first led him to become a schoolmaster,— his intense love and pity that supphed both motive and means. He saw around him children perishing, as he conceiv- ed, from lack of knowledge ; and though possessed of little himself, though mentally untrained, though ignorant of the experience of other teachers, he re- solved, with such appliances as he had ; to com- mence the work. The one ruling thought in his mind was, '*Here are poor, ignorant children. * Like most enthusiasts, however, he exercised it very irregu- larly. On one occasion, we are told, when reduced to the utmost extremity for want of money, he borrowed 400 francs from a friend. Going home, he met a peasant wringing his hands in despair for the loss of his cow. Without a moment's hesitation, Pestalozzi put the purse with all its contents into the man's hands and ran off, as quick as he could, to escape his thanks. 122 THE SCIENCE AND ART OP EDUCATION. From my heart I pity them, I feel that I can do them, some good. Let me try." It is not to be wondered at that his trials often proved *' trials" indeed; and ended in utter disap- pointment ; for although his educational instincts furnished him with excellent notions and theories about teaching, the actual results were often un- satisfactory. In this intense eagerness to press forward, he never stopped to examine results, nor to co-ordinate means with ends. Provided that he could excite, as he generally did, a vivid interest in the actual lesson, he was contented with that ex- citement as the end of his teaching. Thus, while he, to some extent developed the mental powers, he did not even conceive of the higher end of train- ing them to independent action. In order to show what Pestalozzi's method of teaching really was, I shall quote some passages from an interesting narrative written by Ram- sauer, who was- first a pupil and then a teacher in one of Pestalozzi's schools.* Referring to his experience as a pupil, he says, *^ I got about as much regular schooling as the other scholars — namely, none at all ; but his (Pestalozzi's) sacred zeal, his devoted love, which caused him to be entirely unmindful of himself, his serious and depressed state of mind, which struck even the children, made the deepest impression on me, and knit my childlike and grateful heart to his for- ever." Pestalozzi had a notion **that all the instruction * These quotations are taken from a translation by Mr. Tilleard of Von Raumer's account of Pestalozzi's Life and System, given in the " Geschichte der Padagogik." THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 123 of the school should start from form, number and language ; so that the entire curriculum consisted of drawing, ciphering, and exercises in language." *'We neither read nor wrote," says Ramsauer, " nor were we required to commit to memory, any- thing secular or sacred. *' For the drawing, we had neither copies to draw from nor directions what to draw, but only cray onsand boards; and t\^e were told to draw *what we liked. ^ .... But we did not know what to draw, and so it happened ' that some drew men and women, some houses, etc Pesta- lozzi never looked to see what we had drawn, or rather scribbled; but the clothes of all the schol- ars, especially the sleeves and elbows, gave unmis- takeable evidence that they had been making due use of their crayons." [This is a remarkable speci- men of children being left to teach themselves, without the careful superintendence of the teacher^ and certainly does not recommend the practice.] **For the ciphering," Eamsauer says, **wehad between every two scholars a small table pasted on mill-board, on which, in quadrangular fields, were marked dots which we had to count, to add together, to subtract, to multiply and divide by one another," [Here there is obviously some superin- tendence ; the character of it, however, is seen in what follows.] **But as Pestalozzi only allowed the scholars to go over and to repeat the exercises in their turns, and never questioned them nor set them tasks, these exercises which were otherwise very good, remained without any great utiHty. He had not sufficient patience to allow things to be gone over again, or to put questions ; and in his 124 THE SCIENCE AND ART OP EDUCATION. enormous zeal for the instruction of the whole school, he seemed not to concern himself in the slightest degree for the individual scholar. " [These are Eamsauer's words, and they give a curious idea of a superintendence which involved neither knowl- edge of the nature of the machine, nor a true con- ception of the end towards which it was working, nor any notion of the corrections necessary to con- trol its aberrations and apply its action to special cases. Yet, as making concrete matter the basis of the abstractions of number, it was good; and good, too, in employing the pupil's own observation, and his analytical and synthetical faculties. Hence we find that Pestalozzi was more successful in teaching arithmetic than anything else.] Kamsauer proceeds, — *'The best things we had with him were the exercises on language, at least those which we gave us on the paper-hangings of the school-room, and which were real exercises on observation." *' These hangings," he goes on to say, *'were very old and a good deal torn ; and before these we had frequently to stand for two or three hours together, and say what we observed in respect to the form, number, position, and color of the figures painted on them, and the holes torn in them, and to express what we observed in sen- tences gradually increasing in length. On such occasions he would say, * Boys, what do you see V (He never named the girls). Ans.—A hole in the wainscoat (meaning the hangings). P.— Very good. Now repeat after me : I see a hole in the wainscoat. I see a long hole in the wainscoat. Through the hole I see the wall. Through the long narrow hole I see the wall. P.— -Eepeat after me ; THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 125 I see figures on the paper-hangings. I see black figures on the paper-hangings. I see round black figures on the paper-hangings. I see a square yel- low figure on the paper-hangings, Beside the square yellow figure I see black round figures," etc. ** Of less utility were those exercises in language which he took from natural history, and in which we had to repeat after him, and at the same time to draw, as I have already mentioned. He would say : — Amphibious animals — crawling amphibious animals, creeping amphibious animals. Monkeys — ^long-tailed monkeys, short-tailed monkeys, and so on." Ramsauer adds,— we did not understand a word of this, for not a word was explained ; and it was all spoken in such a sing-song tone, and so rapidly and indistinctly, that it would been a wonder if any one had understood anything of it, and had learnt anything from it. Besides, Pestalozzi cried out so dreadfully loud and so continuously that he could not hear us repeat after him, the less so as he never waited for us when he had read out a sen- tence, but went on without intermission, and read off a whole page at once. Our repetition consist- ed for the most part in saying the last word or syllable of each phrase ; thus, '* Monkeys— mon- keys," or ** Keys— keys." There was never any questioning or recapitulation." This long but interesting account from the pen of an attached pupil, fairly represents (as we learn from Von Raumer himself, who spent nearly nine months in the school) Pestalozzi's actual teaching, though not the ideal which, in describing results 126 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. to strangers, he often in his enthusiasm, substituted for it. In criticising it, we observe, in the first place, that Pestaiozzi's method excites mental action to some extent, but secures the ends neither of in- struction nor education. It scarcely at all recog- nizes the self -teaching of the child, but rather su- persedes it by the mechanical repetition of the master's words. The observation of the child, called for a moment to the properties of objects, is immediately checked by the resolution, on the part of the teacher, of the lesson on things into a lesson on words. The naming of qualities, not ascertain ed by investigation, but pointed out by the teach- er, constitutes what Pestalozzi looked on in theory as a training in the powers of observation. Von Baumer, Professors Maiden and Moseley, and Her- bert Spencer, all agree in their estimate both of the value of Pestaiozzi's theory respecting object- teaching, and the comparative worthlessness of his practice. In fact, to hold up a piece of chalk before a class G^eeping it in your own hands all the while), to call out, *' That is chalk," or to make the class repeat after you three times, **That is chalk ! that is chalk I that is chalk!" or "Chalk is white," '* Chalk is hard," etc., is in no proper sense teaching the properties of chalk, but only the names of its properties. Pestalozzi, however, never saw this, nor that his method generally had no tendency to train the mind. An additional proof of his blindness in this respect was that he drew up manuals of instruc- tion for his teachers which involved in their use a perfectly slavish routine. Thus we learn from his THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 127 ** Book for Mothers," that the teacher, in leaching a child the parts of his own hody (which he fancied was the subject to be first taught), is to go, word for word, through a quantity of such matter as this : — *' The middle bones of the index finger are placed outside, on the middle joints of the index finger, between the back and middle members of the index finger," etc. Then he compiled a spelling- book containing long lists of words, which were to be repeated to the infant in its cradle^ before it was able to pronounce even one of them, that they might be deeply impressed on its memory by fre- quent repetition. On the whole, then, from Pestalozzi's method pur et simple, there is little to be gained. It was much improved subsequently by some of his teach- ers, Schmid, Niederer, etc., who saw in his the- ories applications which he failed to see himself. Had he been educated in education,— had he, more- over, profited by the experience of others,— had he brought his practice into conformity with his prin- ciples (crude enough though some of these were) — his career, instead of being a series of failures and disappointments, many of them due, however, to his unrivalled *' incapacity to govern," would have been one of triumphant success. As it is, we owe him much. His principles, and much of his practice, are an inheritance that the world will not willingly let die. Let us, however, leave the noble-minded, seK-sacrificing Pestalozzi, with all his virtues and all his faults, and pass on to Jacotot. It should be stated in the outset, that Jacotot was rather an educator of the mind than of all the hu- 128 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. man forces. He does not appear to have been placed in circumstances which required him to de- velop and train, by special treatment, the physical and moral powers; although the moral force of his own energetic character, as well as that of his sys- tem, could not but be, and was, vitally influential on the whole being of his pupils. It is, however, mainly as a teacher that I propose to consider him. But some here will inquire who was Jacotot;— a question I have no time to answer in detail. I can merely say that he was born at Dijon in 1770 ; was educated at the college of that town ; at nineteen years of age took the degree of Docteur-es-Lettres, and was appointed Professor of Humanities (le., grammar, rhetoric, and composition) in the same college ; when the troubles of his country arose, be- came, at the age of twenty-two, a captain of artil- lery, and fought bravely at the sieges of Maestricht and Valenciennes ; was afterwards made sub-direc- tor of the Polytechnic School at Paris ; then Pro- fessor of the Method of Sciences at Dijon ; and Irter Professor of Pure and Transcendental Mathematics, Koman Law, Ancient and Oriental Languages in different colleges and universities. Obliged, as a marked opponent of the Bourbons, to leave France on their restoration, he took refuge in Brussels, and was in 1818 appointed by the Belgian govern- ment Professor of the French Language and Liter- ature in the University of Louvain ; there discov- ered the method of teaching which goes by his name; devoted the remainder of his life to propa- gating it; and died at Paris in 1840, being then seventy years of age. We are told that, as a schoolboy, he displayed THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 129 some remarkable characteristics. He was what teachers, and especially dull ones, consider a par- ticularly *' objectionable" child. He was one of those children who *' wanted to know, you know," why this thing was so; why that other thing was not. He showed little deference, I am afraid, to the formal, didactic prelections of his teachers. Not that he was idle ; far from that. We are told that he delighted in the acquisition of all kinds of knowledge that could be gained by his own efforts, while he steadily resisted what was imposed on him by authority ; admitting nothing which was prima facie contestable ; rejecting whatever he could not see clearly ; refusing to learn by heart grammars, or, indeed, any mere digests of conclusions made by others. At the same time he eagerly committed to memory passages of authors which pleased him, thus spontaneously preferring the society of the '^ masters of the granmaarians " to that of the grammarians themselves. Even as a child, nearly everything he knew he had taught himself. He was in short, ill adapted to be a pupil of any of those methods which, in Mrs. Pipchin's fashion, are intended to open the mind of a child Hke an oyster, instead of encouraging it to develop like a flower. As a Professor, his rooms were always crowded with eager pupils; and his inaugural address, at Louvain, was received, we are told by one who was present, with an enthusiasm like that which usu- ally greeted Talma on the stage. His style of teaching, as a Professor, before the invention of his method, was striking and original. Instead of pouring forth a flood of information on the subject under attention from his own ample 130 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. stores, explaining everything, and thus too fre- quently superseding, in a great degree, the pupil's own investigation of it, Jacotot, after a simple statement of the object of the lesson, with its lead- ing divisions, boldly started it as a quarry for the class to hunt down, and invited every member to take part in the chase. All were at liberty to raise questions, make objections, and suggest answers, to ask for facts as the basis of arguments, to repu- diate mere didactic authority. During the dis- cussion, the teacher confined himself to asking questions, to suggesting now and then a fresh scent, to requiring clear statements and mutual courtesy ; but of teaching, in the popular sense of the term, as consisting in the authorative com- munication of knowledge, there was little or none. His object throughout was to excite, maintain, and direct the intellectual energies of his pupils— to train them to think. The lesson was concluded by his summing up the argmnents that had been ad- duced, and stating clearly the results obtained.* * Mr. Wilson, of Rugby, in his admirable paper in the " Essays on a Liberal Education," thus describes, in almost identical terms, what he considers a proper method of teaching science :— ** Theory and experience alike convince me that the master who is teaching a class quite unfamiliar with scientific method, ought to make a class teach themselves, by thinking out the sub- ject of the lecture with them, taking up their suggestions and il- lustrations, criticizing them, hunting them down, and proving a suggestion barren or an illustration inapt ; starting them on a fresh scent when they are at fault, reminding them of some fami- liar fact they had overlooked, and so eliciting out of the cliaos of vague notions that are afloat on the matter in hand— be it the laws of motion, the evaporation of water, or the origin of the drift— something of order, and concatenation, and interest, before the key to the mystery is given, even if, after all, it has to be given. Training to think, not to be a mechanic or surveyor, must THE SCIENCE AND ART OP EDUCATION. 131 We come now to the origin of Jacotot's method. In entering on his duties at Louvain, he found that he had to lecture to students, many of whom knew nothing of French. As he was himself ignorant of Flemish, the problem was, how to teach them. He solved it in this way. He put into their hands copies of Telemaque, which contained a Flemish translation, not Hteral, on the opposite page. After some exercises in pronounciation, he directed the students, through an interpreter, to commit to memory a few sentences of the French text, and gather their general meaning from the version in their own language. They were told, on the second day, and for several days, to add other portions in the same way, while carefully repeating from the beginning. This process, the laying in of mtiterials, was repeated until a page or two of the book was thoroughly known— that is, known so that the pu- pils could go on with any sentence of the French text from memory, when the first word was given, or quote the whole sentence in which any given word occurred, while they had at the same time a general idea of the meaning. The teacher now be- gan, through his interpreter, to put questions, in order to test their knowledge, not only of the sen- be first and foremost as his object. So valuable are the subjects intrinsically, and such excellent models do they provide, that the most stupid and didactic teaching- will not be useless, but it will not be the same source of power that * the method of investiga- tion ' will be in the hands of a good master. Some few will work out a logic of proof, and a logic of discovery, when the facts and laws that are discovered and proved have had time to lie and crystalize in their minds. But imbued with scientific method they scarcely will be, unless it springs up spontaneously in them."-*' On Teaching Natural Science in Schools." Essays on a Idberal Education^ pp. 281, 282. 132 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. tences, as wholes, but also of the component phrases and words. As the process of learning by heart, and repeating from the beginning, went on, the questions became more close and specific, so as to induce in the pupils' minds an analysis of the text into its minutest elements. When about half the first book of Telemaque was thus intimately known, Jacotot told them to relate in their own French, good or bad, the substance, not the exact words, of this or that paragraph of the portion that they knew, or to read a paragraph of another part of the book, and write down or say what it was about. He was surprised at their success in this synthetic use of their fund of materials. He praised their achievements ; saw, but took no notice of, the blunders; or if he did, it was simply to require the pupils to correct them themselves by reference to the text (just as Ascham did). He reckoned on the power of the process itself, which involved an active exercise of the mind, to correct blunders which arose from inadvertence. In a very short time, these youths, learning, repeating, answering questions, were able to relate anything that they had first read over. Compositions of different kinds, their text furnishing both subjects and langu- age, were then given, and it was found that as they advanced they spontaneously recognized in their practice the rules of orthography and grammar (without having learned them), and at length wrote a language not their own better (as Jacotot some- what extravagantly declared)— that is, with a more complete command of the force, correctness, and even graces of style — than either himself or any of his colleagues. THE SCONCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 133 All were surprised at the result of his experi- ment, but Jacotot alone perceived the principles in- volved in it. He saw — (1). That his pupils had learned French, not through his knowledge of it — the circumstances for- bade that — but through the exercise of their own minds upon the matter of the text, which they had committed to memory. If they had had any teacher, the book had been their teacher. It was from that source they had derived all their knowl- edge, and the exercise of their observing, remem- bering, comparing, generalising, jadging, and ana- lysing powers upon it had suppHed them with the materials they employed in their synthetic applica- tions. (2). He saw that, though he had been nominally their teacher, they had really taught themselves, — ^that the acquisitions they had made were their own acquisitions, the fruit of their own mental ex- ertions,— that the method by which they had learn- ed was really their method, not his. (3). He deduced from this observation, that che function of the teacher is that of an external moral force, always in operation to excite, maintain and direct the mental action of the pupil, — to encour- age and sympathize with his efforts, but never to supersede them. After a while Jacotot presented, in the form given below, the result of his meditations on the principles involved in his experiments. This pre- cept for the guidance of the teacher, is in fact— as will be at once seen — an epitome of the method of the learner, and indeed of all learners, whatever 134 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. be their age, or the subject they may wish to learn so as really to know. This, then, is the fundamental precept of Jaco- tot's method:—// faut apprendre quelque chose, et y rapporter tout le reste; i.e., the pupil must learn something, and refer all the rest to it. When fur- ther explanation was demanded, he would reply to this effect : — (1). Learn — i.e., learn so as to know thoroughly, perfectly, immovably (imperturbablement), as well six months or twelve months hence as now — some- thing, a portion of a book, for instance. (2). Eepeat that something, the portion learned, incessantly — i.e., every day or very frequently (sanscesse), from the beginning, without any omission, so that no part of it be forgotten. (3) Reflect upon the mat- ter thus acquired, analyze it, decompose it, re- combine the elements, make it a real mental pos- session in all its details, interpret the unknown by it. (4), Verify— test, general remarks — i.e., gram- matical and other rules — by comparing them with the facts — the phraseology and constructions which you already know. In brief, learn, repeat, reflect, verify ; or if you like, learn, verify, repeat, reflect ; so that you learn first, the order of the other pro- cesses is unimportant. Know facts, then; bring all the powers of the mind to bear upon them ; and repeat what you know, to prevent its being lost. This is the method of Jacotot, which may be other- wise represented thus : — In all your learning, do homage to the authority of facts. (1). Apprenesf.— Learn them accurately; grasp them firmly; apprehend, so as to know them. THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 135 (2). Eapportez, — Compare them with each other, interpret one by another, make the known explain the unknown, generalize them, classify them, analyze them into their elements, re-combine the elements, attach new knowledge to the pegs al- ready fixed in your mind. (3). Eepetez, — Don't let the facts slip away from you. To lose them, is to waste the labor you spent in acquiring them. Keep them, therefore, contiAU- ally before you by repetition. (4). Verifiez, — Test general principles, said to be founded on them, by confronting them with your facts. Bring your grammatical rules to the facts, and explain the facts by them. ^ In all this process, the pupil is employing natural means for a natural end. He is doing what he did in the case of the pile-driving machine— observing, comparing, investigating, discovering, inventing; and if we apply the tests— Mr. Marcel's or any other — of a good method, we find them all in this, which is the method of the pupil, teaching himself under the direction of the master. It is, in short, as said before, the method by which all learners — ^whether the little child in nature's infant school, or the adult man in the school of science — learn whatever they really know. In both cases, the essential basis of all men- tal progress is a knowledge of facts— a knowledge which, to be fruitful, must be gained at first hand> and not on the report of others, must be strict and accurate, and must be firmly retained. These are the essential conditions for the subsequent opera- tions by which knowledge is appropriated, assimil- ated, and incorporated with the organic life of the 136 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. mind. On this point, however, I cannot further dwell. In order to make the principles of Jacotot's me- thod clearer by a practical example, I will give, in some detail, an account of his plan of teaching Eeading. In this method, the sacred mysteries of ha, ha ; h-e, he, in pronouncing which, Dr. Bell gravely tells us, ^'the sound is an echo to the sense," are alto- gether exploded ; those columns, too, all symmetric- ally arranged in the vestibule of the temple of knowledge, to the dismay of the young pilgrim to its shrine, are entirely ignored. The sphinx of the alphabet never asks him what see-a-tee spells, nor devours him if he fails to give the impossible an- swer, cat. The child who has already learnt to speak by hearing and using whole words, not sepa- rate letters — saying hahy, not hee-a, hee-wy — has whole words placed before him. These words are at first treated as pictures, which have names that he has to learn to associate with the forms, in the same way that he already calls a certain animal shape a cow, and another a dog, and knows a cer- tain face as mammals, and another as papa^s. Sup- pose we take a little story, which begins thus : — ''Frank and Robert were two little boys about eight years old." There is, of course, a host of reasons to show the unreasonableness of beginning to teach reading by whole words. We ought, we are told, to begin with the elements, put them together for the child, ar- range words in classes for him, keep all difficulties out of his way, proceed step by step from one com- bination to another, and so on. Reflecting, how- THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 137 ever, that Nature does not teach speaking, nor give her object-lessons in this way, but first pres- ents wholes, aggregates, compounds, which her pupil's analytic faculty resolves into their elements, the teacher sets aside all these speculative difficul- ties ; and, believing in the native capacity of the child to exercise on printed words the same powers which he has already exercised on spoken words, forms the connection between the two by saying to the child, **Look at me" (not at the book). He then very deliberately and distinctly, but without grimacing, utters the sound *' Frank " two or three times, and gets the child to do the same repeatedly, so as to secure from the first a clear and firm arti- culation. He then points to the printed word, re- peats *' Frank, "and requires the child, in view of it, to utter the same sound several times. The first word is learned and known. The teacher adds '* and." The child reads " Frank and." The teacher adds *'Kobert." The child reads *' Frank and Eobert." The teacher asks *'A^hichis 'Eobert?' * and V What is that word ?" (pointing to it), ''and that?" etc. The teacher says, *' Show me 'and,' * Eobert,' * Frank,' in the same page — in any page." The same process is repeated with the rest of the words of the sentence, and comes out thus :— Frank Frank and Frank and Eobert Frank and Eobert were, etc. ; the pupil is told each word once for all, and repeats from the beginning, that nothing may be forgotten. By thus (1) learning, (2) repeating, he exercises perception and memory. 138 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. Suppose that the next sentences are— " One day, as they were plaj ing in the garden, it began to thunder very loud and to rain very hard. *' So they ran under the apple tree." All the words of these sentences may be gradu- ally learned, in the same way, in four, six, or ten lessons. There is no need for haste. The only thing needful is accurate knowledge — to have some- thing (quelque chose) thoroughly, perfectly, immov- able known (imperturbablement apprise). The child has up to this point imitated the sounds given him, has associated them with the signs, has exercised observation and memory ; so that where- ever he meets with these words in his book, the sign will suggest the sound— or given the sound, he will at once point out the sign. The teacher may now, if he thinks fit, begin to exercise the child's analytical and inductive facul- ties ; not, however, necessarily on any symmetrical plan. He says, ^*Look at me," and pronounces very distinctly f-ranJc, repeating the process in view of the printed word. He does the same with f-ond and f-ast, and asks the child, *' Which letter is /?" (the articulation, not the name ef). The child points it out, and in this wajf (that is, the articulation, the power of it) is learned and known. The teacher covers over the / in frank, and asks what is left. The child replies *'rank," The teacher proceeds as before, uttering r-anh, and requiring the child to read for himself B-obert, r-ain, r-an, and thus the articulation of initial r is mastered. In the same way the articulation I is gained from l-ittle and l-oud. Nor do the mutes, as b and p THE SCIENCE AND ART OP EDUCATION. 139 present any difficulty. The utterance of hoys^ h-oth^ b-alls, b-egan, suggests the necessary config- uration of the organs, and the function of these letters is appreciated. The teacher may next, if he pleases, though it is not necessary to anticipate the natural results of the process, try the synthetic or combining powers of the child. He writes on a blackboard, in print- ing letters, the words foldy falls, fops, fin, found, fray, ray, rap, lank, flank, last loth, lops, let, laid, lap, bank, bat, bold, bay, blank, etc., and requires the child, without any help whatever, to read them himself. Most children will do this at once. If there is any difficulty, a simple reference to the words Frank, little, boys, etc., without any expla- nation, will immediately dispel it. It is not necessary, I repeat, for the teacher thus to anticipate the inevitable results of the process. The quickened mind of the pupil will, of its own accord, analyse and combine, in its natural instinct to interpret the unknown by the known. The only essential parts of the process are learning and re- peating from the beginning; all the rest depends on these. And in guiding the mind of the pupil to the intellectual use of his materials, the teacher should be under no anxiety about the length of the process. He should often practice a masterly inac- tivity ; should know how to gain time by losing it —to advance by standing still. If he have a gen- uine belief in the native capacity of his pupils' minds, he need have no fear as to the result. The pupil (1) learning, (2) repeating, (3) reflecting — s.e,, analysing or de-composing, (4) re-combining, is all along employing his active powers as an observer 140 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. and investigator, and learns at length to read ac- curately and to articulate justly. The name of the letters may be given him when he has thus learnt their powers. It is a convenience, nothing more, to know them. The young carpenter saws and planes no better for knowing the names of his tools. Such, then, is Jacotot's method applied to the teaching of Eeading. It ought, by theory, to ac- complish this object, and it does. While philoso- phers are discussing the propriety of learning a subject without beginning secundum artem at what they call the beginning, the child, like the epic poet, dashes in med as res, and arrives at the end long before the discussion is over. A young inves- tigator of this school, initiated in the habit of ac- tively employing his mind on the subject of study, laughs at the ingenious arrangements, however kindly meant, furnished by various spelling-book makers, to aid him in his career. He turns aside from ram, rem, rim, rom, rum—adge, edge, idge, odge, and udge, — indeed, from all the scientilic per- mutations made for him on the assumption that he cannot make them himself. He is told that there is a go-cart provided to help him to walk,— that the food is ready minced for his eating : but he chooses to walk and comminute his food for himself ? Why should we prevent him ? This method is essentially the same as Mr. Cur- wen's **Look and Say Method," and that of the little book entitled **Eeading without Spelling, or the Teacher's Delight ;" the only diiference being that the teacher here employs the process consci- ously as a means of developing and training the THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 141 mental powers as well as of teaching to read, of education as well as of instruction. My pleasant task is now done. I have left much unsaid that I wished to say; and, in criticising others, have, no doubt, exposed myself to criticism. As that is the common lot, I ought not to complain of it. I will, in conclusion, go over the main points which I have touched upon in the three lectures. In my first Lecture I endeavored to show that education is both a science and an art, and that the principle science account for, explain, and give laws to the processes of the art ; that the educator's own education is incomplete without a knowledge of these principles, which are ultimately grounded on those of Physiology, Psychology, and Ethics; that this knowledge is useful, not only in its appli- cation to the normal phenomena occurring in prac- tice, but especially to the abnormal, which demand for their treatment all the resources of the science ; that knowledge of this kiod is comparatively rare amongst educators, and that its rarity is the main cause of the unsatisfactory condition of much of our education. In the second Lecture, assuming the education of the educator, and confining myself to teaching, or the art of intellectual education, I endeavored to show that the teacher ought, in the first place, to have a just conception of his relation to his pupil ; that this was gained by his seeing in the child one who had learned, or taught himself, all that he al- ready knew, and in inferring, therefore, that it was his business to continue the process already begun ; that it thus appeared that the child's pro- cess of learning was, to a great extent, a guide to 142 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. the teacher's process of teaching, and that the joint operation in which both were engaged resolved it- self into the superintendence, or direction, by the teacher, of the pupil's method of self -instruction. In this Lecture, I have ^hown that a method of teaching any subject is a special mode of applying the art of teaching ; that to be a good method, it must have certain characteristics, deduced from successful practice, and ultimately referable to the principles of the science of education, and I have described, and to some extent criticised, a few well- known methods. My simple aim, in these Lectures, has been to lead the educator to form a high idea of his work ; to show that there are principles underlying his practice which it is important for him to know, and to induce him to study and apply them, not only for his own sake, but as a protest against the depotism of routine, which has so long hindered education from claiming its professional rights in England. I trust I have not altogether failed to accomplish my purpose. PEINCIPLES OF THE SCIENCE OF EDUCATION. GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 1. Every child is an organism, furnished by the Creator with inherent capabilities of action, and surrounded by material objects which serve as stimulants to action. 2. The channels of communication between the external stimulants and the child's inherent capa- bihties of action are the sensory organs, by whose agency he receives impressions. 3. These impressions, or sensations, being incapa- ble of resolution into anything simpler than them- selves, are the fundamental elements of all knowl- edge. The development of the mind begins with the reception of sensations. 4. The grouping of sensations forms perceptions,L which are registered in the mind as conceptions or I ideas.* The development of the mind, which be- gins with the reception of sensations, is carried onward by the formation of ideas. 5. The action and reaction between the external stimulants and the mind's inherent powers, in- * By " conception," or "idea," is meant the trace, residuum, or ideal substitute which represents the real perception. 143 144 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. volving processes of development t and implying growth, may be regarded as constituting a system of natural education. 6. A system of education implies— (1) an educat- ing influence, or educator; (2) a being to be educated, or learner; (3) matter for the exercise of the learner's powers ; (4) a method by which the action of these powers is elicited ; and (5) an end to be accomplished. 7. In the case before us, the educating influence, or educator, is God, represented by Nature, or natural circumstances; the bei ig to be educated, or learner, a child; the matter, the objects and phenomena of the external world ; the method, the processes by which this matter is brought into communication with the learner's mind ; and the object or end in view, intellectual development and growth. In view of the different agencies concerned in effecting this intellectual education, and of their mutual relatior , we arrive at the following : II. PRINCIPLES OF NATURAL EDUCATION. I. Nature, as an educator, recognizes throughout all his operations the inherent capabilities of the learner. The laws of the learner's being govern the educator's action, and determine what he does, and what he leaves undone. He ascertains, as it were, from tho child himself how to conduct his education. II. The natural educator is the prime mover and I* The term " development" is here employed for that unfold- ing of the natural powers of which "growth " is the registered result. THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 145 director of the action and exercise in which the learner's education consists. III. The natural educator moves the learner's mind to action by exciting his interest in the new, the wonderful, the beautiful; and maintains this action through the pleasure felt by the learner in the simple exercise of his own powers -the pleasure of developing and growing by means of acts of ob- serving, experimenting, discovering, inventing, performed by himself —of being his own teacher. IV. The natural educator limits himself to sup- plying materials suitable for the exercise of the learner's powers, stimulating these powers to action, and maintaining their action. He co-oper- ates with, but does not supersede, this action. Y. The intellectual action nnd exercise in which the learner's education essentially coQsists are per- formed by himself alone. It is what he does him- self, not what is done for him, that educates him. VI. The child is therefore a learner who educates himself under the stimulus and direction of the natural educator. VII. The learner educates himself by his per- sonal experience ; that is, by the direct contact of his mind at first hand with the matter — object or fact — ^to be learned. VIII. The mind, in gaining knowledge for itself, proceeds from the concrete to the abstract, from particular facts to general facts, or principles ; and from principles to laws, rules and definitions, and not in the inverse order. IX. The mind, in gaining knowledge for itself, proceeds from the indefinite to the definite, from the compound to the simple, from complex aggre- 146 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. gates to their component parts, from the compon- ent parts to their constituent elements — hy the method of Investigation. It employs both Analysis and Synthesis in close connection. X. The learner's process of self -education is con- ditioned by certain laws of intellectual action, These are — (1) the Law of Consciousness; (2) of Attention, including that of Individuation, or singling out; (3) of Kelativity, including those of , Discrimination and Similarity; (4) of Ketentive- l ness, including those of Memory and Eecollection; i (5) of Association, or Grouping; (6) of Eeiteration, 1 or Eepetition, including that of Habit. XI. Memory is the result of attention, and atten- tion is the concentration of all the powers of the mind on the matter to be learned. The art of memory is the art of paying attention. XII. Ideas gained by personal experience are subjected by the mind to certain processes of elab- oration; as, classification, abstraction, generahza- tion, judgment, and reasoning. These processes imply the possession of ideas gained by personal experience, and they are all performed by the youngest child who possesses ideas. XIII. The learner's knowledge consists in ideas, gained from objects and facts by his own powers, and consciously possessed — not in tvords. The na- tural educator, by his action and influence, secures the learner's possession of clear and definite pri- mary ideas. Such ideas, so gained, are necessarily incorporated with the organic life of the learner's mind, and become a perm.anent part of his being. XIV. Words are the conventional signs, the ob- tive representatives, of ideas, and their value to THE SCIENCE AND ART OP EDUCATION. 147 the learner depends on his previous possession of the ideas they represent. The words, witHout the ideas, are not knowledge to him. XV. Personal experience is the condition of de- velopment, whether of the body, mind, or moral sense. What the child does himself, and loves to do, forms his habits of doing ; but the natural ed- ucator, by developing his powers and promoting their exercise, also guides him to the formation of right habits. He therefore encourages the physi- cal development which makes the child healthy and robust, the intellectual development which makes him thoughtful and reasonable, and the moral development which makes him capable of appreci- ating the beautiful and the good. This threefold development of the child's powers tends to the formation of his bodily, mental, and moral charac- ter, and prepares him to recognize the claims of religion. XVI. Education as a whole consists of develop- ment and training, and may therefore be defined as ''cultivation of all the native powers of the child, by exercising them in accordance with ^the laws of his being with a view to development and growth." The above general facts or principles being the results of an analytical investigation into the nature of the child as a thinking being, and into the processes by which his earhest education is carried on, constitute the science of Natural Edu- cation. But as it is the same mind which is to be culti- vated throughout. Natural Education is the pattern 148 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. or model of Formal Education, and consequently the science of Natural Education is the science of Education in general. The formal educator or teacher, therefore, who professes to take up and continue the education begun by nature, is to found his scheme of action upon the above principles, and in supplementing the natural educator's work, he is to proceed on the same lines. He is not to intrude modes of action which contravene and neutralize the prin- ciples of natural education. III. THE ART OF EDUCATION. 1. Art is the application of the laws of Science to a given subject under given circumstances. 2. The Aj*t of Education, or Teaching, is the explicit display of the implicit principles of the Science of Education. 3. The principles already stated set the child or pupil before us as one who gains knowledge for himself, at first hand, by the exercise of his own native powers, through personal experience, and therefore as a learner who teaches himself. 4. This is the central principle of the Art of Teaching. It serves as a limit to define both the functions of the formal teacher, and the nature of the matter on which the learners powers are first to be exercised— that is, of the subject of instruction. 5. The limit which includes also excludes— it proscribes as well as prescribes. The teacher who regards the child as a learner who is to teach himself through personal experience, is therefore interdicted from doing anything to interfere with THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 149 the learner's own method — from telling, cramming, explaining, and even from correcting, merely on his own authority, the learner's blunders. The function assigned him by the Science of Education is that of a stimulator, director, and superintendent of the learner's work, and to that office he is to confine himself. 6. But the Hmit in question determines also the character of the matter on which the learner's powers are to be first exercised. If he is to teach himself, he can only do so by exercising his mind on concrete objects or actions — on facts. These furnish him with ideas. He cannot teach himself with abstractions, rules, and definitions, packed up for him in words by others ; for these do not furnish him with ideas of his own. In all that he has to learn he must begin with facts — that is, with personal experience. It is clear, then, that the conception of the learner as a self -teacher deter- mines both the manner in which he is to be taught and the means. 7. This notion of the Art of Teaching, which has specially in view the period of the child's life when the formal teacher first takes him in hand, in order to develop and train his mind, is capable of general appHcation. It applies therefore, with the requis- ite modifications, to instruction properly so called, which consists in the orderly and systematic building of knowledge into the mind, with a defin- ite object. 8. The teacher, therefore, educates by instruct- ing, and instructs by educating. Education and instruction are different aspects of th» same pro- cess. 150 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 9. The sum of what has been laid down is that the Art of Education consists in the practical appHcation of principles gained by studying the nature of the child; the central principle, which governs all the rest, being that it is what the child does for and by himself that educates him. THEORIES OF TEACHING WITH THEIR CORRESPONDING PRACTICE. There are, as we know, many methods of teach- ing. There are, for instance, Ascham's, Hamilton's, and Ollendorf s method of teaching languages, and Pestalozzi's and Jacotot's methods of teaching gen- erally ; there are the methods of the old Grammar School, and those of the Dame Schools, and of the Kindergarten and a great many others. Each of these has a theory which underlies it and accounts for its speciality. Into the details, however, of various methods I am not about to enter; my pur- pose is the more geieral one of endeavoring to ascertain the leading spirit which pervades them all, independently, for the most part, of the details. A little consideration of the subject will, I be- lieve, justify us in taking, as the criterion of this spirit, the aspect under which we regard the rela- tion of the teacher to the pupil, and of both to their joint work. One teacher may regard the commu- nication of his own ideas to his pupil as his proper and special function, and their minds as a sort tabula rasa, on which he has to write himself. According to this theory, he will then treat them merely as recipients, and will carefully tell them 151 152 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. what they ought to receive, and how they ought to receive it. In placing facts before them, he will tell them what conclusions they are to draw from them. When his pupils commit faults he will cor- rect them himself even though no use whatever is made of the corrections by them. He will be so careful that the pupil should not go wrong that he will continually interfere with his free action, by urging him to aim at this point and avoid that— in short, he will assume that the ability of the pupil to observe, compare, reason, think, depends almost entirely upon his own continual telling, showing, explaining, and thinking for him. Such a teacher evidently has a mean opinion of the pupil's powers; he assumes that they cannot work without the constant intervention of his own, and considers that in the joint operation carried on by himself and his pupil, he takes, and ought to take, the larger share. Another teacher entertains a very different view of the relation he sustains to his pupil. He sets out, indeed, with a different estimate of the pupil's native ability, which he regards as com- petent to observe facts, compare them together and draw inferences respecting them without any authoritative inference on his part. He sees his native faculty at work in daily life, and therefore knows that it can be employed in self -instruction. He trusts in it, therefore, and never tells the pupil what he can find out for himself; he does not su- perfluously explain relations between objects or facts which explain themselves by the simple jux- taposition of the objects and facts. He does not correct blunders which almost invariably arise THE SCIENCE ANB ART OF EDUCATION. 153 either from insufficient knowledge or from care- lessness: in the one case he requires the pupil to gain the knowledge required, or leaves the blunder for subsequent correction ; in the other he demands more attention, and expects the pupil to correct his own blunders. He feels no inordinate anxiety about his pupil's occasional errors of judgment, provided that his mind is actively engaged in the subject under instruction, in short, seemg that the child is pursuing, in a natural way, his own self - teaching, he is anxious not to supersede his efforts by any needless, and probably injurious, interfer- ence with the process. He judges, therefore, that in the joint operation referred to it is the pupil and not himself who is to take the far larger share, in- asmuch as the pupil's ultimate power of thinking will be in the inverse ratio of the teacher's think- ing for him. It is evident that these different conceptions of the relation between the teacher and the pupil are not easily reconcilable with each other, and that the practical results must be respectively very different. These results I will not now endeavor to estimate, but address myself to my immediate purpose, which is to maintain the latter theory, and to show that learning is essentially self- tuition^ and teaching^ the superintendence of the process; and, in short, that compendiously stated, the essential function of the teacher consists in helping the pupil to teach himself. It may be worth while to inquire for a few min- utes into the exact meaning, as fixed by etymologi- cal considerations, of the words learn and teach. As words represent ideas, we may thus ascertain 154 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. what conceptions were apparently intended to be represented by these or equivalent symbols. Now it does seem remarkable that, in European lan- guages at least, to learn means to gather or glean for oneself — and teach^ to guide or superintend. In no cas ethat I am aware of do these words im- ply a correlation of receptivity on the one hand, with communicativeness on the other. A brief reference to the facts will be sufficient to show this. I take the word learn first, because learning must precede teaching. Learn ^ in the earliest form of our language, which we erroneously call Anglo- Saxon instead of Original or Primitive English, was leorn-ian, a derivative of the simpler form Icer- an, to teach. There is reason to believe that the longer form with the epenthetic n represents a class of words once not uncommon in Gothic lan- guages, though now no longer recognized in prac- tice — I mean words endued in themselves with the functions of reflective or passive verbs. Thus, in Moeso- Gothic, we have luJcan, to shut or lock up, luknan, to lock oneself up, or to be locked up; wak-an, to wake another, wakn-an, to wake oneself, to be awake. We have the corresponding awake and awaken ourselves. If this analogy be correct, then leorn-ian, as connected with Icer-an, to teach, means to teach oneself -i.e., to learn. As, however, the director of a work often gets the credit due to his subaltern, so the person who directed his pupil to do his work of teaching himself was formerly said — and the usage still exists— to Zearn or lam the pupil. In nearly all European languages, this double force of the word is found. Three hundred years ago even it was unquestionably good English THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 155 to say, as Cranmer does in his version of the Psal- ter—'' Lead me forth in thy truth and learn me," and as Shakespeare does in the person of Caliban—- **the red plague rid you for learning me your lan- guage." But what does the original root l(£r mean? It is evidently equivalent to the Moeso- Gothic lais or les ; s being interchangeable with r, as we see in the Latin, arbos, arbor, and in the German, eisen, compared with our iron. But the Moeso- Gothic lais or les is identical with the Ger- man, les or lesen, and means to pluck, gather, ac- quire, read, learn, and we have still a trace of it in our provincial word leasing — gleaning or gathering up. The primitive meaning then of the root leer, of our original English must have been the same as that of the Moeso-Gothic les, though, for reasons already referred to, the causative sense to maJce to gather, acquire or learn, must have been very early superadded. On the whole, then, it appears suffi- ciently clear that to learn is to gather or glean for oneself, i.e., to teach oneself. But the correlative teach also requires a moment's consideration. This is derived from, or equivalent to, the original Eng- lish, tcec or tcBch (in tsec-an or tsech-an), to the Ger- man, zeig (in zeigen), to the Moeso Gothic tech (in techan), to the Latin doc (in docere) or die in di(c) score (of which the ordinary form is discere) and to the Greek deiJc (in deiJcnumi). This common root means to show, point out, direct, lead the way. The same idea is conveyed by the French equiva- lent montrer and enseigner, both meaning, as we know, to teach. The etymology, then, in both instances supports the theory that learning is gathering up or acquir- 166 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. ing for oneself, and teaching^ the guiding, direct- ing, or superintending of that process. The pupil, then, by this theory is to advance by his own efforts, to work for himself, to learn for himself, to think for himself; and the teacher's function is to consist mainly in earnest and sym- pathizing direction. He is to devote his knowledge, intelligence, virtue and experience to that object. He has himself traveled the road before which he and his young companion are to travel together: he knows its difficulties, and can sympathize with the strug- gles which must be made against them. He will therefore endeavor to gain his pupil's confidence, by entering into them, and by suggesting adequate motives for exertion when he sees the needful courage failing. He will encourage and animate every honest and manful effort of his pupil, but, remembering that he is to be a guide and not a hearer^ he will not even attempt to supersede that labor and exercise which constitute the value of the discipline to the pupil, and which he cannot take upon himself without defeating the very end in view. It is worth while here to meet a plausible objec- tion which has been taken against this view of the teacher's function. If, it is said, the pupil really after all learns by himself without the intervention of the teacher's mind in the process— though the intervention of his moral influence is strenuously insisted on— then this superintendent of other peo- ple's efforts to gain knowledge may really have none himself ; tHis director of machinery may know nothing of niechanics. This objection is pertinent and deserves attention. It is obvious THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 157 that the teacher who is really able to enter into his pupil's difficulties in learning, effectively ought to be well furnished with knowledge and experience. Knowledge of the subject under instruction is to be required of the teacher, both because the recog- nized possession of it gives him weight and influ- ence, and because the possession of a large store of well digested knowledge is itself distinct evidence that its owner has gone through a course of health- ful mental discipline, and is^on that ground— ottier things being equal — a fit and proper person to superintend those who are going through the same discipline. Knowledge also of a special kind he ought to have — that derived from thoughtful study, accompanied by practice, of the machinery which he is to direct. He is not, by the assump- tion, himself an essential part of it, but as an over- looker or engineer he certainly ought to be ac- quainted with its nature and construction, so as to be able to estimate its working power, and to know when to start and when to stop it, to prevent both inaction and overaction. A teacher, then, without ome knowledge of pyschology, gained both sys- tematically and by experience and observation, could hardly be considered as fully equipped for his work. But I need not dwell further on this point, though I could not well leave it unnoticed. ft appears, then, that the teacher of a pupil who teaches himself will find quite enough to do in his work of superintendence and sympathy. It is only as far as the mental process of learning that the pupil is in any sense independent of him. I do not profess to describe in philosophic terms what the mental process which we call learning 158 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. really is, but it is necessary for my argument to maintain that whatever it Is, it can no more be performed by deputy than eating, drinting, or sleeping, and further, that every one engaged in performing it is really teaching himseK. If, then, the views I have suggested of the relation between the teacher and the learner be generally correct, and the latter really learns by teaching himself, it would follow that if we could only ascertain his method as a learner, we should obtain the true ele- ments of ours as teachers ; or in other words, that the true principles of the art of teaching would be educed from those involved in the art of learning, though the converse is by no means true. The establishment of these principles would fur- nish us with a test of the real value of some of the practices in current use amongst teachers, and perhaps help to lay the foundation of that teaching of the future, which will, as I believe, identify self- tuition, under competent guidance, with the scien- tific method of investigation. But I must endeavor to enlarge the field of in- quiry, and show that self -tuition under guidance is the only possible method in the acquirement of that elementary instruction which is the common property of the whole himian race. Long before the teacher, with his apparatus of books, maps, globes, diagrams, and lectures, appears in the field, the child has been pursuing his own education un- der the direction of a higher teacher than any of those who bear the technical name. He has been learning the facts and phenomena which stand for words and phrases in the great book of Nature, and has also learned some of the conventional signs THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 159 by which those facts and phenomena are known in his mother-tongue. As my general proposition is that the art of teaching should be, as far as possible, founded on those processes by which Nature teaches those who have no other teacher — those who learn by them- selves—it is important to glance at a few of these processes. Nature's earliest lessons consist in teaching her pupils the use of their senses. The infant, on first opening his eyes, probably sees nothing. A glare of light stimulates the organ of sight, but makes no distinct impression upon it. In a short time, how- ever, the light reflected from the various objects around him impinges with more or less force, upon the eye and impresses upon it the images of things without, the idea of the image is duly transferred to the mind — and thus the first lesson in seeing is given. This idea of form is, however, complex in its character, which arises from the fact that the ob- jects presented to his attention are wholes or ag- gregates. He learns to recognize them in the gross before he knows them in detail. He has no choice but to learn them in this way. No child ever did learn them in any other way. Nature presents him with material objects and facts, or things al- ready made or done. She does not invite him, in the first instance, before he knows in a general way the whole object, to observe the constituent parts, nor the manner in which the parts are related to the whole. She never, in condescension to his weakness of perception, separates the aggre gate in its component elements— never presents 160 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. these elements to his consideration one by one. In short, she ignores altogether in her earliest lessons the synthetical method, and insists on his employ- ing only the analytical. As a student of the ana- lytical method he proceeds with his investigations, observing resemblances and differences, comparing, contrasting, and to some extent generalizing (and thus using the synthetical process), until the main distinctions of external forms are comprehended, and their more important parts recognized as dis- tinct entities, to be subsequently regarded them- selves as wholes and decomposed into their constit- uent parts. Thus the child goes on with Nature as his teacher, learning to read for himself and by himself the volume she spreads out before him, mastering first some of its sentences, then its phrases and words, and, lastly, a few of its separ- ate letters. So with regard to the physical properties of ob- jects as distinguished from their mechanical divisions or parts. What teacher but Nature makes the child an embryo experimental philoso- pher ? It is she who teaches him to teach himself the difference between hard and soft, bitter and sweet, hot and cold. He lays hold of objects with- in his reach, conveys them to his mouth, knocks them against the cable or floor, and by performing such experiments incessantly gratifies, instructs and trains the senses of sight, touch, taste, smell- ing, and hearing. At one time a bright and most attractive object is close at hand. It looks beauti- ful, and he wonders what it can be. Nature whis- pers, ''Find out what it is. Touch it." He puts his fingers obediently into the flame, bums them, THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 161 and thus makes an experiment, and gains at the the same time an important experience in the art of living. He does not, however, feel quite certain that this may not he a special case of bad luck. He therefore tries again, and of course with the same result. And now, reflecting maturely on what has taken place, he begins to assume that not only the flame already tried, but all flame will burn him— and thus dimly perceiving the relation between cause and effect, he is already tracking, though slowly and feebly, the footsteps of the inductive philosophy. Even earlier in life— as soon, indeed, as he was born, as Professor Tyndall remarks — urged by the necessity of doing something for his living, he improvised a suction-pump, and thus showed himself to be, even from his birth, a stu- dent of practical science. These instances will serve to show that Nature's earliest lessons are illustrations of the theory, that teaching essentially consists in aiding the pupil to teach himself. The child's method of learning is evidently self -tuition under guidance, and nothing else. He learns, ^.e., gathers up, acquires, knows a vast number of facts relating to things about him ; and, moreover, by imitation solely, he gains a practical acquaintance with the arts of walking, seeing, hearing, etc. Who has taught him ? Na- ture — himself — practically they are one. In the ordinary sense, indeed, of the word teaching. Na- ture has not taught him at all. She has given him no rules, no laws, no abstract principles, no formu- lae, no grammar of hearing, seeing, walking, or talking ; she simply gave the faculty, supplied the material, and the occasion for its exercise, and her 1G2 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. pupil learnt to do hy doing. This is what Nature, the teacher, the guide, the directrix, did. But something more she did, or rather in her wisdom left undone. When her pupil, through careless- ness and heedlessness, failed to see what was before him, when he blundered in his walking or talking; she neither interposed to correct his blunders, nor indulged in outcries and objurgations against him. She bided her opportunity. She went on teaching, he went on learning, and the blunders were in time corrected by the pupil himself. Even when he was about to burn his fingers, it was no part of her plan to hinder him from learning the valuable lessons taught by the ministry of pain. Perhaps in these respects, as weU as in so many others, teachers of children might learn something from the example of their great Archididascalos. But it will be objected that Nature's wise, au- thoritative teaching can be no guide for us. She teaches by the law of exigency, and her pupil must perforce learn whether he will or not. In the society in which we live there is no such impera- tive claim, and the teacher, who appears as Na- ture's deputy, can neither wield her authority nor adopt her methods. In reply to this objection it may be urged that Society's claims upon her mem- bers are scarcely less imperative than Nature's, and that the deputy can, and ought to, act out his superior's principles of administration. Suppose, then, for instance, that Society requires that a child should learn to read. In this case, certainly, Nature will not intervene to secure that special instruction, but the method adopted by her deputy may be, and ought to be, founded on hers. THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 163 Every principle of Nature's teaching is violated in the ordinary plan of commencing' with the alpha- bet. Nature, as I have already said or impHed, sets no alphabet whatever before her pupil ; nor is there in the teaching of Nature anything that even suggests such a notion as learning A, B, C Na- ture's teaching, it cannot be too frequently repeat- ed, is, at first analytical, not synthetical, and the essence of it is that the pupil makes the analysis himself. Our ordinary teacher, however, in defiance of Nature, commences his instructions in the art of reading with A, B, C, pointing out each letter, and at the same time uttering a sound which the child is expected to consider as the sound always to be associated with that sign. At length, after many a groan, the alphabet is learned perfectly and the teacher proceeds to the combinations. He points to a word, and the pupil says, letter by letter, hee- a-tee, and then, naturally enough, comes to a dead stop. His work is done. Neither he nor Sir Isaac Newton in his prime, could take the next expected step and compoimd these elements into bat. The sphynx who proposes the riddle may indeed look menacingly for the answer, but by no possible chance can she get it. The teacher then comes to the rescue, utters the sound bat, which the child duly repeats, and thus the second stage in reading is ac- complished. It will be observed that the only rational and sensible feature in this process is the utterance and echo of the sound bat in view of the word or sign, and if the teacher had begun with this, and not confused the child by giving him the notion that 164 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. he was learning a sounds when he was in fact learning nothing but a name^ Nature would have approved of the lesson, as analogous to those given by herself. She might also have asked the teacher to notice that the child learns to speak by hearing and using whole words. Nobody addresses him as bee-a-bee-wy^ nor does he say em-a-em-em-a. He, in fact, deals with aggregates, compares them together, exercises the analytical faculty upon them, and employs the constituent elements which he thus ob- tains in ever new combinations. There can be no doubt, then, that the child learns to speak by im- itation, analysis, and practice. Why not, then, says Nature, let him learn reading in the same way ? Let him in view of entire words echo the sound of them received from the teacher; let him learn them thoroughly as wholes, let him by anal- ysis separate them into their syllables, and the syl- lables into their letters, and it will be found that the phonic faculty of the compound leads surely and easily to that of its separate parts. The fact that our orthography is singularly anomalous is an ar- gument for, rather than against, the adoption of this plan of teaching to read. In pursuing this only natural method of instruc- tion we notice that the pupil frequently repeats the same process, going over and over the same ground until he has mastered it, and as in learning to walk he often stumbled before he walked freely, and in learning to talk often blundered and stammered before he used his tongue readily, so while learning to read in Nature's school, he will make many a fruitless attempt, be often puzzled, often for awhile miss his path, yet all the while he is correcting his THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 165 errors, by added knowledge and experience, sharp- ening his faculties by practice, teaching himself by his own active efforts, and not receiving passively the explanations of others ; deeply interested too in discovering for himself that which he would be even disgusted with if imposed upon him by dogmatic authority, he is trained, even from the very begin- ning, in the method of investigation. I cannot but look upon him as illustrating faithfully and fairly in his practice the theory that learning is self -tui- tion under competent guidance, and that teaching is, or ought to be, the superintendence of the pro- cess. Did time permit I could give many illustrations of the interest excited, and the efficiency secured, by this method of teaching reading. For example, I have seen and heard children earnestly petition- ing to be allowed to pursue their lessons in reading, after a short experience of it, by what they called the *'find out plan." It was known to me more than forty years ago, as a part of Jacotot's once renowned **Enseignement Universel," and I then put it to the severest test. It is also substantially contained in Mr. Curwen's **Look and Say meth- od," in the little book entitled '* Eeading without Spelling, or the Scholar's Delight," and in articles by Mr. Dunning and Mr. Baker, of Doncaster, in the Quarterly Journal of Education for 1834. A natural method, like others, requires of course to be judiciously directed, and the teacher's especial duty is in this, as in other methods, to maintain the interest of the lesson, and above aU, to get the pu- pil, however young he may be, to think; especially as, according to the principles already laid down, 166 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. it is rather the pupil who learns than the master who teaches. As a case in point I quote a passage from the life of Lord Byron. Speaking of a school he was in when five years of age, he says, *'I learned little there except to repeat by rote the first, lesson of monosyllables, ^ God made man, let us love him, etc,' by hearing it often repeated with- out acquiring a letter. Whenever proof was made of my progress at home, I repeated these words, with the most rapid fluency, but on turning over a new leaf, I continued to repeat them, so that the narrow boundaries of my first year's accompHsh- ments were detected, my ears boxed (which they did not deserve, seeing that it was by ear only that I had acquired my letters), and my intellects con- signed to a new preceptor." This case, however, proves only that Byron had not been directed in teaching himself, and that he was not a pupil of the analytical method. His mind had taken no cognizance of the acquisitions which he had mechanically made. Another instance, much more to the point, is suppHed in a passage which I extracted many years ago from a Report of the Gaelic School So- ciety, and which contains a most valuable lesson for the teachers of reading. ' ' An elderly female in the parish of Edderton was most anxious to read the Scriptures in her native tongue. She did not even know the alphabet, and of course she began with the letters. Long and zealously she strove to acquire these, and finally succeeded. She was then put into the syllable class, in which she con- tinued some time, but made so little progress that, with a breaking heart, she retired from the school. THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 167 The clergyman of the parish, on being made ac- quainted with these circumstances, advised the teacher to send for her again, and instead of trying her with syllables, to which she could attach no meaning, to give her the sixth Psalm at once. This plan succeeded to admiration ; and when the school was examined by a committee of presbytery, she read the thirty seventh Psalm in a manner that astonished all present." Whether this impor- tant discovery— for it was nothing less— was made practically available in the teaching of the parish of Edderton I do not know; but I should not be surprised to find that the good old A, B, C, and the cabalistical b-a, ba; b-e, be, — in which Dr. Andrew Bell gravely tells us **the sound is an echo to the sense .'"—is still going on there as at the beginning. I have detained you long over the practical illus- tration contained in this method of teaching to read, because it really is a complete application of the theory which I advocate, and involves such principles as these which I state with the utmost brevity for want of time : — 1. The pupil, teaching himself, begins with tangi- ble and concrete facts which he can compre- hend, not with abstract principles which he cannot. 2. He employs a method— the analytical— which lies in his own power, not the synthetical, which mainly requires application ab extra, 3. His early career is not therefore impeded by needless precepts, and authoritative dogmas. 4. He learns to become a discoverer and explorer on his own account, and not merely a passive 168 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. recipient of the results of other people's dis- coveries, 5. He takes a degree of pleasure in the discov- eries or acquisitions made by himself, which he cannot take in those made by others. 6. In teaching himself he proceeds— he can only proceed — in proportion to his strength, and is not perplexed and encumbered by explana- tions, which, however excellent in themselves, may not be adapted — generally are not adapt- ed — to the actual state of his mind. 7. He consequently proceeds from the known to the unknown. 8. The ideas that he thus gains will, as natural sequences of those already gained by the same method, be clear and precise as far as they go, his knowledge will be accurate, though of course very limited, because it is his own. 9. By teaching himself, and relying on his own powers in a special [case, he acquires the fa- culty of teaching himself generally — a faculty the value of which can hardly be overrated. If these principles are involved in the method of self -tuition they necessarily define the measure and limit of the teacher's function, and show us what the art of teaching ought to be. They seem also to render it probable that much that goes under the name of teaching rather hinders than helps the self -teaching of the pupil. The assmnption of the pupil's inability to learn except through the mani- fold .explanations of the teacher is inconsistent with this theory, not less so is the universal prac- tice of making technical definitions, abstract prin- ciples, scientific rules, etc., form so large a portion THE SCIENCE AND ART* OP EDUCATION. 169 of the pabulum of the youthful mind. The super- intending teacher by no means however despises definitions, principles and rules, but he introduces them when the pupil is prepared for them, and then he gets him to frame them for himself. The self -teaching student has no power to anticipate the time when these deductions from facts — for such they all ultimately are— will, by the natural course of mental development, take their proper place in the course of instruction, and any attempt to force him to swallow them merely as intellectual boluses prematurely can only end in derangement of the digestive organs. His mind can digest, or at least begin to digest, facts which he sees for himself, but not definitions and rules which he has had no share in making. He cannot, in the. nature of things, assume the conclusions of others drawn from facts of which he is ignorant as his conclusions, and he is not therefore really instructed by passively re- ceiving them. Those who take a different view from this of teaching sometimes plead that inasmuch as rules and principles are compendious expressions repre- senting many facts, the pupil does in learning them economize time and labor. Experience does not, however, support this view, but it is rather against it. The elementary pupil cannot, if he would, comprehend for instance the metaphysical distinctions and definitions of grammar. They are utterly unsuited to his stage of development, and if violently intruded into his mind they cannot be assimilated to its substance, but must remain there as crude undigested matter until the system is prepared for them. When that time arrives, he 170 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. will welcome those compendious generalizations of facts which when prematurely offered he rejected with disgust. Stuffing a pupil with ready-made rules and formulse may perhaps make an adept in cramming, but is cramming the be-all and the end- all of education ? But T must furl my sails and make for land. The idea which I have endeavored to give of the true relation of the pupil to the teacher, and which represents the former as carrying on his own self- tuition under the wise superintendence of the lat- ter, is of course not new. Nothing strictly new can be said about education. The elements of it may easily be found in the principles and practice of Ascham, Montaigne, Eatich, Milton, Comenius, Locke, Eousseau, Pestalozzi, Jacotot, and Herbert Spencer. Those who are interested in the subject may find an account of the views and methods of these eminent men in Mr. Quick's valuable little book on Educational Reformers. All, in fact, who have insisted on the great importance of ehciting the pupil's own efforts, and not superseding, en- feebling, and deadening them by too much telling and explaining— all, too, who have urged that ab- stract rules and principals should, in teaching, follow, not precede, the examples on which they are founded, have virtually adopted the theory which I have endeavored to state and illustrate. They have, in substance, admitted that the teach- er's function is defined by a true conception of the mental operation which we call learning, and that that operation is radically and essentially the work of the pupil, and cannot be performed for him. THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 171 If I have succeeded at all in the development of my theory, it must be obvious that a pupil thus trained must be a more accurate observer, a more skillful investigator, more competent to deal with subjects of thought in an intelHgent way; in a word, a more awakened thinker, than one trained in accordance with the opposite theory. The pro- cess he goes through naturally tends to make him such, and to prepare him to appreciate and adopt in his subsequent career the methods of science. It is the want of that teaching which comes from himself that makes an ordinary pupil the slave of technicalities and routine, that prevents him from grappling with a common problem of arithmetic or algebra, unless he happens to remember the rule, and from demonstrating a geometrical proposition if he forgets the diagram; which evea, though he may be a scholar of Eton or Harrow, leaves him destitute of power to deal at sight with a passage of an easy Greek or Latin author. In the great bulk of our teaching, with of course many and notable exceptions, the native powers of the pupil are not made the most of; and hence his knowl- edge, even on leaving school, is too generally a farrago of facts only partially hatched into prin- ciples, mingled in unseemly jumble with rules scarcely at all understood, exceptions claiming equal rank with the rules, definitions dislocated from the objects they define, and technicahties which clog rather than facilitate the operations of the mind. A sHght exercise of our memories, and a slight glance at the actual state of things among us, will, I believe, witness to the substantial truth of this 172 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. statement. If, however, we want other testimony, we may find it in abundance in the ^Eeports and evidence of the four Commissions which have in- vestigated the state of education among us ; if we want more still, we may be supplied— not, I am sorry to say, to our heart's content, but discon- tent — in the reports of intelligent official observers from abroad. If we want more stiU, let us read the petitions only lately presenteij to the House of Commons from the highest medical authorities who complain that medical education is rendered abortive and impossible by the wholly unsatisfac- tory results of middle-class teaching. Does it ap- pear unreasonable to suppose that such a chorus of dispraise and dissatisfaction could not be raised unless there were something in the methods of teaching which naturally leads to the results com- plained of ? If the quality of the teaching — I am not considering the quantity— is not responsible for the quality of its results, I really do not know where we are to find the cause, and failing in de- tecting the cause, how are we to begin even our search for the remedy ? Theories of teaching which distrust the pupiFs native ability, which in one way or other repress, instead of aiding, the natural development of his mind, which surfeit him with technicalities, which impregnate him with vague infructuous notions that are never brought to the birth, that cultivate the lowest faculties at the ex- pense of the highest, that make him a slave to the Rule-of -Thumb instead of a master of principles- are these theories, which have done much of the mischief, to be still relied on to supply the reform we need ? Or shall we find, at least, some of the THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 173 germs of future life in the other theory, which from the first confides in, cherishes, and encour- ages the native powers of the child, and takes care that his acquisitions, however small, shall be made by himself, and secures their possession by repeti- tion and natural association, which invests his career with the vivid interest which belongs to that of a discoverer and explorer of unknown lands, which, in short, to adopt the striking words of Burke, instead of serving up to him barren and lifeless truths, leads him to the stock on which they grew, which sets him on the track of invention, and directs him into those paths in which the great authorities he follows made their own discoveries ? Is a theory which involves such principles, and leads to such results, worth the consideration of those who regard education as pre-eminently the civilizing agent of the world, and lament that Eng- land, as a nation, is so little fraught with its spirit ? THE IMPORTANCE OF THE TRAINING OF THE TEACHER, In maintaining, however, generally that the professor of an art should understand its prin- ciples, and that he cannot understand them with- out study and training, I do not mean to assert that there may not be found among those who feel themselves suddenly called upon to act as teachers, especially among women, many, who without obvious preliminary training, are really already far advanced in actual training for the task they assume. In these cases, superior mental culture, acute insight into character, ready tact and earnest sympathy constitute, pro tanto, a real preparation for the profession; and supply, to a considerable extent, the want of technical training. To such persons it not unf requently happens that a matured consciousness of the im- portance of the task they have undertaken, and actual contact with the work itself, rapidly sug- gest what is needed to supplement their inexperi- ence. Such cases, however, as being rare and exceptional, are not to be relied on as examples. Even in them, moreover, a thoughtful study of the Science of Education, and of the correlated Art, would guide the presumed faculty to better results than can be gained without it. 174 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 175 We can have little hesitation then in asserting that the pretension to be able to teach without knowing even what teaching means ; without mas- tering its processes and methods as an art ; without gaining some acquaintance with its doctrines as a sc ience ; without studying what has been said and done by its most eminent practitioners, is an un- warrantable pretension which is so near akin to empiricism and quackery, that it is difficult to make the distinction. There are, however, two or three fallacious argu- ments sometimes urged against the preliminary training of the teacher which it is important briefly to discuss. The first is, that ** granting the need of such training for teachers of advanced subjects, it is imnecessary for the teaching of elementary sub- jects. Anybody can teach a child to read, write and cipher." This is, no doubt, true, if teaching means nothing more than mechanical drill and cram ; but if teaching is an art and requires to be artistically conducted, it is not true. A teacher is one who, having carefully studied the nature of the mind, and learned by reading and practice some of the means by which that nature may be influenced, applies the resources of his art to the child-nature before him. Knowing that in this nature there are forces, moral and intellectual, on the development of which the child's well-being depends, he draws them forth by repeated acts, exercises them in order to strengthen them, trains them into faculty, and continually aims at making all that he does, all that he gets his pupil to do, minister to the consciousness of growth and power 176 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. in the child's mind. If this is a correct description of the teacher's function, it is ohvious that it ap- plies 1)0 every department of the teacher's work ; as much to the teaching of reading and arithmetic as to that of Greek plays, or the Differential Cal- culus. The function does not change with the sub- ject. But I go further, and maintain that the beginning of the process of education is even more important in some respects than the later stages. II n'y a que le premier pas qui coute. The teacher who takes in hand the instruction and direction of a mind which has never been taught before, com- mences a series of processes, which by our theory should have a definite end in view — and that end is to induce in the child's mind the consciousness of power. Power is, of course, a relative term, but it is not inapplicable to the case before us. The teacher, even of reading, who first directs the child's own observation on the facts in view— the combinations of the letters in separate words or syllables— gets him to compare these combinations together, and notice in what respect they differ or agree, to state liimself the difference or agreement —to analyze each new compound, into its known and unknown elements, applying the known, as far as possible, to interpret the unknown — ^to refer each fresh acquisition to that first made, to find out for himself everything which can be found out through observation, inference and reflection — to look for no help, except in matters (such as the sounds) which are purely conventional — to teach himself to read, in short, by the exercise of his own mind— such a teacher, it is contended, while get- ting the child to le8.rn how to read, is, in fact, doing THE SCIENCE AND ART OP EDUCATION. 177 much more than this— he is teaching the child how to use his mind— how to observe, investigate, think. It will probably be granted that a process of this kind — if practicable — would be a valuable initiation for the child in the art of learning gener- ally, and that it would necessarily be attended by what I have described as a consciousness of power. But, moreover,— which is also very im- portant — it would be attended by a consciousness of pleasure. Even the youngest child is sensible of the charm of doing things himself— of finding out thicgs for himself; and it is of cardinal import- ance in elementary instruction to lay the grounds for the association of pleasure with mental activity. It would not be difficult, but it is unnecessary, to contrast such a method as this, which awakens all the powers of the child's mind, keeps them in vivid and pleasurable exercise, and forms good mental habits, with that too often pursued, which deadens the faculties, induces idle habits, distaste for learn ing, and incapacity for mental exertion. It is clear, then, that **any teacher" cannot teach even reading, so as to make it a mental ex- ercise, and, consequently, a part of real education —in other words, so as "to make all that he does, and all he gets his pupil to do, minister to the con- sciousness of growth and power in the child's mind." So far then from agreeing with the pro- position in question, I believe that the early devel- opment of a child's mind is a work that can only effectually be performed by an accomplished teach- er ; such a one as I have already described. In some of the best German elementary schools men of literary distinction, Doctors in Philosophy, are 178 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. employed in teaching children how to read, and in the highly organized Jesuit Schools, it was a regu- lation that only those teachers who had been specially successful in the higher classes should be entrusted with the care of the lowest. There is, moreover, another consideration which deserves to be kept in view in discussing the com- petency of '* any teacher " to take charge of a child who is beginning to learn. JMost young untrained teachers fancy when they give their first lesson to a child who has not been taught before, that they ^^ are commencing its education. A moment's reflec- tion will show that this is not the case. They may indeed be commencing its formal education, but they forget that it has been long a pupil of that great School, of which Nature is the mistress, and that their proper function is to continue the educa- tion which is already far advanced. In that School, observation and experiment, acting as superintend- ents of instruction, through the agency of the child's own senses, have taught it all it knows at the time when natural is superseded, or rather suppHmented by formal education. Can it then be a matter of indifference whether or not the teacher understands the processes, and enters into the spirit of the teaching carried on at that former School; and is it not certain that his want of knowledge on these points will prove very injurious to the yoimg learner? The teacher who has this knowledge will bring it into active exercise in every lesson that he gives, and, as I have shown in the case of teaching to read, will make it instru- mental in the development of all the intellectual faculties of the child. He knows that his method THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 179 is sound, because it is based on ISI ature ; and he knows, moreover, that it is better than Nature's, because it supersedes desultory and fortuitous ac- tion by that which is organized with a view to a definite end. The teacher who knows nothing of Nature's method, and fails, therefore, to appreciate its spirit, devises at haphazard a method of his own which too generally has nothing in common with it, and succeeds in effectually quenching the child's own active energies ; in making him a pas- sive recipient of knowledge, which he has had no share in gaining ; and in finally converting him into a mere unintellectual machine. Untrained teachers, especially those who, as the phrase is, ** commence " the education of children, are, as yet, little aware of how much of the dullness, stupidity, and distaste for learning which they complain of in their pupils, is of their own creation. The up- shot then of this discussion is, not that **any teacher," but only those tea3hers who are trained in the art of teaching can be safely entrusted with the education of the child's earlist efforts in the career of instruction, j Another fallacy, which it is important to expose, is involved in the assumption, not unfrequently met with, that a man's *' choosing to fancy that he has the ability to teach, is a sufficient warrant for his doing so," leaving, it is added, '' the pubHc to judge whether or not he is fit for his profession." Ridiculous as this proposition may appear, I have heard it gravely argued for and approved in a con- ference of teachers, many of whom, no doubt had good grounds of their own for their adherence to it. Simply stated, it is the theory of free trade in 180 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. education. Every one is to be at liberty to offer his wares, and it is the buyer's business to take care that he is not cheated in the bargain. It is unnecessary for my present purpose to say more on the general proposition than this — that the state of the market and the frequent inferiority of the wares invahdate the assumption of the competency of the buyer to form a correct estimate of the ar- ticle he buys, and, moreover, that an immense quantity of mischief may be, and actually is done to the parties most concerned, the children of the buyers, while the hazardous experiment is going on. As to the minor proposition, that a man's ''choosing to fancy that he has the ability "to teach is a STifficient warrant for his doing so, it is obviously in direct opposition to the argument I am maintaining. It cannot for a moment be ad- mitted that a man's ''choosing to f iancy that he has the ability " to discharge a function constitutes a sufficient warrant for the indulgence of his fancy, especially in a field of action where the dearest interests of society are at stg^. We do not allow a man "who chooses to fancy that he has the ability" to practice surgery, to operate on our limbs at his pleasure, and only after scores of dis- astrous experiments, decide whether he is "fit to follow the profession " of a surgeon. Nor do we allow a man who may "choose to fancy that he has the ability " to take the command of a man-of- war, to imdertake such a charge on the mere as- surance that we may safely trust to his " inward impulse." And if we require the strictest guaran- tees of competency, where our lives and property are risked, shall we be less anxious to secure them THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDtJCATION. 181 when the mental and moral lives of our children — the children of our commonwealth — are endanger- ed ? I repudiate then entirely this doctrine of an *' inward impulse," which is to supersede the order- ly training of the teacher in the art of teaching. It has been tried long enough, and has been found utterly wanting. Fallacies, however, are often singularly tenacious of life, and we are not there- fore surprised at Mr. Meiklejohn's assertion, that in more than 50 per cent, of the letters which he examined, the special qualification put forward by the candidates was their '* feeling " that they could perform the duties of the office in question to their own satisfaction, (!) This is obviously only anoth- er specimen, though certainly a remarkable one, of the *' inward impulse" theory. The third fallacy I propose to deal with is couch- ed in the common assumption that "any one who knows a subject can teach it." There can be no doubt that the teacher should have an accurate knowledge of the subject he professes to teach, and especially for this, if for no other reason — that as his proper function is to guide the process by which his pupil is to learn, it will be of the greatest advantage to him as a guide to have gone himself through the process of learning. But, then, it is very possible that although his experience has been real and personal, it may not have been conscious — that is, that he may have been too much absorb- ed in the process itself to take account of the natural laws of its operation. This conscious knowledge of the method by which the mmd gains ideas is, in fact, a branch of Psychology, and he may not have studied that science. Nor was it 182 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. necessary for his purpose, as a learner, that he should study it. J But the conditions are quite altered when he becomes a teacher. He now assumes the direction of a process which is essen- tially not his but the learner's ; for it is obvious that he can no more think for the pupil than he can eat or sleep for him. His efficient direction, then, will mainly depend on his thoughtful, con- scious knowledge of all the conditions of the pro- blem which he has to solve. That problem consists in getting his pupil to learn, and it is evident that he may know his subject, without knowing the best means of making his pupil know it too, which is the assumed end of all his teaching; in other words, he may be an adept in his subject, but an novice in the art of teaching it. Natural tact and insight may, in many cases, rapidly suggest the faculty that is needed ; but the position still remains unaffected that knowing a subject is a very different thing from knowing how to teach it. This conclusion is indeed involv- ed in the very conception of the art of teaching, an art which has principles, laws, and processes peculiar to itself. But, again, a man profoundly acquainted with a subject may be unapt to teach it by reason of the very height and extent of his knowledge. His mind habitually dwells among the mountains, and he has therefore small sympathy with the toilsome plodders on the plains below. It is so long since he was a learner himself that he forgets the diffi- culties and perplexities which once obstructed his path, and which are so painfully felt by those who are still in the condition in which he once was THE SCIENCE ANB ART OF EDUCATION. 183 himself. It is a hard task, therefore, for him to condescend to their condition, to place himself alongside of them, and to force a sympathy which he cannot naturally feel with their trials and ex- perience. The teacher, in this case, even less than in the other, is not likely to conceive justly of all that is involved in [the art of teaching, or to give himseK the trouble of acquiring it. Be this, how- ever, as it may, both illustrations of the case show that it is a fallacy to assert that there is any necessary connection between knowing a subject, and knowing how to teach it. f Having now shown that the present state of L, public opinion in England, which permits any one I who pleases to ** set up " as a teacher without re- gard to qualifications is inconsistent with the no- tion that teaching is an art for the exercise of which preliminary training is necessary, and dis- posed of those prevalent fallacies which are, to a great extent, constituents of that public opinion, I proceed to give some illustrations of teacliing as it is in contrast with teaching as it should be. The fundamental proposition, to which all that I have to say on the point in question must be referred, is this-\that teaching, in the proper sense of the term, is a branch of education, and that educa- tion is the development and training of the facul- ties with a view to create in the pupil's mind a consciousness of power. \Every process employed in what is called teaching that will not bear this test is, more or less, of the essence of cramming, and cramming is a direct interference with, and antagonistic to, the true end of Education. Cram- ming may be defined for our present purpose as 184 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. the didactic imposition on the child's mind of ready-made results, of results gained by the thought of other people; through processes in which his mind has not been called upon to take a part. During this performance the mind of the pupil is for the most part a passive recipient of the matter forced into it, and the only faculty actively employed is memory. The result is that memory instead of being occupied in its proper func- tion of retaining the impression left on the mind by its own active operations, and being therefore subordinate and subsequent to those operations, is forced into a position to which it has no natural right, and made to precede, instead of waiting on, the mind's action. Thus the true sequence of causes and consequences is dis- turbed, and memory becomes a principal agent in instruction. If we further reflect that ideas gained by the direct action of the mind naturally find their proper place among [the other ideas already exist- ing there by the law of association, while those arbitrarily forced into it do so only by accident — for the mind receives only that which it is already prepared to receive— we see that cramming, which takes no account of preparedness, is absolutely op- posed to development, that is to education in the true sense of the term. Cramming, therefore, has nothing in common with the art of teaching, and the great didactic truth is established that it is the manner or method, rather than the thing taught, that constitutes the real value of the teaching. Mr. D'Arcy Thompson, in his interesting book entitled ' 'Wayside Thoughts, " referring to the usual process of cramming in education, compares it to THE SCIIEKCE AND ART OF EBTTCATION. 185 the deglutition of the boa constrictor of a whole goat at a meal, but he remarks that while the boa by degrees absorbs the animal into his system, the human boa often goes about all his life with the un- digested goat in his stomach ! There may be some extravagance in this whimsical illustration, but it involves, after all, a very serious truth. How many men and women are there who, if they do not carry the entire goat with them ihroughout life, retain in an undigested condition huge frag- ments of it, which press as a dead weight on the system — a source of torpidity and uneasiness, in- stead of becoming through proper assimilation a means of energy and power. / The true educator, who is at the same time a genuine artist, proceeds to his work on principles diametrically opposed to those involved in cramming. / In the first place he endeavors to form a just conception of the nature, aims, and ends of education, as of a theory which is to govern his professional action. According to this conception *' education is the training carried on consciously and continuously by the educator with the view of converting desultory and acciden- tal force into organized action, and of ultimately making the child operated on by it a healthy, in- telligent, moral, and rehgious man." Confining himself to intellectual training, he sees that this must be accomplished through instruction, which is '' the orderly placing of knowledge in the mind with a definite object ; the mere aggregation of in- coherent ideas, gained by desultory and uncon- nected mental acts being no more instruction than heaping bricks and stone together is building a 186 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. house."* These conceptions of the nature and aim of education, and of its proper relation to instruc- tion, suggest to him the consideration of the means to be employed. These means to be effectual must have an exact scientific relation to the nature of the machinery that is to be set in motion ; a rela- tion which can only be understood by a careful study of the machinery itself. If it is a sort of machinery which manifests its energies in acts of observation, perception, reflection, and remember- ing, and depends for its efficacy upon attention, he must study these phenomena subjectively in re- lation to his own conscious experience, and objec- tively as exhibited in the experience of others. Regarding, further, this plexus of energies as con- nected with a base to which we give the name of mind, he must proceed to study the nature of the mind in general, and especially note the manner in which it acts in the acquisition of ideas. This study will bring him into acquaintance with cer- tain principles or laws which are to guide and control his future action. The knowledge thus gained will constitute his initiation into the Science and Art of Education. The Science or Theory of Education then is seen to consist in a knowledge of those principles of Psychology, which account for the processes by which the mind gains knowledge. It therefore serves as a test, by which the Art or Practice of Education may be tried. All practices which are not in accordance with the natural action of the mind in acquiring knowledge for itself are con- demned by the theory of Education, and in this * Lectures on the Science and Art of Education. THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 187 predicament is cramming, which consists in forcing into the mind of the learner the products of othe^ people's thought. Such products are formulae, rules, abstract general propositions, definitions, classifications, technical terms, common words even, when they are not the signs of ideas gained at first-hand by his own observation and percep- tion. The Science of Education recognizes all these kinds of knowledge as necessary to the formation of the mind; but relegates them to their proper place in the course of instruction, and determines that that place is subsequent not antecedent to the action of the learner's mind on the facts which serve as their groundwork. Facts, then, things, material objects, natural phenomena, physical facts, facts of language, facts of nature, are the true, the all-suflScient pabulum for the youthful mind, and the careful study and investigation of them at first-hand, through his own observation and experiment are to constitute his earliest initia- tion in the art of learning. After this initiatory practice, which involves analysis and disintegra- tion, come, as the natural sequence, the processes of reconstruction and classification of the elements obtained, induction, framing of definitions, build- ing up of rules, generalization of particulars, con- struction of formulae, appHcation of technical terms, in all which processes the art of the teacher as a director of the learner's intellectual efforts is manifestly called into exercise ; and the need of his own experimental knowledge of the processes he has to direct is too obvious to require to be insisted on. The comprehensive principle here enunciated, which regards even the learning by rote of the 188 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. multiplication table and Latin declensions, antece- (Jently to some preliminary dealing with the facts of Latin and the facts of number, as of the essence of cramming, will be theoretically received or re- jected by teachers just in proportion as they receive or reject the conception of an art of teaching founded on intellectual principles. It is obvious enough that cramming knowledge into the memory, without regard to its fitness for mental digestion, if an art at all, is an art of very low order, and has little in common with that which consists in a conscious appreciation of the means whereby the mind is awakened to activity, and its energies trained to independent power. J The teacher, in fact, in the one case is an artist, soientifically working out his design in accordance with the principles of his art, and ready to apply all its resources to the emergencies of practice; in the other case, he is an artisan empirically working by the rule-of -thumb, unfurnished with principles of action, and succeeding, when he succeeds at all, through the happy accident that the pupil's own intellectual activity practically defeats the natural tendency of the teacher's mechanical drill. I do not, however, by any means pretend to assert that every teacher who declines to accept this no- tion of teaching as an art, is an artisan. It often happens that a man works on a theory which he does not consciously appreciate, and in his actual practice obviates the objection which might be taken against some of his processes. Hence we find teachers, while denouncing such expressions as '^ development and cultivation of the intelli- gence " as "frothy," doing practically all they can THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 189 to develop and cultivate the intelligence of their pupils. Such teachers do indeed violently drive ''the goat" into the stomach of their pupils, but when they have got it there take great pains to have it digested in some fashion or other, I be- lieve that the process would be much facilitated by their knowing something of the physiology of di- gestion, but I do not therefore designate such practitioners as artisans. At the same time I do not call them artists, for their procedure violates nature, and true art never does that. The epithet artisan may however be restricted to those — and their number is legion— whose practice consists of cramming pur et simple. On the whole, then, I contend that if we could examine the entire practice of those teachers who actually succeed in endowing the large majority — not a select few—of their pupils with sound and systematic knowledge, and with well-formed minds, we should find that, whatever be their theoretic notions, they have worked on the principles on which I have been all along insisting. They have succeeded by the development and cultivation of their pupils, and by nothing else, and they have succeeded just in proportion as they have con- sciously kept this object in view. Let us hear what Dean Stanley tells us of Arnold's teaching. "Arnold's whole method was founded on the prin- ciple of awakening the intelligence of every indivi- dual boy. Hence it was his practice to teach, not, as you perceive, by downpouring, but by question- ing. As a general rule he never gave information except as a reward for an answer, and often with- held it altogether, or checked himself in the very 190 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. act of uttering it, from a sense that those whom he was addressing had not sufficient interest or sympathy to entitle them to receive it. His ex- planations were as short as possible, enough to dis- pose of the difficulty and no more, and his ques- tions were of a kind to call the attention of the boys to the real point of every subject, to disclose to them the exact boundaries of what they know and did not know, and to cultivate a habit not only of collecting facts, but of expressing themselves with facility, and of understanding the principles on which these facts rested." Such was Arnold's method of teaching ; and it is obvious that, mutatis mutandis, modified somewhat so as to apply to the earliest elementary instruction, it involves all the principles which I have contended for, as consti- tuting the true art of teaching. The boys were, in fact, teaching themselves under the direction of the teacher without, or with the slightest, explana- tion on his part. They were using all their minds on the subject, and gaining independent power. Arnold, to use a famous French teacher's expres- sion, was *' laboring to render himself useless." But T must draw these remarks to a conclusion. It is hardly necessary for me to state formally the principles for which I have been all along arguing. The upshot is this —Teaching is not a bhnd rou- tine but an art, which has a definite end in view. An art implies an artist who works by systematic rules. The processes and rules of art explicitly or implicitly evolve the principles involved in science. The art or practice of education, therefore, is founded on the science or theory of education, while the science of education is itself f oimded on THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 191 the science of mind or psychology. The complete equipment and training of the teacher for his pro- fession comprehends therefore ; (a.) A knowledge of the subject of instruction. (6.) A knowledge of the nature of the being to be instructed. (c.) A knowledge of the best methods of instruc- tion. This knowledge, gained by careful study and conjoined with practice, constitutes the training of the teacher. TJSE TRUE FOUNDATION OF SCIENCE- TEACHING. It is almost a truism to say, that the foundation of a building is its most important feature. If the foundation be either insecure in itself, or laid with- out regard to the plan of the superstructure, the building, as a whole, will be found wanting both in unity and strength. A building is in fact the em- bodiment and realization of an idea conceived in the mind of the architect, and if he is competent for his post, and can secure the needful co-opera- tion, the practical expression will synunetrically correspond to the conception. But unless the foun- dation is solidly laid, and all the parts of the build- ing are constructed with relation to it, his aesthetic and theoretic skill will go for little or nothing. His work is doomed to failure from the beginning, and the extent of the failure will be proportionate to the ambition of the design. These remarks are applicable to the art of building generally, whether shown in large and imposing structures, or in the meanest cottages. In no case can the essential ele- ments of unity and strength be dispensed with. Whatever might have been said of the neglect of what is called *' science " in former times, we can- not make the same complaint now. A ringing cho- rus of voices may be heard vociferously demanding science for the children of primary, secondary, and 192 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 193 public schools; for the Universities; in short, for all classes of society. ' ' Science, " it is said, * ' is the grand desideratum of our age, the true mark of our civilization. We want science to supply a mental discipline unfurnished by the old-estab- lished curriculum ; we want it as the basis of the technical instruction of our workmen." But amidst all the clamor of voices demanding instruction in Science, we listen in vain for the au- thoritative voice — the voice of the master artist — which shall define for us the aims and ends of Science, and lay down the laws of that teaching by which they are to be effectively secured. As things go, every teacher is left to frame his own theory of Science-teaching, and his own empirical method of carrying it out ; and the result is, to ap- ply our illustration, that the fabric of Science- teaching now rising before us rests upon no recog- nized and estabhshed foundation, exhibits no prin- ciple of harmonious design, and that [its various stages have scarcely any relation to each other, and least of all to any solidly compacted ground- plan. The first question for consideration is, ** What is meant by Science ?" The shortest answer that can be given is, that ** Science is organized knowledge." This is, however, too general for our present pur- pose, which is, to deal with Physical Science. In a somewhat developed form, then, physical science is an organized knowledge of material, concrete, objective facts or phenomena. The term ^'organ- ized," it will be seen, is the essence of the defini- tion, inasmuch as it connotes or implies that cer- tain objective relations subsisting in the nature of 194 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. things, between facts or phenomena, are subjec- tively appreciated by the mind— that is, that Science differs from mere knowledge by being a knowledge both of facts and of their relations to each other. The mere random, haphazard accu- mulation of facts, then, is not Science; but the perception and conception of their natural rela- tions to each other, the comprehension of these re- lations under general laws, and the organization of facts and laws into one body, the parts of which are seen to be subservient to each other, is Science. Ketuming to the other factor of the definition, " Knowledge," we observe that there are two kinds of knowledge— what we know through our own experience, and what we know through the expe- rience of others. Thus, I know by my own knowl- edge that I have an audience before me, and I know through the knowledge of others that the earth is 25,000 miles in circumference. This latter fact, however, I know in a sense different from that in which I know the former. The one is a part of my experience, of my very being. The other I can only be strictly said to know when I have, by an effort of the mind, passed through the connected chain of facts and reasonings on which the demon- stration is founded. Thus only can it beome my knowledge in the true sense of the term. Strictly speaking, then, organized knowledge, or Science, is originally based on unorganized knowl- edge, and is the outcome of the learner's own ob- servation of facts through the exercise of his own senses, and his own reflection upon what he has observed. This knowledge, ultimately organized into Science through the operation of his mind, he THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 195 may with just right call his own ; and, as a learner, he can properly call no other knowledge his own. What is reported to us by another is that other's, if gained at first-hand by experience ; but it stands on a different footing from that which we have gained by our own experience. He merely hands it over to us ; but when we receive it, its condition is already changed. It wants the brightness, defin- iteness, and certainty in our eyes, which it had in his; and, moreover, it is merely a loan, and not our property. The fact, for instance, about the earth's circumference was to him a living fact ; it sprang into being as the outcome of experiments and reasonings, with the entire chain of which it was seen by him to be intimately — indeed indis- solubly and organically connected. To us it is a dead fact, severed from its connection with the body of truth, and, by our hypothesis, having no organic relation to the living truths we have gained by our own minds. These are convertible into our Science ; that is not. What I insist on then is, that the knowledge from experience— that which is gained by bringing our own minds into direct con- tact with matter— is the only knowledge that as novices in science we have to do with. The dog- matic knowledge imposed on us by authority, though originally gained by the same means, is, really, not ours, but another's — is, as far as we are concerned, unorganizable ; and therefore, though Science to its proprietor, is not Science to us. To us it is merely information, or haphazard knowl- edge. The conclusions, then, at which we arrive, are — (1) That the true foundation of physical Science 196 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. lies in the knowledge of physical facts gained at first-hand by observation and experiment, to be made by the learner himself; (2) that all knowl- edge not thus gained is, pro tantOy unorganizable, and not suited to his actual condition ; and (3) that his facts become organized into Science by the operation of his own mind upon them. Having given some idea of what is meant by Science, and how it grows up in the mind of the learner, I turn now to the teacher, and briefly in- quire what is his function in the process of Science- teaching ? I have elsewhere* endeavored to expound the correlation of learning and teaching, and to show that the natural process of investigation by which the unassisted student— unassisted, that is, by book or teacher — would seek, as a first discoverer, to gain an accurate knowledge of facts and their in- terpretation, suggests to us both the nature and scope of the teacher's, and especially the Science- teacher's, functions. According to this view of the subject, the learner's method and the teacher's serve as a mutual limit to each other. The learner is a discoverer or investigator engaged in interro- gating the concrete matter before him, with a view to ascertain its nature and properties; and the teacher is a superintendent or director of the learn- er's process, pointing out the problem to be solved, concentrating the learner's attention upon it, vary- ing the points of view, suggesting experiments, in- quiring what they result in ; converting even errors * See a Lecture entitled " Theories of Teaching with the Corre- sponding Practice," delivered AprU 26, 1869, at the Rooms of the Association for the Promotion of Social Science. THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 197 and mistakes into increased means of power, bring- ing back the old to interpret the new, the known to interpret the unknown, requiring an exact record of results arrived at—in short, exercising all the powers of the learner's mind upon the matter in hand, in order to make him an accurate observer and experimenter, and to train him in the method of investigation. The teacher, then, is to be governed in his teach- ing, not by independent notions of his own, but by considerations inherent in the natural process by which the pupil learns. He is not, therefore, at liberty to ignore this natural process, which essen- tially involves the observation, experiment and re- flection of the pupil; nor to supersede it by intrud- ing the results of the observation, experiment and reflection of others. He is, on the contrary, boimd to recognize these operations of his pupil's mind as the true foundation of the Science-teaching which he professes to carry out. In other words, the pro- cess of the learner is the true f oxmdation of that of the teacher. It will have been observed, that I lay great stress on teaching Science in such a way that it shall be- come a real training of the student in the method of Science, with a view to the forming of the scien- tific mind. According to the usual methods of Science-teaching, it is quite possible for a student to *'get up," by cramming, a number of books on scientific subjects, to attend lecture after lecture on the same subjects, to be drenched with endless explanations and comments on descriptions of ex- periments performed by others, to lodge in his memory the technical results of investigations in 198 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. which he has taken no part himself, together with formulae, rules, and definitions ad infinitum; and yet, after all, never to have even caught a glimpse of the idea involved in investigation, or to have been for a moment animated by the spirit of the scientific explorer. That spirit is a spirit of power, which, not content with the achievements gained by others, seeks to make conquests of its own, and therefore examines, explores, dicovers and invents for itself. These are the manifestations of the spirit of investigation, and that spirit may be ex- cited by the true Science-teacher in the heart of a little child. I may refer, for proof of this asser- tion, to the teaching of botany to poor village chil- dren by the late Professor Henslow ; to the teach ing of general Science by the late Dean Dawes to a similar class of children ; to that pursued at the present time at the Bristol Trade School ; and to the invaluable lessons given to the imaginary Harry and Lucy by Miss Edgeworth, Without warranting every process adopted by these emi- nently successful teachers, some of whom were perhaps a little too much addicted to explaining, I have no hesitation in declaring that they one and all acted mainly on the principle that true Science- teaching consists in bringing the pupil's mind into direct contact with facts — ^in getting him to inves- tigate, discover, and invent for himself. The same method is recommended in Miss Youmans's philo- sophical Essay **0n the Culture of the Observing Powers of Children," and rigorously applied in her *' First Lessons on Botany;" and in the Supplement to that little volume I have given, as its editor, a THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 199 typical lesson on the pile-driving engine, which Qlustrates the following principles : 1. That the pupils, throughout the lesson, are learning— ^. 6., teaching themselves, by the exer- cise of their own minds, without, and not by, the explanations of the teacher, 2. That the pupils gain their knowledge from the object itself, not from a description of the object furnished by another. 3. That the observations and experiments are their own observations and experiments, made by their own senses and by their own hands, as inves- tigators seeking to ascertain for themselves what the object before them is, and what it is capable of doing. 4. That the teacher recognizes his proper func- tion as that of a guide or director of the pupil's process of self -teaching, which he aids by moral means, but does not supersede by the intervention of his own knowledge. These hints all tend to show what is really meant by Science-teaching, as generally distinguished from other teaching. In case, however, my competency to give an opinion on Science-teaching should be questioned, I beg to enforce my views by the authority of Pro- fessor Huxley, who, in a lecture on "Scientific Education," thus expresses himself: "If scientific training is to yield its most eminent results, it must be made practical — that is to say, in explain- ing to a child the general phenomena of nature, you must, as far as possible, give reality to your teaching by object-lessons. In teaching him bota- ny, he must handle the plants and dissect the flow- 200 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. ers for himself; in teaching him physics and chem istry, you must not be solicitous to fill him with mformaition, but you must be careful that what he learns he knows of his own knowledge. Do not be satisfied with telling him that a magnet attracts iron. Let him see that it does; let him feel the pull of the one upon the other for himself. ... Pursue this discipline carefully and conscientiously, and you may make sure that, however scanty may be the measure of information which you have poured into the boy's mind, you have created an intellectual habit of priceless value in practical Hfo." Again, in the same lecture, the professor says: ** If the great benefits of scientific training are sought, it is essential that such training should be real— that is to say, that the mind of the scholar should be brought into direct relation with fact; that he should not merely be told a thing, but made to see, by the use of his own intellect and ability, that the thing is so, and not otherwise. The great") peculiarity oi scientific training— that in virtue of which it cannot be replaced by any other discipline whatever — is this bringing of the mind directly ; into contact with fact, and practising the mind in the eompletest form of induction— that is to say, in \ drawing conclusions from particular facts made known by immediate observation of Nature." To the same effect another eminent Science- teacher, Mr. Wilson, of Eugby School, thus ex- presses himself: '* Theory and experience," he says, *' alike convince me that the master who is teaching a class quite unfamiliar with scientific method, ought to make his class teach themselves, THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 201 by thinking out the subject of the lecture with them, taking up their suggestions and illustrations, criticising them, hunting them down, and proving a suggestion barren or an illustration inapt ; start- ing them on a fresh scent when they are at fault, reminding them of some familiar fact they had overlooked, and so eliciting out of the chaos of vague notions that are afloat on the matter in hand, be it the laws of motion, the evaporation of water, or the origin of the drift, something of or- der, concatenation, and interest, before the key to the mystery is given, even if at all it has to be given. Training to think, not to be a mechanic or surveyor, must be first and foremost as his object. So valuable are the subjects intrinsically, and such excellent models do they provide, that the most stupid and didactic teaching will not be useless; but it will not be the same source of power that the method of investigation will be in the hands of a good master." My last quotation will be from the very valuable lecture given here by Dr. Kemshead, the able Science-teacher of Dulwich CoUege, on * ' The Im- portance of Physical Science as a Branch of Eng- lish General Ejjucation." Referring to education generally, he says, and I entirely agree with him : *'I wish it particularly to be borne in mind that, whenever I use the word education, I use it in its highest and truest sense of training and develop- ing the mind. I hold the acquisition of mere use- ful knowledge, however important and valuable it may be, to be entirely secondary and subsidiary. I consider it to be of more value to teach the young mind to think out one original problem, to draw 202 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. one correct conclusion for itself, than to have ac- quired the whole of * Mangnall's Questions ' or * Brewer's Guide to Science.' " There speaks the true teacher. But what does he say on Science- teaching ? This : *' I wish particularly to draw the distinction between mere sc ientific knowledge and scientific training. I do not believe in the former ; I do believe in the latter. In physical and experi- mental science, studied for the sake of training, the mode of teaching is everything. I know of one school [we shall soon see that there are many such] in which physical science is made a strong point in the prospectus, where chemistry is taught by reading a text-book (a very antiquated one, since it only gives forty-five elements), but in which the experiments are learnt by heart, and never seen practically. Such a proceeding is a mere farce on Science." But Dr. Kemshead pro- ceeds: '*0f course, as mere useful knowledge, Lardner's hand-books, or any other good text- books, might be committed to memory. So long as the facts are correct, and are put in a manner that the pupil can receive them, the end is gained ; but this is not scientific teaching— cramming if you like, but not teaching. It will^ I am sure, be manifest to you all that there is nothing of scien- tific training in this. To develop scientific habits of thought — the scientific mind, the teaching must be of a totally different nature. In order to get the fullest benefit from a scientific education, the teacher should endeavor to bring his pupil face to face with the great problems of Nature, as though he were the first discoverer. He should encourage him from the first to record accurately all his ex- THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 203 periments, the object he had in view in making them, the results even when they have failed, and the inferences which he draws in each case, with as much rigor and exactitude as though they were to be published in the 'Philosophical Transactions.' He should, in fact, teach his pupil to face the great problems of Nature as though they had never been solved before." *' To face the great problems of Nature as though they had never been solved before" — "to bring the child face to face with the great problems of Nature, as though he were the first discoverer " — these weighty, pregnant, and luminous expressions contain the essence of the whole question I have endeavored to set before you. They define, as you easily perceive, the attitude of the pupil in regard to his subjective process of learning, and the func- tion of the teacher in regard to his objective pro- cess of teaching— the one being the counterpart of the other. It will have been noticed, perhaps, that nothing has been said of text-books, which some consider as *'the true foundation of Science teaching," The reason of this omission lies in the nature of things. The books of a true student of physical Science are the associated facts and phenomena of Nature. He finds them in ''the running brooks," the mountains, trees, and rocks ; wherever, in short, he is brought face to face with facts and phenomena ; these are the pages, whose sentences, phrases, words and letters he is to decipher and interpret by his own investigation. The intervention of a text-book, so called, between the student and the matter he is to study, is an impertinence. For what is such a 204 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. text-book? A compendium of observations and experiments made by others in view, of that very nature-book which, by the hypothesis, he is to study at first-hand for himself, and of definitions, rules, generatizations and classifications which he is, through the active powers of his mind, to make for himself. The student's o \vn method of study is the true method of Science. He is being gradually inifciatsd in the processes by which both knowledge, truly his own, and the power of gaining more, are secured. Why should we supersede and neutralize his energies, and altogether disorganize his plan by requiring him to receive on authority the results of other people's labors in the same field ? Again, a text-book on Science is a logically-constructed treatise, in which the propositions last arrived at by the author are presented first — in the reverse order to that followed by the method of Science. The sufficient test of the use of books in Science- teaching is, in fact, this: Do they train the mind to scientific method ? If they do not— if on the contrary, they discountenance that method — ^then they are to be rejected in that elementary work — the foundation of Science-teaching — with which alone we are here concerned. Once more, I appeal to Professor Huxley, who tells us that, ' ' If scien- tific education is to be dealt with as mere book- work, it wiU be better not to attempt it, but to stick to the Latin grammar, which makes no pretence to be anything but book-work." Again, in his Lecture t ) Teachers : "But let me entreat you to remember isij last words. Mere book learning in phyical Science is a sham and a delusion. What you teach, unless you wish to be impostors, that you must THE SCIENCE AND ART OP EDUCATION. 205 first know ; and real knowledge in Science means personal acquaintance with the facts, be they few or many." But I must add to these authoritative words those of Dr. Acland, who, when asked by the Public Schools Commission his opinion of the London University Examinations in Physical Sci- ence, thus replied: '*I may say, generally, that I should value all knowledge of these physical sci- ences very little indeed unless it was otherwise than book-work. If it is merely a question of get- ting up certain books, and being able to answer certain book questions, that is merely' an exercise of the memory of a very useless kind. The great object, though not the sole object, of this training should be to get the boys to observe and under- stand the action of matter in some department or another. ... I want them to see and know the things, and in that way they will evoke many qualities of the mind, which the study of these subjects is intended to develop" (vol. iv. p., 407). These words sufficiently show both what the true foundation is, and what it is not. Once more— for the importance of this matter can hardly be too much insisted on— hear what Professor Huxley says, in his evidence before the Commission on Scientific Instruction (p. 23) : "The great blunder that our people make, I think, is attempting to teach from books ; our schoolmasters have largely been taught from books, and nothing but books; and a great many of them understand nothing but book-teaching, as far as I c^n see. The conse- quence is, that when they attempt to deal with scientific teaching, they make nothing of it. If you are setting to work to teach a child Science, 206 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. you must teach it through its eyes, and its hands, and its senses." I do not for a moment deny that much is to be gained from the study of scientific text-books. It would be absurd to do so. What I do deny is, that the reading up of books on Science — which is, strictly speaking, a literary study — either is, or can possibly be, a training in scientific method. To re- ceive facts in Science on any other authority than that of the facts themselves ; to get up the observa- tions, experiments and comments of others, instead of observing, experimenting and commenting our- selves ; to learn definitions, rules, abstract proposi- tions, technicalities, before we personally deal with the facts which lead up to them ; all this, whether in literary or scientific education — and especially in the latter — is of the essence of cramming, and is therefore entirely opposed to, and destructive of, true mental training and discipline. PE8TAL0ZZI: THE INFLUENCE OF HIS PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE ON ELEMENTARY EDUCATION. Familiar as Pestalozzi's name is to our ears, it will hardly be pretended that he himself is wall known amongst us. His life and personal charac- ter—the work he did himself, and that which he influenced others to do— his successes and failures as a teacher, form altogether a large subject, which requires, to do it justice, a thoughtful and length- ened study. Parts of the subject have been from time to time brought very prominently before the public, but often in such a way as to throw the rest into shadow, and hinder the appreciation of it as a whole. Though this has been done without any hostile intention, the general effect has been in Eng- land to misrepresent, and therefore to under- esti- mate, a very remarkable man — a man whose prin- ciples, slowly but surely operating on the pubhc opinion of Germany ; have suflSced, to use his own pithy expression, ** to turn right round the car of Education, and set it in a new direction." One of the aspects in which he has been brought before us— and it deserves every consideration— is 207 208 THE SCIENCE AND ART OP EDUCATION. that of an earnest, self-sacrificing, enthusiastic philanthropist, endowed with what Eichter calls ''an almighty love," whose first and last thought was how he might raise the debased and suffering among his countrymen to a higher level of happi- ness and knowledge, by bestowing upon them the blessings of education. It is right that he should be thus exhibited to the world, for never did any man better deserve to be enrolled in the noble army of martyrs who have died that others might live, than Pestalozzi. To call him the Howard of educa- tional philanthropists, is only doing scant justice to his devoted character, and under-estimates, rather than over-estimates, the man. Another aspect in which Pestalozzi is sometimes presented to us, is that of an unhandy, unpractical, dreamy theorist ; whose views were ever extending beyond the compass of his control ; who, like the djinn of the Eastern story, called into being forces which mastered instead of obeying him; whose ** unrivalled incapacity for governing " (this is his own confession) made him the victim of circum- stances ; who was utterly wanting in worldly wis- dom; who, knowing man, did not know men; and who, therefore, is to be set down as one who promised much more than he performed. It is im- possible to deny that there is substantial truth in such a representation ; but this only increases the wonder that, in spite of his disqualifications, he accomplished so much. It is still true that his awakening voice, calHng for reform in education, was responded to by hundreds of earnest and intel- ligent men, who placed themselves under his ban- THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 209 ner, and were proud to follow whither the Luther of educational reform wished to lead them. A third view of Pestalozzi presents him to us as merely interested about elementary education— and this appears to many who are engaged in teaching what are called higher subjects, a matter in which they have little or no concern. Those, however, who thus look down on Pestalozzi's work, only show, by their indifference, a profound want, both of self knowledge, and of a knowledge of his prin- ciples and purpose. Elementary education, in the sense in which Pestalozzi understands it, is, or ought to be, the concern of every teacher, whatever be his especial subject, and whatever the age of his pupils ; and when he sees that elementary education is only another expression for the forming of the character and mind of the child, he must acknowl- edge that this object comes properly within the sphere of his labors, and deserves, on every ground, his thoughtful attention. In spite, then, of Pestalozzi's patent disqualifica- tions in many respects for the task he undertook ; in spite of his ignorance of even common subjects (for he spoke, read, wrote, and ciphered badly, and knew next to nothing of classics or science); in spite of his want of worldly wisdom, of any compre- hensive and exact knowledge of men and of things ; in spite of his being merely an elementary teacher, — ^through the force of his all-conquering love, the nobihty of his heart, the resistless energy of his en- thusiasm, his firm grasp of a few first principles, his eloquent exposition of them in words, his reso- lute manifestation of them in deeds,— he stands forth among educational reformers as the man 210 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. whose influence on education is wider, deeper, more penetrating, than that of all the rest— the prophet and the sovereign of the domain in which he lived and labored. The fact that, with such disqualifications and drawbacks, he has attained such a position, super- sedes any argument for our giving earnest heed to what he was and what he did. It is a fact preg- nant in suggestions, and to the consideration of them this Lecture is to be devoted. It was late in life—he was fifty-two years of age — ^before Pestalozzi becarne a practical schoolmas- ter. He had even begun to despair of ever finding the career in which he might attempt to realize the theories over which his loving heart and teeming brain had been brooding from his earliest youth. He feared that he should die, without reducing the ideal of his thought to the real of action.* Besides the advanced age at which Pestalossi be- gan his work, there was another disabiUty in his case to which I have not referred. This was, that not only had he had no experience of school work, but knew no eminent teacher whose example might have stimulated him to imitation ; and he was en- tirely ignorant (with one notable exception) of all writings on the theory and practice of education. The exception I refer to is the Emile of Rousseau, a * See the particulars of Pestalozzi's life, in Mr. Quick's admira- ble Essays on Educational Reformers ; in Pestalozzi, edited for the Home and Colonial Society, hy Mr. Dunn|p;ig', in Von Raumer's History of Education ; in Roger de Guimps' Histoire de Pestalozzi, de sa Pensee, et de son (Euvre, Lausanne, 1874 ; in the Life and Work of Pestalozzi, hy Hermann Krusi, New York, 1875 ; and in various treatises by Mr. Henry Barnard, late of the State Depart- ment of Education, Washington. THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 211 remarkablj- suggestive book, which made, as was to be expected, a strong impression on his mind. We know from his own account, that he had al- ready endeavored, with indifferent success, to make his own son another Enule. The diary in which he has recorded day by day the particulars of his ex- periment is extremely interesting and instructive. At fifty-two years of age, then, we find Pesta- lozzi utterly unacquainted with the science and the art of education, and very scantily furnished even with elementary knowledge, undertaking at Stanz, in the canton of Unterwalden, the charge of eighty children, whom the events of war had rendered homeless and destitute. Here he was at last in the position which, during years of sorrow and disap- pointment, he had eagerly desired to fill. He was now brought into immediate contact with ignor- ance, vice, and brutahty, and had the opportunity for testing the power of his long-cherished theories. The man whose absorbing idea had been that the ennobling of the people, even of the lowest class, through education, was no mere dream, was now, in the midst of extraordinary difficulties, to strug- gle with the solution of the problem. And surely if any man, conseiously possessing strength to fight, and only desiring to be brought face to face with his adversary, ever had his utmost wishes granted, it was Pestalozzi at Stanz. Let us try for a moment to realize the circumstances — the forces of the enemy on the one^ide, the single arm on the other, and the field of the combat. The house in which the eighty children were assembled, to be boarded, lodged, and taught, was an old tumble-down Ursu- line convent, scarcely habitable, and destitute of 212 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. all the conveniences of life. The onlyapartment suitable for a schoolroom was about twenty-four feet square, furnished with a few desks and forms ; and into this were crowded the wretched children, noisy, dirty, diseased, and ignorant, with the man- ners and habits of barbarians. Pestalozzi's only helper in the management of the institution was an old woman, who cooked the food and swept the rooms ; so that he was, as he tells us himself, not only the teacher, but the paymaster, the man-ser- vant, and almost the house-maid of the children. Here, then, we see Pestalozzi surroimded by a **sea of troubles," against which he had not only **to take arms," but to forge the arms himself. And what was the single weapon on which he relied for conquest? It was his own loving heart. Hear his words:— * 'My wishes were now accomplished. I felt convinced that my heart would change the conditioii of my children as speedily as the spring- tide sun reanimates the earth frozen by the winter. Nor," he adds, 'Vas I mistaken. Before the springtide sun melted away the snow from our mountains, you could no longer recognize the same children." But how was this wonderful transformation effected ? What do Pestalozzi's words really mean ? Let us pause for a moment to consider them. Here is a man who, in presence of ignorance, obstinacy, dirt, brutality, and vice — enemies that will destroy Mm unless he can destroy if/iem— opposes to them the unresistible might of weakness, or what appears such, and fights them with his heart ! Let all teachers ponder over the fact, and remem- ber that this weapon, too frequently forgotten, and THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 213 therefore unforged in our training colleges, is an indispensable requisite to their equipment. Want- ing this, all the paraphernalia of Uterary certificates — even the diplomas of the College of Preceptors- will be unavailing. With it, the teacher, poorly furnished in other respects (think of Pestalozzi's literary qualifications!), may work wonders, com- pared with which the so-called magician's are mere child's play. The first lesson, then, that we learn from Pestalozzi is, that the teacher must have a heart — an apparently simple but really profound discovery, to which we cannot attach too much im- portance. But Pestalozzi's own heart was not merely a statical heart— a heart furnished with capabilities for action, but not acting; it was a dynamical heart — a heart which was constantly at work, and vitalized the system. Let us see how it worked. "I was obliged," he says, ** unceasingly to be everything to my children. I was alone with them from morning to night. It was from my hand that they received whatever could be of service both to their bodies and minds. All succor, all consolation, all instruction came to them immediately from myself. Their hands were in my hand; my eyes were fixed on theirs, my tears mingled with theirs, my smiles encountered theirs, my soup was their soup, my drink was their drink. I had around me neither family, friends, nor servants; I had only them. I was with them when they were m health, by their side when they were ill. I slept in their midst. I was the last to go to bed, the first to rise in the morning. When we were in bed, I used to 214 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. pray with them and talk to them till they went to sleep. They wished me to do so," This active, practical, self-sacrificing love, beam- ing on the frozen hearts of the children, by degrees melted and animated them. But it was only by degrees. Pestalozzi was at first disappointed. He had expected too much, and had formed no plan of action. He even rather prided himself upon bis want of plan. ''I knew," he says, **no system, no method, no art but that which rested on the simple consequen- ces of the firm belief of the children in my love towards them. I wished to know no other." Before long, however, he began to see that the re- sponse which the movement of his heart towards theirs called forth was rather a response of his per- sonal efforts, than one dictated by their own will and conscience. It excited action, but not spon- taneous, independent action. This did not satisfy him. He wished to make them act from strictly moral motives. Gradually, then, Pestalozzi advanced to the main principles of his system of moral education— that virtue, to be worth anything, must be practical; that it must consist not merely in knowing what is right, but in doing it ; that even knowing what is right does not come from the exposition of dogmatic precepts, but from the convictions of the conscience ; and that, therefore, both knowing and doing rest ultimately on the enhghtenment of the conscience through the exercise of the intellect. He endeavored, in the first place, to awaken the moral sense— to make the children conscious of their moral powers, and to accomplish his object, THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 215 not by preaching to them, though he sometimes did this, but by caUing these powers into exercise. He gave them, as he tells us, few explanations. He taught them dogmatically neither morality nor re- ligion. He wished them to be both moral and re- ligious ; but he conceived that it was not possible to make them so by verbal precept, by word of com- mand, nor by forcing them to commit to memory formularies which did not represent their own con- victions. He did not wish them to say they be- lieved, before they believed. He appealed to what was divine in their hearts, implanted there by the Supreme Creator ; and having brought it out into consciousness, called on them to exhibit it in action, **When," he says, **the children were perfectly still; so that you might hear a pin drop, I said to them, * Don't you feel yourselves more reasonable and more happy now than when you are making a disorderly noise V When they clung round my neck and called me their father, I would say, *Chil- dren, could you deceive your father ? Could you, after embracing me thus, do behind my back what you know I disapprove of?' And when we were speaking about the misery of our country, and they felt the happiness of their own lot, I used to say, * How good God is, to make the heart of man piti- ful and compassionate.' " At other times, after telling them of the desolation of some family in the neighborhood, he would ask them whether they were willing to sacrifice a portion of their own food to feed the starving children of that family ? These instances will suflSce to show generally what Pestalozzi meant by moral education, and how he operated on the hearts and consciences of 216 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. the children. We see that, instead of feeding their imagination with pictures of virtue beyond and above their sphere, he called on them to exercise those within their reach. He knew what their ordinary family life had been, and he wished to pre- pare them for something better and nobler ; but he felt that this could only be accomplished by making them, while members of his family, consciously ap- preciate what was right and desire to do it. Here then, in moral and, as we shall presently see, in intellectual education, Pestalozzi proceeded from the near, the practical, the actual^to the re- mote, the abstract, the ideal. It was on the foun- dation of what the children were, and could become, in the sphere they occupied, that he built up their moral education. But he conceived — and justly — ^that their intel- lectual training was to be looked on as part of their moral training Whatever increases our knowl- edge of things as they are, leads to the appreciation of the truth ; for truth, in the widest sense of the term, is this knowledge. But the acquisition of knowledge, as requiring mental effort, and there- fore exercising the active powers, necessarily in- creases the capacity to form judgments on moral questions ; so that, in proportion as you cultivate the will, the affections, and the conscience, with a view to independent action, you must cultivate the intellect, which is to impose the proper limits on that independenoe ; and on the other hand, in pro- portion as you cultivate the intellect, you must train the moral powers which are to carry its de- cisions into effect. Moral and intellectual education must consequently, in the formation of the human THE SCIENCE AND ART OB* EDUCATION. 217 being, proceed together, the one stimulating and maintaining the action of the other. Pestalozzi, therefore, instructed as well as educated ; and in- deed educated by means of instruction. In carry- ing out this object, he proceeded from the near, the practical, the actual, to the remote, the abstract, and the ideal. We shall see his theoretical views on this point in a few quotations from a work which he wrote some years before, entitled ** The Evening Hour of a Hermit. " He says : ** Nature develops all the human faculties by practice, and their growth depends on their ex- ercise." **The circle of knowledge commences close around a man, and thence extends concentrically." *' Force not the faculties of children into the re- mote paths of knowledge, until they have gained strength by exercise on things that are near them." "There is in Nature an order and march of de- velopment. If you disturb or interfere with it, you mar the peace and harmony of the mind. And this you do, if, before you have formed the mind by the progressive knowledge of the realities of life, you fling it into the labyrinth of words, and make them the basis of development." '' The artificial march of the ordinary school, an- ticipating the order of Nature, which proceeds with- out anxiety and without haste, inverts this order by placing words first, and thus secures a deceit- ful appearance of success at the expense of natural and safe development." In these few sentences we recognize all that is 218 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. most characteristic in the educational principles of Pestalozzi. I will put them into another form : — (1) There is a natural order in which the powers of the human being develop or unfold themselves. (2) We must study and understand this order of Nature, if we would aid, and not disturb, the de- velopment. (3) We aid the development, and consequently promote the growth of the faculties concerned in it, when we call them into exercise. (4) Nature exercises the faculties of children on the realities of life — on the near, the present, the actual. (5) If we would promote that exercise of the fac- ulties which constitutes development and ends in growth, we also, as teachers, must, in the case of children, direct them to the realitiee of life— to the things which come in contact with them, which concern their immediate interests, feelings, and thoughts. (6) Within this area of personal experience we must confine them, until, by assiduous, practical exercise in it, their powers are strengthened, and they are prepared to advance to the next concen- tric circle, and then to the next, and so on, in un- broken succession. (7) In the order of Nature, things go before words, the realities before the symbols, the substance be- fore the shadow, We cannot, without disturbing the harmonious order of the development, invert this order. If we do so, we take the traveller out of the open, sunlit high-road, and plunge him into THE SCIENCE AND ART OP EDUCATION. 219 an obscure labyrinth, where he gets entangled and bewildered, and loses his way. These are the fundamental principles of Pestal- ozzi's theory of intellectual as well as moral educa- tion, and I need hardly say that they resolve themselves into the principles of human nature. But we next inquire. How did he apply them ? What was his method ? These questions are some- what embarrassing, and, if strictly pressed, must be answered by saying that he often apphed them very imperfectly and inconsistently, and that his method for the most part consisted in having none at all. The fact is, that the imrivalled incapacity for governing men and external things, to which he confessed, extended itself also to the inner re- gion of his understanding. He could no more gov- ern his conceptions than the circumstances around him. The resulting action, then, was wanting in order and proportion. It was the action of a man set upon bringing out the powers of those he in- fluenced, but apparently almost indifferent to what became of the results. His notion of educa- tion as development was clear, but he scarcely conceived of it as also training and discipline. Provided that he could secure a vivid interest in his lesson, and see the response to his efforts in the kindling eyes and animated countenances of his pupils, he was satisfied. He took it for granted that what was so eagerly received would be cer- tainly retained, and therefore never thought of repeating the lesson, nor of examining the product. He was so earnestly intent upon going ahead, that he scarcely looked back to see who were following; and to his enormous zeal for the good of the whole, 230 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. often sacrificed the interests of individuals. This zeal was without discretion. He forgot what he might have learned from. Rousseau — that a teacher who is master of his art frequently advances most surely by standing still, and does most by doing nothing. In the matter of words, moreover, his practice was often directly opposed to his prin- ciples. He would give lists of words to be repeated after him, or learned by heart, which represent- ed nothing real in the experience of the pupils. In various other ways he manifested a strange incon- sistency. Yet, in spite of these drawbacks, if we look upon the teacher as a man whose especial function it is, to use an illustration from Socrates, to be, as it were, the accoucheur of the mind, to bring it out into the sunlight of life, to rouse its dormant powers, and make it conscious of their possession, we must assign to Pestalozzi a very high rank among teachers. It was this remarkable instinct for developing the faculties of his pupils that formed his main characteristic as a teacher. Herein lay his great strength. To set the intellectual machinery in motion— to make it work, and keep it working; that was the sole object at which he aimed ; of all the rest he took little account. If he had any method, this was its most important element. But in carrying it out, he relied upon a principle which must be insisted on as cardinal and essential in education. He secured the thorough interest of his pupils in the lesson, and mainly through their own direct share in it. By his influence upon them he got them to concentrate all their powers upon it ; THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 221 and this concentration, involving self-exercise, in turn, by reaction, augmented the interest, and the result was an inseparable association of the act of learning with pleasure in learning. Whatever else, then, Pestalozzi's teaching lacked, it was intensely- interesting to the children, and made them love learning. Consistently with the principles quoted from the *' Evening Hours of a Hermit," and with the prac- tice just described, we see that Pestalozzi's concep- tion of the teacher's fimction made it consist pre- enunently in rousing the pupil's native energies, and bringing about their self -development. This self-development is the consequence of the self-activity of the pupil's own mind— of the experience which his mind goes through in dealing with the matter to be learned. This experience must be his own ; by no other experience than his own can he be educated at all. The edu- cation, therefore, that he gains is self -education ; and the teacher is constituted as the stimulator and director of the intellectual processes by which the learner educates himself. This I hold to be the cen- tralprinciple of all education — of all teaching ; and although not formerly enunicated in these words by Pestalozzi, it is clearly deducible from his theory. We are now prepared to estimate the great and special service which Pestalozzi did to education. It is not his speculative theories, nor his practice (especially the latter), which have given him his reputation — ^it is that he, beyond all who preceded him, demanded that paramount importance should be attached to the elementary stages of teaching, *'His differentia,'*'' as Mr. Quick justly remarks. 222 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. **is rather his aim than his method." He saw more clearly than all his predecessors, not only what was needed, but how the need was to be sup- plied. Elementary education, in his view, means not definite instruction in special subjects, but the eliciting of the powers of the child as preparative to definite instruction, — it means that course of cultivation which the mind of every child ought to go through, in order to secure the all-sided develop- ment of its powers. It does not mean learning to read, write, and cipher, which are matters of in- struction, but the exercises which should precede them. Viewed more generally, it is that assiduous work of the pupil's mind upon facts, as the building materials of knowledge, by which they are to be shaped and prepared for their place in the edifice. After this is done, but not before, instruction prop- er commences its systematic work. This principle may find its most general expres- sion as a precept for the teacher thus:— Ahvays make your pupil begin Ms education by dealing with concrete things and facts, never with abstrac- tions and generalizations, such as definitions, rules, and propositions couched in words. Things first, afterwards words— particular facts first, after- wards general facts, or principles. The child has eyes, ears, and fingers, which he can employ on things and facts, and gain ideas — ^that is, knowl- edge—from them. Let him, then, thus employ them. This employment constitutes his elemen- tary education— the education which makes him conscious of his powers, forms the mind, and pre- pares it for its after work. We now see what Pestalozzi meant by elementary THE SCIENCE AND ART OP EDUCATION. 223 education. The next question is, how he proposed to secure it. Let us hear what he himself says : — " If I look back and ask myself what I have really done towards the improvement of elementary education, I find that in recognizing Observation (Anschauung) as the absolute basis of all knowl- edge, I have established the first and most impor- tant principle of instruction; and that, setting aside all particular systems, I have endeavored to discover what ought to be the character of instruc- tion itself, and what are the fundamental laws ac- cording to which the natural education of the hu- man race must be conducted." In another place he says: " Observation is the absolute basis of all knowledge. In other words, aU knowledge must proceed from observation, and must admit of being traced to that source." Theword Anschauung, which we translate gener- ally and somewhat vaguely by * 'Observation," cor- responds rather more closely to our word Percep- tion. It is the mind's looking into, or intellectual grasping of, a thing, which is due to the reaction of its powers, after the passive reception of impres- sions or sensations from it. We see a thing which merely flits before our eyes, but we perceive it only when we have exhausted the action of our senses upon it, when we have dealt with it by the whole mind. The act of perception, then, is the act by which we knom the object. If we use the term Ob- servation in this comprehensive sense, it may be taken as equivalent to Anschauung. Observation, then, according to Pestalozzi (and Bacon had said the same thing before him) is the absolute basis of all knowledge, and is, therefore. 224 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. the prime agent in elementary education. It is around this theory, as a centre of gravity, that Pestalozzi's system revolves. The demands of this theory can only be satisfied by educating the learner's senses, and making him by their use an accurate observer — and this not merely for the purpose of quickening the senses, but of securing clear and definite perceptions, and this again with a view to lay firmly the foundation of all knowledge. The habit of accurate observa- tion, as I have thus defined it, is not taught by Nature. It must be acquired by experience. Miss Martineau remarks:—'* A child does not catch a gold fish in water at the first trial, however good his eyes may be, and however clear the water. Knowledge and method are necessary to enable him to take what is actually before his eyes and under his hands;" and she adds, *' The powers of observation must be trained, and habits of meth- od in arranging the materials piesented to the eye [and the other sense-organs] must be acquired before the student possesses the requisites for understand- ing what he contemplates."* It is scarcely necessary to show in detail what is meant by the education of the senses. This educa- tion consists in their exercise— an exercise which involves the development of all the elementary powers of the learner. Any one may see this edu- cation going on in the games and employment of the kindergarten, and indeed in the occupations of every little child left to himseK. It is, therefore, * See some excellent remarks on this subject in Miss Youmans's essay on the culture of the observing powers of children in Second Book of Botany. New York. THE SCIENCE AND ART OP EDUCATION. 225 in the strictest sense of the term, self-education. But it should also be made an object of direct atten- tion and study, and lessons should be given for the express purpose of securing it. The materials for such lessons are of course abundant on every hand. Earth, sky, and sea, the dwelling-house, the fields, the gardens, the streets, the river, the forest— sup- ply them by thousands. All things within the area of the visible, the audible, and the tangible, supply the matter for such object lessons, and upon these concrete reahties the sense may be educated. Draw- ing, again, and moulding in clay, the cutting out of paper forms, building with wooden bricks or cubes to a pattern, are all parts of the education of the senses, and at the same time, exercises for the im- provement of the observing powers. Then, again, measuring objects with a foot measure, weighing them in scales with real weights, gaining the power of estimating the dimensions of bodies by the eye, and their weight by poising them in the hand, and then verifying the guesses by actual trial —these, too, are valuable exercises for the education of the senses. It is needless to particularize further, but who does not see that such exercises involve, not merely the training of the senses, but also the cul- ture of the observing powers as well as the exercise of judgment, reasoning, and invention, and all as parts of elementary education ?* It is impossible to exaggerate their value and importance. But elementary education, rightly understood, appHes also to the initiatory stage of all definite in- *I heg very strongly to recommend to all teachers, and to mothers who teach their children, a most valuable little book, written by the late Horace Grant, Exercises for the Improvement of the Senses* London. 226 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. struction. If we accept Pestalozzi's doctrine, that all education must begin with the near, the actual, the real, the concrete, we must not begin any sub- ject whatever, in the case of children, with the re- mote, the abstract, and the ideal— that is, never with definitions, generalities, or rules; which, as far as their experience is concerned, all belong to this category. In teaching Physics, then, we must begin with the phenomena themselves ; in teaching Magnetism, for instance, with the child's actual ex- periencejof the mutual attraction of the magnet and the steel bar ; Arithmetic must begin with counting and grouping marbles, peas, etc., not with abstract numbers; Geometry, not with propositions and theorems, but with observing the forms of solid cubes, spheres, etc. ; Geography, not with excur- sions into unknown regions, but with the school- room, the house, etc., thence proceeding concentric- ally; Language, too, with observing words and sentences as facts to be compared together, classi- fied, and generalized by the learner himself. In all these cases the same principle applies. The learner must first gain personal experience in the area of the near and the real, in which he can exercise his own powers; this area thus becomes the known which is to interpret the unknown, and thus the principle is established that the learner educates himself under the stimulation and direction of the educator. You are now, I presume, aware of what Pesta- lozzi means by elementary education ; and you see that it resolves itself into the education which the learner gives himself by exercising his own powers of observation and experiment. The method of THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 227 elementary education, is, therefore, the child's own natural method of gaining knowledge, guided and superintended by the formal teacher. This method has been, by Diesterweg, an eminent German disciple of Pestalozzi, strongly distinguish- ed from what he calls the Scientific method— that which is employed in higher instruction, in uni- versities and colleges, and is suitable for learners whose minds are already developed and trained. The Elementary method, he says, is inductive, ana- lytic, inventive, developing. It begins with indi- vidual things or facts, lays these as the foundation, and proceeds afterwards to general facts or princi- ples. The Scientific method, on the other hand, is deductive, synthetic, dogmatic, and didactic. It begins with definitions, general propositions, and axioms, and proceeds downwards to the individual facts on which they are founded. I will give the substance of his further remarks on the subject. In learning by the Elementary method, we begin with individual things— facts or objects. From these we gain definite ideas, ideas naturally related to the condition of our powers, or of our knowledge, as being the result of our own personal experience. Such knowledge, as the product of our own efforts, is ours, in a sense in which no knowledge of others can ever become ours ; and, being ours, serves as the solid basis of the judgment and inductions that we are able to form, — the method is inditctive be- cause it begins with individual facts. The Scientific method, on the other hand, is de- ductive, because it begins with general principles, definitions, axioms, formulae, etc. ; that is to say, 228 THE SCIENCE AN1> ART OF EBTTCATION. with deductive propositions founded on facts which the learner is afterwards to know, not with facts which he already knows. The definitions, etc., are constructed for him, not by him. They are the ready-made results of the exploration of others, not the gains of his own. The deductive method pro- ceeds from the summit to the foundation, from the unknown to the known ; the inductive, from the foundation to the summit, from the known to the unknown. The mind dealing wifch individual things, and seeking to know them, has no choice but to subject them to mental analysis. Every individual thing is an aggregate of elements, which can only be known by disintegration of the compound. Nature presents us with no element whatever alone and simple. The Elementary method, therefore, which requires the learner to perform this disintegration, is analytical. In other words, as resting on obser- vation and experiment, it is the method of investi- gation. The Scientific method, on the other hand, is syn- thetic. It performs the analysis for the learner, and hands over to him the results. It directs him to re-construct something, the form of which he has not seen, and tells him at every moment where and how he is to place the materials. He does not necessarily know what he is constructing until the complete form is before him. He satisfies the de- mands of the method, if he obeys the directions given him. He is not required to observe and ex- periment — i, e., to investigate for himself. The Elementary method is inventive (heuristic). It places the learner on the path of discovery, and THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 329 by encouraging spontaneity and independence, gives free scope for the exercise of all his powers. It suggests to him new combinations of ideas al- ready acquired, and the solution of difficulties which come in his way. The spirit of the Scientific method is opposed to invention. It didactically furnishes ready-made matter which is to be received, not questioned, and dogmatically prescribes obedience to fixed rules. It consequently checks spontaneity, independence, and invention. The scientific method, then, as thus interpreted, though adapted to students of high pretensions, is not adapted to those who are acquiring the elements of knowledge- The mistake, for the discovery of which we are indebted to Pestalozzi, is, that in our ordinary traditional teaching the Scientific method has, unfortunately, come to be employed in our schools for children where the Elementary method alone is natural and suited to the circumstances. Pestalozzi's eminent claim to our gratitude consists in the service he has done to education by *' turning the traditional car of school routine quite round, and setting it in a new direction." I conclude the exposition I have given of Pesta- lozzi's fundamental principles, by appending a sum- mary of them. (1) The principles of education are not to be de- vised ad extra ; they are to be sought for in human nature, (2) This nature is an organic nature— a plexus of bodily, intellectual, and moral capabilities, ready for development, and struggling to develop them- selves. 230 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. (3) The education conducted by the formal edu- cator has both a negative and a positive side. The negative function of the educator consists in re- moving impediments, so as to afford free scope for the learner's self -development. The educator's posi- tive function is to stimulate the learner to the exer- cise of his powers, to furnish materials and occasions for the exercise, and to superintend and maintain the action of the machinery. (4) Self -development begins with the impressions received by the mind from external objects. These impressions (called sensations), when the mind be- comes conscious of them, group themselves into perceptions. These are registered in the mind as conceptions or ideas, and constitute that elemen- tary knowledge which is the basis of all knowledge. (5) Spontaneity and self -activity are the necessary conditions under which the mind educates itself, and gains power and independence. (6) Practical aptness, or faculty, depends more on habits gained by the assiduous oft-repeated exer- cise of the learner's active powers, than on knowl- edge alone. Knowing and doing {wissen und kon- nen) must, however, proceed together. The chief aim of all education (including instruction) is the development of the learner's powers. (7) All education (including instruction) must be grounded on the learner's own observation (Ans- chauung) at first hand— on his own personal experi- ence. This is the true basis of all his knowledge. The opposite proceeding leads to empty, hollow, delusive word-knowledge. First the reality, then the symbol ; first the thing, then the word ; not vice versa. THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 231 (8) What the learner has gained by his own obser- vation (Anschauung), and, as a part of his personal experience, is incorporated with his mind, heJcnows, and can describe or explain in his own words. His competency to do this is the measure of the accu- racy of his observation, and, consequently, of his knowledge. (9) Persona] experience necessitates the advance- ment of the learner's mind from the near and actual, with which he is in contact, and which he can deal with himself, to the more remote ; therefore, from the concrete to the abstract, from particulars to generals, from the known to the unknown. This is the method of elementary education ; the opposite proceeding— the usual proceeding of our traditional teaching — leads the mind from the abstract to the concrete, from generals to particulars, from the imknown to the known. This latter is the Scientific method— a method suited only to the advanced learner, who, it assumes, is already trained by the Elementary method. FRCEBEL AND THE KINDERGARTEN SYS- TEM OF ELEMENTARY EDUCATION. Among the names of the great Eeformers of Education, there is one which has not yet received that honor which ifc deserves, and with which I firmly believe the future will invest it. It is that of Friedrich Wilhelm August Froebel. His claims to distinction among educators are, however, now extensively allowed in his native land, as well as in Switzerland, Holland, France, the United States, and partially even in England. These claims are numerous, and of great importance. While many others have labored with greater or less success at the superstructure of Education, to him belongs the special credit of having earnestly devoted him- self to the foundation. While others have taken to the work of Education their own pre-conceived notions of what that work should be, Froebel stands consistently alone in seeking in the nature of the child the laws of educational action — in as- certaining from the child himself how we are to educate him. Further, Froebel is the first teacher to whom it has occurred to convert what is usually considered the waste steam of childish activities and energies into means of fruitful action ; to utilize what has 232 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 233 hitherto been looked upon as unworthy of notice ; and, moreover, to accomplish this object, not only without repressing the natural free spirit of child- hood, but by making that free spirit the very in- strument of his purpose. In laying before you the development of FroebeFs principlesr of elementary education, I propose to connect with this development a sketch of the per- sonal history of the man. We shall in this way learn to appreciate not only the principles at which he ultimately arrived, but the mental process which led to them. Froebel was born April 21, 1782, at Oberweiss- bach, in the principality of Schwarzburg-Eudol- stadt. His mother died when he was so young that he never even remembered her ; and he was left to the care of an ignorant maid-of- all -work, who simply provided for his bodily wants. His father, who was the laborious pastor of several parishes, seems to have been solely occupied with his duties, and to have given no concern whatever to the development of the child's mind and char- acter beyond that of strictly confining him within doors, lest he should come to harm by straying away. One of his principal amusements, he tells us, consisted in watching from the window some workmen who were repairing the church, and he remembered long afterwards how he earnestly de- sired to lend a helping-hand himself. The instinct of construction, for the exercise of which, in his system, he makes ample provision, was even then stirring within him. As years went on, though nothing was done for his education by others, he found opportunities for satisfying some of the 234 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. longings of his soul, by wandering in the woods, gathering flowers, listening to the birds, or the wind as it swayed the forest trees, watching the movements of all kinds of animals, and laying up in his mind the various impressions then produced as a store for future years. He was, in fact, left as much to educate himself through nature as was the Mary Somerville of later times. Not until he was ten years of age did he receive the sHghtest regular instruction. He was then sent to school to an uncle who lived in the neighborhood. This man, a regular driller of the old, time-honored stamp, had not the slightest conception of the in- ner nature of his pupil, and seems to have taken no pains whatever to discover it. He pronounced the boy to be idle (which, from his point of view, was quite true) and lazy (which certainly was not true) — a boy, in short, that you could do nothing with. And, in fact, the teacher did nothing with his pupil, never once touched the chords of his in- ner being, or brought out the music they were fit- ted, under different handling, to produce. Froebel was indeed, at that time, a thoughtful, dreamy child, a very indifferent student of books, cordially hating the formal lessons with which he was crammed, and never so happy as when left alone with his great teacher in the woods. The result was, that he left school, after four years, almost as ignorant as when he entered it, carrying with him as the produce of his labor a considerable quantity of chaff, but very little corn. The corn consisted in some elementary notions of mathematics, a sub- ject which interested him throughout his life, and which he brought afterwards to bear on the lessons THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 235 of the Kindergarten. Circumstances, which had proved so adverse to his development in his school experiences, took a favorable turn in the next step of his life. It was necessary for him to earn his bread, and we next find him a sort of apprentice to a woodsman in the great Thuringian forest. Here, as he afterwards tells us, he lived some years in cordial intercourse with nature and mathematics, learning even then, though unconsciously, from the teaching he received, how to teach others. His daily occupation in the midst of trees led him to observe the laws of nature, and to recognize union and unity in apparently contradictory phenomena. Here, too, he reflected on his previous course of education; and formed very decided opinions on the utter worthlessness of the ordinary school- teaching, as never having reached what was in himself, and, therefore, in his view, failing alto- gether to be a true culture of the mind and of the man. His life as a forester, which, though certain- ly not without great influence on his mental charac- ter, was not to be his final destination, ended when he was about eighteen years of age. He now went to the University of Jena, where he attended lectures on natural history, physics, and mathematics ; but, as he tells us, gained little from them. This result was obviously due to the same dreamy speculative tendency of mind which characterized his earlier school-life. Instead of studying hard, he speculat- ed on unity and diversity, on the relation of the whole to the parts, of the parts to the whole, etc., continually striving after the unattainable and neglecting the attainable. This desultory style of life was put an end to by the failure of means to 236 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. stay at the University. For the next few years he tried various occupations, ever restlessly tossed to and fro by the demands of the outer life, and not less distracted by the consciousness that his powers had not yet found what he calls their *' centre of gravity.-' At last, however, they found it. While engaged in an architect's office at Frank- fort, he formed an acquaintance with the Eector of the Model School, a man named Gruner. Gruner saw the capabilities of Froebel, and detected also his entire want of interest in the work that he was doing; and one day suddenly said to him: "' Give up your architect's business ; you will do nothing at it. Be a teacher. We want one now in the school; you shall have the place." This was the turning point in Frcebel's life. He accepted the en- gagement, began work at once, and tells us that the first time he found himself in the midst of a class of 30 or 40 boys, he felt that he was in the element that he had missed so long—" the fish was in the water." He was inexpressibly happy. This ecstasy of feeling, we may easily imagine, soon subsided. In a calmer mood he severely questioned himself as to the means by which he was to satisfy the demands of his new position. He found the answer, he says, by descending into himself, and listening to the teachings of nature respecting life, mind, and being — lessons already theoretically known, but now, for the first time, correlated with practice. ' * My hitherto pecuHar development, self- cultivation, self -teaching," he says, " as well as my observation of nature and of life, now found their proper place." But he keenly felt, at the same time, the effects of his desultory manner of study. THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 237 He was neither instructed in knowledge nor in teaching, but he now resolved to make up for his deficiencies in both respects. About this time he met with some of Pestalozzi's writings, which so deeply impressed him that he determined to go to Yverdun and study Pestalozzism on the spot. He accompHshed his purpose, and lived and worked for two years with Pestalozzi. His experience at Yverdun impressed him with the conviction that the science of Education had still to draw out from Pestalozzi's system those fundamental principles which Pestalozzi himself did not comprehend. "And therefore," says Schmidt, **this genial dis- ciple of Pestalozzi supplemented and completed his system by advancing from the point which Pestal- ozzi had reached through pressure from without to the innermost conception of man, and arriving at the thought of the true development and the con- dition of the true culture of mankind." Feeling still his want of positive knowledge, Froebel spent the next two or three years of his life at the Uni- versities of Gottingen and Berlin. It was now, while he was for the first time earnestly engaged in study, that his views on Education gradually gained consistency and form, * ' Our greatest edu- cators," he says, "even Pestalozzi himself not ex- cepted, appear to me too crudely, empirically, cap- riciously, and, therefore, unscientifically to allow themselves to be led away from nature and nature's laws ; they do not appear, indeed, to recognize hon- or, and cultivate the divinity of science." It would only be tedious to relate the various preliminary experiences by which Froebel— some- times with few, sometimes with many pupils — 238 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. sometinies under favorable, at other times under unfavorable circumstances — pursued his course, until the moment when at Blankenburg, near Eu- dolphstadt, he established, about the year 1840, the school to which he first gave the name of Kinder- garten. In this name he wished to embody two of his favorite theoretical notions:— the one, that edu- cation, as culture, has to do with children as hu- man plants, which are to be surrounded with cir- cumstances favorable to their free development, and to be trained by means suited to their nature ; and the other, that a school for little children should have attached to it a garden, in which they may exercise their natural taste for flowers, and be not only the observers but the cultivators of plants. Frcebel, as well as his disciples of the present day, protested against the application of the name School to the Kindergarten, which is, in their view, a place for the development of the activities and capabilities of children before the usual school age begins. The Kindergarten proper is intended for children of between three and seven years of age. Its purpose is thus briefly indicated by himself : — *' To take the oversight of children before they are ready for school life; or exert an influence over their whole being in correspondence with its nature ; to strengthen their bodily powers ; to exercise their senses; to employ the awakening mind; to make them thoughtfully acquainted with the world of nature and of man ; to guide their heart and soul in a right direction, and lead them to the Origin of all life and to union with Him." You will have observed already that in this pro- gram there is no mention made of reading, writing THE SCIENCE AND ART OP EDUCATION. 239 and arithmetic; of grammar, geography and his- tory; of rules, precepts, or general propositions; not a word about books, not even of instruction at all in its ordinary sense ; yet you will also have observed that there is ample provision for activity and energy of various kinds — activity of limbs, ac- tivity of the senses, activity of the mind, heart, and of the religious instinct. It is in this immense field of natural energies that the Froebelian idea *' lives, moves, and has its being." You will fur- ther see that the carrying out of this program in- volves something very different in spirit and es- sence from the ordinary course of an English in- fant school, to which children are often carried merely '* to get them out of the way." Having said at the commencement of this lecture that Froebel as an educator begins at the very be- ginning, I ought now to add that in his great work, *' On the Education of Man," he takes into consid- eration the circumstances of the child during the period which precedes the Kindergarten age, and gives many valuable hints to guide the mother, who is Nature's deputy and helper, for the first three years of its life. As, however, to describe his views and plans in relation to that period would occupy us too long, I confine myself to the Kinder- garten age. In FroebePs opinion, the mother who consults the true interests of her child, will, when he is three years old, give him up to the governess of the Kindergarten. In this respect he differed from Pestalozzi, who thought that the mother, as the natural educator of the child, ought to retain the charge of him up to his sixth or seventh year. It 240 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. is easy to see that if this opinion be acted on, the education of the child will be restricted to the ex- perience of the family circle. According to Froebel this basis is too narrow. The family circle does not generally afford a sufficient scope for the develop- ment of tliose activities which, in their combina- tion, constitute life. A system of education, there- fore, founded on this narrow basis, does not really prepare the child for that intercommunion and constant intercourse with his fellow men of which hfe, broadly interpreted, consists. Froebel more- over doubts, with much reason, whether mothers generally are qualified for the task assigned them by Pestalozzi, and points out that, if they are not, the child must suffer from their incompetence, even if he lose nothing through neglect occasioned by the demands of the household upon their time and strength. He, therefore, insists that in order to furnish children with opportunities for display- ing and developing all their natural capabilities, they must be brought together in numbers. The mutual action and reaction of forces and activities thus necessitated presents, in fact, a miniature pic- ture of the larger life to which they are destined. The passions, emotions, sufferings, desires of our common humanity, have here both scope and oc- casion for their fullest manifestation ; while the in- tellectual powers, under the stimulus of inexhaust- ible curiosity and of aptitude for imitation and in- vention, are excited to constant action. At the same time the bodily powers— hands, feet, muscles, senses — ^under the influence and impulse of com- panionship, are more actively exercised, and the health of the constitution thereby promoted, while THE SCIENCE AND ART OP EDUCATION. 241 a larger and better opportunity is supplied for learning the resources of the mother-tongue. The Kindergarten, therefore, for its full development, requires the bringing together of children in num- bers, in order that they may not only be educated, but educate themselves and each other; and re- quires, moreover, the surrender, on the mother's part, of the charge which she is, as a rule, unfitted to discharge, into the hands of those who under- stand, and are trained for, the work. This, then, is one of the cases in which Frcebel takes a crude and unconditioned notion of Pestalozzi's, and or- ganizes it into a clear and consistent rule of ac- tion. But we are still only standing on the circumfer- ence of Froebel's expansive idea of education. Let us now enter within the circle, and make our way to the center. In order to do this effectually, lot us form a conception of the genesis of the idea — an idea not less distinguished by its originality as a theory than by its far-extending practical issues. Let us imagine to ourselves Frcebel, after pro- foundly studying human nature in general, both in books and life, and minutely observing and study- ing the nature of children; in possession, too, of a large theoretical knowledge of education, as a means for making the best of that nature ; and, at the same time, impressed with a sorrowful convic- tion, founded partly on his own experience, that most of what is called education, is not only un- natural, but anti-natural, as failing to reach the inner being of the child, and even counteracting and thwarting its spontaneous development, — let us, I say, imagine Frcebel, thus equipped as an ob- 242 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. server, taking his place amidst a number of chil- dren disporting themselves in the open air without any check upon their movements. After looking on the pleasant scene awhile, he breaks out into a soliloquy: ** What exuberant life I What immeasurable enjoyment! What un- bounded activity I What an evolution of physical forces ! What a harmony between the inner and outer life ! What happiness, health, and strength ! Let me look a little closer. What are these chil- dren doing ? The air rings musically with their shouts and joyous laughter. Some are running, jumping, or bounding along, with eyes like the eagle's bent upon its prey, after the ball which a dexterous hit of the bat sent flying among them ; others are bending down towards the ring filled with marbles, and endeavoring to dislodge them from their position ; others are running friendly races with their hoops; others again, with arms laid across each other's shoulders, are quietly walk- ing and talking together upon some matter in which they evidently have a common interest. Their natural fun gushes out from eyes and lips. I hear what they say. It is simply expressed, amusing, generally intelligent, and often even wit- ty. But there is a small group of children yonder. They seem eagerly intent on some subject. What is it ? I see one of them has taken a fruit from his pocket. He is showing it to his fellows. They look at it and admire it. It is new to them. They wish to know more about it — to handle, smell, and taste it. The owner gives it into their hands ; they feel and smell, but do not taste it. They give it back to the owner, his right to it being generally THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 243 admitted. He bites it, the rest looking eagerly on to watch the result. His face shows that he likes the taste ; his eyes grow brighter with satisfaction. The rest desire to make his experience their own. He sees their desire, breaks or cuts the fruit in pieces, which he distributes among them. He adds to his own pleasure by sharing in theirs. Sudden- ly a loud shout from some other part of the ground attracts the attention of the group, which scatters in all directions. Let me now consider. What does all this manifold movement— this exhibition of spontaneous energy— really mean ? To me it seems to have a profound meaning. It means — ** (1) That there is an immense external develop- ment and expansion of energy of various kinds- physical, intellectual, and moral. Limbs, senses, lungs, tongues, minds, hearts, are all at work— all co-operating to produce the general effect. ** (2) That activity— doing— is. the common char- acteristic of this development of force, **(3) That spontaneity— absolute freedom from outward control — appears to be both impulse and law to the activity. *' (4) That the harmonious combination and in- teraction of spontaneity and activity constitute the happiness which is apparent. The will to do prompts the doing ; the doing reacts on the will. ** (5) That the resulting happiness is independent of the absolute value of the exciting cause. A bit of stick, a stone, an apple, a marble, a hoop, a top, as soon as they become objects of interest, call out the activities of the whole being quite as effectual- ly as if they were matters of the greatest intrinsic 2^4: THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. value. It is the action upon them — the doing some- thing with them — that invests them with interest. *'(6) That this spontaneous activity generates happiness because the result is gained by the chil- dren's own efforts, without external interference. What they do themselves and for themselves, in- volving their own personal experience, and there- fore exactly measured by their own capabilities, interests them. What another, of trained powers, standing on a different platform of advancement, does for them, is comparatively uninteresting. If such a person, from whatever motive, interferes with their spontaneous activity, he arrests the movement of their forces, quenches their interest, at least for the moment, and they resent the inter- ference. ' ' Such, then, appear to be the manifold meanings of the boundless spontaneous activity that I wit- ness. But what name, after all, must I give to the totality of the phenomena exhibited before me ? I must call them Play. Play, then, is spontaneous ac- tivity ending in the satisfaction of the natural de- sire of the child for pleasure — for happiness. Play is the natural, the appropriatebusiness and occupa- tion of the child left to his own resources. The child that does not play, is not a perfect child. He wants something— sense-organ, limb, or generally what we imply by the term health—to make up our ideal of a child. The healthy child plays- plays continually — cannot but play. "But has this instinct for play no deeper sig- nificance ? Is it appointed by the Supreme Being merely to fill up time ? — merely to form an occasion for fruitless exercise ? — merely to end in itself ? THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 245 No ! I see now that it is the constituted means for the unfolding of all the child's powers. It is through play that he learns the use of his limbs, of all his bodily organs, and with this use gains health a ad strength. Through play he comes to know the external world, the physical qualities of the objects which surround him, their motions, ac- tion, and re-action upon each other, and the rela- tion of these phenomena to himself; a knowledge which forms the basis of that which will be his permanent stock for life. Through play, involving associateship and combined action, he begins to re- cogize moral relations, to feel that he cannot live for himself alone, that he is a member of a com- munity, whose rights he must acknowledge if his own are to be acknowledged. In and through play, moreover, he learns to contrive means for securing his ends; to invent, construct, discover, investi- gate, to bring by imagination the remote near, and, further, to translate the language of facts into the language of words, to learn the conventionalities of his mother-tongue. Play, then, I see, is the means by which the entire being of the child de- velops and grows into power, and, therefore, does not end in itseK. " But an agency which effects results like these, is an education agency; and Play^ therefore, resolves itself into education ; education which is independent of the formal teacher, which the child virtually gains for and by himself. This, then, is the outcome of all that I have observed. The child, through the spontaneous activity of all his natural forces, is rea,lly developing and strengthening 246 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. them for future use ; he is working out his own edu- cation. *' But what do I, who am constituted by the de- mands of society as the formal educator of these children, learn from the insight I have thus gained into their nature ? I learn this— that I must edu- cate them in conformity with that nature. I must continue, not supersede, the course already begun ; my own course must be based upon it. I must rec- ognize and adopt the principles involved in it, and frame my laws of action accordingly. Above all, I must not neutralize and deaden that spontaneity which is the mainspring of all the machinery; I must rather encourage it, while ever opening new fields for its exercise, and giving it new directions. Play, spontaneous play, is the education of little children ; but it is not the whole of their education. Their life is not to be made up of play. Can I not tJicn even now gradually transform their play in- work, but work which shall look like play ? — work which shall originate in the same or similar impulses, and exercise the same energies as 1 see employed in their own amusements and occupa- tions ? Play, however, is a random, desultory education. It lays the essential basis, but it does not raise the superstructure. It requires to be or- ganized for this purpose, but so organized that the superstructure shall be strictly related and con- formed to the original lines of the foundation. ^'Isee these children delight in movement ;— they are always walking or running, jumping, hopping, tossing their limbs about, and, moreover, they are pleased with rhythmical movement. I can con- trive motives and means for the same exercise of THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 247 the limbs, which shall result in increased physical power, and consequently in health — shall train the children to a conscious and measured command of their bodily functions, and at the same time be ac- companied by the attraction of rhythmical sound through song or instrument. '^Isee that they use their senses ; but merely at the accidental solicitation of surrounding circum- stances, and therefore imperfectly. I can contrive means for a definite education of the senses, which shall result in increased quickness of vision, hear- ing, touch, et c, I can train the purbhnd eye to take note of dehcate shades of color, the dull ear to appreciate minute differences of sound. **J see that they observe; but their observations are for the most part transitory and indefinite, and often, therefore, comparatively imfruitful. I can contrive means for concentrating their attention by exciting curiosity and interest, and educate them in the art of observing. They will thus gain clear and definite perceptions, bright images in the place of blurred ones, will learn to recognize the difference between complete and incomplete knowl- edge, and gradually advance from the stage of merely knowing to that of knowing that they know. " /see that they invent and construct ; but often awkwardly and aimlessly. I can avail myself of this instinct, and open to it a definite field of action. I shall prompt them to invention, and train them in the art of construction. The materials I shall use for this end will be simple ; but in combining them together for a purpose, they will employ not only their knowledge of form, but their imagination of 248 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. the capabilities of form. In various ways I shall prompt them to invent, construct, contrive, imi- tate, and in doing so develop their nascent taste for symmetry and beauty. **And so in respect to other domains of that child-action which we call play, I see that I can make these domains also my own. I can convert children's activities, energies, amusements, occu- pations, all that goes by the name of play, into in- struments for my purpose, and, therefore, trans- form play into work. This work will be education in the true sense of the term. The conception of it as such I have gained from the children them- selves. They have taught me how I am to teach them." And now Froebel descends from the imaginary platform where he has been holding forth so long. I have endeavored, in what has preceded, to give you as clear a notion as I could of the genesis of his root idea; and I may say, in passing, that it is well for you that I, and not Froebel himself, have been the expositor ; for anything more cloudy, in- volved, obscure, and mystical than Froebers own style of writing can hardly be conceived. It has been my task to keep the clouds out of sight, and admit upon the scene only the genial light which breaks out from between them. Having thus brought before you what I may call Froebel's statical theory of the education of little children of from three to seven years of age, I now proceed to describe the means by which it was made dynamical— that is, exhibited in practice. But before I do so, I will add to the particulars of his life, that after founding the Kindergarten at THE SCIENCE AND ART OP EDUCATION. 249 Blankenburg, and carrying it on for some years, he left it to establish and organize others in various parts of Germany, and at last died at Liebenstein, June 21, 1852, Thus passed away a man of remark- able insight into human nature, and especially in- to children's nature, — of wonderful energy of char- acter when once roused to action,— of all-pervad- ing philanthropy— a man, I repeat, to whom alone is due the fruitful and original conception of avail- ing himself, as a teacher, of the spontaneous ac- tivities of children as the means of their formal education, and, therefore, of laying on this founda- tion the superstructure of their physical, intel- lectual, and moral life. And now I must endeavor to give some notion of the manner in which Froebel reduced his theory to practice. In doing this, the instances I bring for- ward, must be considered as typical. If you ad- mit — and you can hardly do otherwise — the reason- ableness of the theory, as founded on the nature of things, you can hardly doubt that there is some method of carrying it out. Now, a method of edu- cation involves many processes, all of which must represent more or less the principles which form the basis of the method. It is quite out of my power, for want of time, to describe the various processes which exhibit to us the httle child pursu- ing his education by walking to rhythmic measure, by gymnastic exercises generally, learning songs by heart and singing them, practising his senses with a definite purpose, observing the properties of objects, counting, getting notions of color and form, drawing, building with cubical blocks, mod- elHng in wax or clay, braiding slips of various 250 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. colored paper after a pattern, pricking or cutting forms in paper, curving wire into different shapes, folding a sheet of paper and gaining elementary- notions of geomentry, learning the resources of the mother-tongue by hearing and relating stories, fables, etc. , dramatizing, guessing riddles, working in the garden, etc., etc. These are only some of the activities naturally exhibited by young children, and these the teacher of young children is to em- ploy for his purpose. As, however, they are so numerous, I may well be excused for not even at- tempting to enter minutely into them. But there is one series of objects and exercises therewith connected, expressly devised by Froebel to teach the art of observing, to which, as being typical, I will now direct your attention. He calls these ob- jects, which are gradually and in orderly succes- sion introduced to the child's notice, Gifts— a pleas- ant name, which is, however, a mere accident of the system ; they might equally well be called by any other name. As introductory to the series, a ball made of wool, of say a scarlet color, is placed before the baby. It is rolled along before him on the table, thrown along the floor, tossed into the air, suspended from a string, and used as a pendu- lum, or spun round on its axis, or made to describe a circle in space, etc. It is then given into his hand ; he attempts to grasp it, fails ; tries again, succeeds ; rolls it along the floor himself, tries to throw it, and, in short, exercises every power he hgcs upon it, always pleased, never wearied in do- ing something or other with it. This is play, but it is play which resolves itself into education. He is gaining notions of color, form, motion, action and THE SCIENCE AND ART OP EDUCATION. 251 re-action, as well as of muscular sensibility. And all the while the teacher associates words with things and actions, and, by constantly employing words in their proper sense and in the immediate presence of facts, initiates the child in the use of his mother-tongue. Thus, in a thousand ways, the scarlet ball furnishes sensations and perceptions for the substratum of the mind, and suggests fitting language to express them ; and even the baby ap- pears before us as an observer, learning the proper- ties of things by personal experience. Then comes the first G-tft. It consists of six soft woollen baUs of six different colors, three primary and three secondary. One of these is recognized as like, the others as unlike, the ball first known. The laws of similarity and discrimination are called into action ; sensation and perception grow clearer and stronger. I cannot particularize the numberless exercises that are to be got out of the various combinations of these six balls. The second Gift consists of a sphere, cube, and cylinder, made of hard wood. What was a ball before, is now called a sphere. The different ma- terial gives rise to new experiences ; a sensation, that of hardness, for instance, takes the place of softness; while varieties of form suggest resem- blance and contrast. Similar experiences of like- ness and unlikeness are suggested by the behavior of these different objects. The easy roUing of the sphere, the sliding of the cube, the roUing as well as sliding of the cylinder, illustrate this point. Then the examination of the cube, especially its sur- faces, edges, and angles, which any child can ob- serve for himself, suggest new sensations and their 252 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. resulting perceptions. At the same time, notions of space, time, form, motion, relativity in general, take their place in the mind, as the unshaped blocks which, when fitly compacted together, will lay the firm foundation of the understanding. These elementary notions, as the very ground- work of mathematics, will be seen to have their use as time goes on. The third Gif b is a large cube, making a whole, which is divisible into eight small ones. The form is recognized as that of the cube before seen ; the size is different. But the new experiences consist in notions of relativity— of the whole in its relation to the parts, of the parts in their relation to the whole ; and thus the child acquires the notion and the names, and both in immediate connection with the sensible objects, of halves, quarters, eighths, and of how many of the small divisions make one of the larger. But in connection with the third Gift a new faculty is called forth — Imagination, and with it the instinct of construction is awaken- ed. The cubes are mentally transformed into blocks ; and with them building commences. The constructive faculty suggests imitation, but rests not in imitation. It invents, it creates. Those eight cubes, placed in a certain relation to each other, make a long seat, or a seat with a back, or a throne for the Queen ; or again, a cross, a doorway, etc. Thus does even play exhibit the characteristics of art, and ** conforms (to use Bacon's words) the outward show of things to the desires of the mind;'' and thus the child, as I said before, not merely imitates, but creates. And here, I may remark, that the mind of the child is THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 253 far less interested in that which another mind has embodied in ready prepared forms, than in the forms which he conceives, and gives outward ex- pression to, himself. He wants to employ his own mind, and his whole mind, upon the object, and does not thank you for attempting to deprive him of his rights. The fourth, fifth, and sixth Gifts consist of the cube variously divided into soHd parallelepipeds, or brick-shaped forms, and into smaller cubes and prisms. Observation is called on with increasing strictness, relativity appreciated, and the oppor- tunity afforded for endless manifestations of con- structiveness. And all the while impressions are forming in the mind, which, in due time, will bear geometrical fruits, and fruits, too, of aesthetic cul- ture. The dawning sense of the beautiful, as well as of the true, is beginning to gain consistency and power. I cannot further dwell on the numberless modes of manipulation of which these objects are capable, nor enter further into the groundwork of prin- ciples on which their eflS.ciency depends. It is needless to say that various objections have been made to Froebers method, especially by those whose ignorance of the laws of mental develop- ment disqualifies them, in fact, for giving an opinion on it at all, and also by others, whose earnest work at various points of the superstruc- ture so absorbs their energies that they have none to spare for considering the foundation. But even among those who have considered the working of mental laws, though in many cases from the stand- point of a favorite theory, there are some who still 254 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. doubt and object. I will attempt to deal with one or two of their objections. It is said, for instance, without proof, that we demand too much from little children, and, with the best intentions, take them out of their depth. This might be true, no doubt, if the system of means adopted had any- other basis than the nature of the children ; if we attempted theoretically, and without regard to that nature, to determine ourselves what they can and what they cannot do; but when we constitute spontaneity as the spring of action, and call on them to do that, and that only, which they can do, which they do of their own accord when they are educating themselves, it is clear that the objection falls to the ground. The child who teaches him- self never can go out of his depth ; the work he ac- tually does is that which he has strength to do ; the load he carries cannot but be fitted to the shoulders that bear it, for he has gradually accumulated its contents by his own repeated exertions. This in- creasing burden is, in short, the index and result of his increasing powers, and commensurate with them. The objector in this case, in order to gain even a plausible foothold for his objection, must first overthrow the radical principle, that the ac- tivities, amusements, and occupations of the child, left to himself, do indeed constitute his earliest education, and that it is an education which he vir- tually gives himself. Another side of this objection, which is not un- frequently presented to us, derives its plausibility from the assumed incapacity of children. The ob- jector points to this child or that, and denounces him as stupid and incapable. Can the objector, THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 255 however, take upon himself to declare that this or that child has not been made stupid even by the very means employed to teach him ? The test, however, is a practical one : Can the child play ? If he can play, in the sense which I have given to the word, he cannot be stupid. In his play he em- ploys the very faculties which are required for his formal education. "But he is stupid at his books." If this is so, then the logical conclusion is, that the books have made him stupid, and you, the objec- tor, who have misconceived his nature, and acted in direct contradiction to it, are yourself respon- sible for his condition. ' ' But he has no memory. He cannot learn what I tell him to learn." No memory! Cannot learn! Let us put that to the test. Ask him about the pleasant hohday a month ago, when he went nut- ting in the woods. Does he remember nothing about the fresh feel of the morning air, the joyous walk to the wood, the sunshine which streamed about his path, the agreeable companions with whom he chatted on the way, the incidents of the expedition, the cUmb up the trees, the bagging of the plunder ? Are all these matters clean gone out of his mind ? '* Oh no, he remembers things hke these." Then he has a memory, and a remarkably good one. He remembers, because he was interest- ed ; and if you wish him to remember your lessons, you must make them interesting. He will certain- ly learn what he takes an interest in. I need not deal with other objections. They all resolve themselves into the category of ignorance of the nature of the child. When public opinion shall demand such knowledge from teachers as the 256 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. essential condition of their taking in hand so deli- cate and even profound an art as that of training children, all these Objections will cease to have any- meaning. - E. L. KELLOGG & CO.'S Educational Publications. THE SCHOOL JOURNAL; Weekly, 50 numbers a year. $2.50 per year; $2.00 if paid in advance. Amos M. KELiiOGG, editor. The oldest and most widely circulated weekly educational journal in the United States. It contains practical articles from prominent educa- tors in all parts of the country. Especially does it advocate a reform in educational methods, and the study of educational principles. It contains every week live and pointed editorials, timely articles on education, large practical (school-room) de- {)artment, declamations and dialogues, fresh educational notes, ettersand the editor's comments on them, "things to tell the scholars," weU-edited book department, etc. Altogether it is the best and cheapest educational journal published. THE TEACHERS' INSTITUTE; Monthly, $1.00 a year. Amos M. Kellogg, editor. This is the most popular and successful educational journal in the world. It subscription list now (Oct. 1, 1883,) is over 28,000 and is constantljr increasing. This popularity has been achieved in its own merits. It aims to present to the teacher the thing he actually needs, and is intensely practical. TREASURE TROVE ; Twenty pages with tinted cover, monthly, 50 cents a year. This paper was formerly called The Scholar's Companion, but in Sept., 1883, we changed the name to Treasure Trove, enlarged its scope, and greatly improved its typography. Some of the best writers have been engaged to write for its pages, and we shaU make it a treasure house of choice things for young people everywhere. FIRST TEACHING ; Monthly, $1.00 a year. This is the only paper published espec- ially for primary and kindergarten teachers. Every article has a direct bearing on primary work. It is a right hand of help to those engaged in the lower grades of schools. Sample copies of the above papers and Premium lAst on receispt of 10 cents in stamps. Address E. L. KELLOGG & CO., EDUCATIONAL PUBLISHERS, 21 Park Place, N. Y. E. L. KELLOGG 8z: CO.'S Educational Publications. NOTES OF TALKS ON TEACHING. Given by Francis W. Parker (formerly Supt. of Schools, Quincy, Mass.) before the Martha's Vineyard Summer Institute, summer of 1882. Reported bjr LeMa E. Patridpe. English cloth, 16 mo., 193 pages, printed on laid paper. ^1.00 postpaid. This is the recent phen- omenal success in educational books. 10,000 copies were sold in the first four months of publication. We give several extracts from notices. •' We commend this book to the great body of earnest teachers. It con- tains a series of twenty-five full, clear, and much needed expositions of ,the principles that underlie primary and grammar-school teach- ing."— Popular Science Monthly. It ought to be in the hands of every teacher and parent In the United States. It is education In a nutshell.— PAi7a. Ledger. THE QUINCY METHODS. In preparation, to be ready by the first part of 1884. Price $1.50. This will be the companion volume of "Talks on Teaching" and willillus trate the principles and theories advanced in it as practically applied In the Quincy system. SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. By Amos M. Kellogg, editor of the School Journal, etc., 16 mo,, cloth, price 75 cents, postpaid. The most practical manual ever nublished on the subject. Tne demand for this standard work is rapidly increasing. Lectures on the Science and Art of Education. By Joseph Payne. Price , 5u cts. in paper, $1.00 in cloth. In press, to be ready in Jan., 1884. This is one of the best works on the science and principles of teaching History of the N. Y* State Teachers' Association* By H. C. Kirk. 192 pages with 30 portraits and illuminated cover, cloth $1.00, paper 50 cts. An interesting sketch of the N. Y. State .Teachers' Association from its organization to the present time, and showing the connection between it and important le^latlon in the interests of the schools. RECEPTION DAY. Nos. 1, 2, and 3. A collection of fresh dialogues, declamations and recitations. Issued quarterly. Price 30 cents a number. Selected with especial care as pe- culiarly useful in the school-room and for use by teachers for arrang- ing receptions, entertainments, etc. Three numbers published. HOW TO PAINT IN WATER-COLORS. With 13 original outline designs of wild flowers for painting. By Lavinia Steele Kellogg. Heavy paper cover, with designs on water color paper in separate envelope. Price 4=0 cents. Widely known and regarded as the best manual on this subject sold at a low price. SONG TREASURES. 20 pages with the words and music of about 35 bright songs In each. Price 10 cents, $6.00 per hundred. For use in teacher's Institutes, schools, normal schools, etc. Bright and useful little books. DIME SHORT-HAND WRITER. Price 10 cents. Contains Llndsley's method of short-hand writing called Takigraphy. Undoubtedly by far the simplest to learn. |||^~ Copies of any of our hookfi sent on receipt of price. Correspon- clencs with regard to the introduction of our publications is solicited. E. L. KELLOGG & CO., Educational Publishers, 21 Park Place, N" Y. THE FAMO US "QUINCY SYSTEM." NOTES OF T?vIk5»nT«?vcKin^. Given by Francis W. Parker, (Formerly Supt, of Schools, Quincy^ Mass.) Before the Martha's Vineyard Summer Institute. Reported by Lelia E. PAirciDGE. The most remarkable book for teachers that has been published in a decade. The views of the great leader are fully set forth in this volume. These " Talks" were delivered before a large assembly of teachers coming from all parts of the country, and eagerly listened to. This book has been prepared to supply the demand on the part of teachers to know the " NEW METH- ODS "of teaching. No hook has been published to explain the methods of teaching that made the Quincy Schools so famous when Col. Parker was Superintendent there. The little town became a Mecca for teachers, and for that matter, is so yet. The methods witnessed were copied in many schools. The demand for the " New Methods" became something tangible. School Boards are offering high wages to those that understand them. Col. Parker explained these methods at Martha's Vineyard last sum- mer. After they were written out by Miss Pat ridge he revised them, and we have published the volume. There is more value to the practical teacher in this book than in any other book pub- lished. It is simply invaluable. It is used in Normal Schools and Normal Institutes as a text-book. 10»000 copies were sold in the first four months it was issued. Tills book is a square IGmo, 5 Tby 6 3-4 inches, 193 pages, printed on heavy laid paper, tastefully bound in extra cloth, and contains as a Frontispiece a Fine Portrait of COL. PARKER. PRIC E $1.00 POST PAID. AGENTS WANTED. " Talks on Teaching is unsurpassed as a book for agents to seU, One asrent sold 130 copies at a Co. Institute ; another sold 40 in one day and 137 in a v^ eek, by going from school to school in a city near New York. Send SI. 00 for copy of book and terms to agents, giving territory desired, experience, references, etc. Address, E. L. KELLOGG & CO., Educational Publishees, 21 Park Place, N Y. Contents of "Reception Day No. 7. The Best of its Kind. -RECEPTION DAY." A Choice Collection of Dialogues and Recitations for the use of Schools. ARTISTIC PAPER COVER. 30 CENTS A NUMBER. Easy to Criticise— Dialogue. . 5 The Rehearsal. Do. . ,8 Better Late than Never— Decla- . mation. ..... 12 The Examination— Dialogue. . 13 Boys of No. 10— Song. ... 15 •'I Can't."— Recitation. . . 16 The Watermill— Declamation. . 17 Christmas Dialogue- . . .19 Swallowing a Fly— Declamati on. 24 For Memorizing— Primary C 1 ass. 26 A Stitch in Time Saves Nine- Dialogue 28 Castles in the Air— Recitation for Boy and Girl. ... 30 The RumseUer's Speech— Dec- lamation 31 Reading of the Will— Dialogue. 32 Days that are Gone— Recitation. 34 Court Scene— Dialogue. . . 35 Some Little Rules— Recitation. 40 A Boy's Dream of Bliss— Decla- mation 41 Don't Whine— Declamation. . 42 Visit to the Country— Dialogue. 43 Cheek— Declamation ... 47 Labor— Recitation. . . . 48 The Debating Society of District Eleven— Dialogue. . . . 49 For Memorizing— Primary Class 54 An Old Fable Versified— Recita- tion. . .... 56 What Time Is It ?— Recitation. 57 Historical Celebration — Dia- logue 58 Look Up, Not Down— Recitation. 65 The Way to Heaven. Do. . 66 The Gridiron— Dialogue. . . 67 If We had but a Day— Recitation 70 By and By Do. . 71 The American Ideal.— No. I.— Recitation 72 The Model Class— Dialogue. . 73 Work and Win— Recitation, . 74 Little Things— Recitation. , . 77 Boys Make Men. Do. . . 78 Grammar Under DiflBculties— Dialogue 79 Optimist and Pessimist— Dia- logue. .... .81 Young America— Dialogue. 82 For Memorizing— Primary Class. 90 Perseverance Does It— Dialogue. 94 Let It Pass— Song. . 96 Our Dead Heroes— Recitation. . 97 The Cheerful Voice. Do. . . 98 Opening Piece — Dialogue in verse 98 Who is the Greatest ?— Dialogue. 100 Employ Your Own Intellect- Declamation 100 A Short Sermon on Tobacco- Declamation 102 The Sign Board— Recitation, . 103 Round of Life. Do. ; 104 Punctuality— No. 1.— Dialogue . 105 Punctuality— No. 2. Do. . 106 Is It Worth While— Recitation. 108 For Memorizing— Primary Class 109 A Jolly Old Pedagogue— Recita- tion 112 Ferguson's Cat— Humorous Re- citation 114 The Happy Family— Dialogue. 115 Strive for the Best— Declama- tion 118 Summer— Declamation. . . 119 An American Ideal— No^II — Rec- itation 120 A Little Girl's Fancies— Recita- tion. ..... 121 Procrastination— Dialogue. . 122 Mrs. Hubbard— Declamation. . 125 The Wonderful Speller— Dia- logue. 125 A Hymn to the Conquered— Re- citation 127 The American Flag— Dialogue. 128 A Boy's Plea— Recitation. . . 133 Who Shall Vote ?— Dialogue. . 134 Success in Life- Declamation. 141 Better than Gold—Recitation. 143 Valedictory. . . . .143 Opening and Closing Addresses. 14& A Little Gentleman— Declama- tion 147 E. L. KELLOGG & CO., EDUCATIONAL PUBLISHERS, 21 Park Place, N. Y. City. SONG TREASURES. For Schools, Teachers' Institutes, and Hormal Schools. CompUed By AMOS M. KELLOGG, EdUor of SCHOOL JOURNAL, TEACHERS* INSTITUTE, etc. CONTENTS OF NO. 1. Ask the Children 14 America 18 Bethou, OGod 18 Come, Come here, Round 11 Come and See How Happily. . 17 Children, Join 19 Days of Summer Glory 12 Follow me, Full of Glee 4 Father, Once More. . . 18 Father of Mercies 19 Gracious God 2 God's Love 18 Invitation to Sing* 7 Long", Long" Ago 8 Evening" Song 5 Nearer To Thee 19 Once More the Light 2 Keck of A^es ...2 Scatter the Germs 3 Spring 16 The Wander-Staff 6 The Dearest Spot 9 The Wanderer's Joys 15 The Sweet VaUey 17 Those Evening BeUs 5 The Cuckoo 8 The Evening Twilight 11 This Morning, Lord 2 Thus Far the Lord 18 We Meet Again 19 We Come, We Come 10 We Are the Jolliest Set of Boys 11 What Delight, What Joy 13 Work and Play 3 What is Time 6 CONTENTS OF NO. 3. Beauty Everywhere, Round.. 6 Come, Come, Come 7 Come, Come Here, Round 3 Cheerfulness 12 Days of Summer Glory 16 Dear Father 2 Going" to School 33 Home, Sweet Home . 4 Hold up the Right Hand 8 i How Can I Forget Thee, I . Round 10 I in the Rosy Light 19 i In the Glad Morn 2 Little Things 9 Lead Kindly Light * • ' 10 Lightly Row 5 Little Drops of Water 19 Music is a Blessing 11 My Maker and My King 18 Morning Hymn for a Child... .18 Morning Hymn 18 O Come Maidens, Come 16 Praise 19 Praise to God 2 Sing We Together, Round 8 Sun of My Soul 18 Softly Now the Light of Day 17 The Teacher's Life 3 The Christmas BeUs .17 Try, Try Again ... 9 Thou, Poor Bird, Round 11 The Mower's Song" 12 The Time to Walk 14 The Setting Sun 14 The Brook 15 There's Not a Tint 19 To Thee My Righteous King.. 2 Where Shall We Find Our Home 6 While my Redeemer 2 L. KELLOGG & CO., Edtioational Publishers, 2 1 Park Place^ New York, A MOST VALUABLE WORK! A History of the New York With Sketches of its Presidents and other Prominent Educators, By HYLAND C. KIRK. Handsomely bound in paper, -witli illustrated cover, price 50 €ts. A few copies bound in cloth $1.00. Sent post-paid, on receipt of price. This volume gives a history of the rise and progress of the New York State Teachers' Association. Among the prominent edncators sketched are : Gideon Hawley, David P. Page, Chester Dewey, Joseph M*Keen, S. B. Woodworth, Chas. R. Coburn, J. W, Buckley, "> . P. Staunton, Charles Davies, Victor M. Bice, B, D. Jones, lieonard Hazeltine, Geo. li. Farnham, Oliver Arey, J. I^. McElligott, E. A. Sheldon, James Cruikshank, E. C. Pome« r"y» J» B. Tliompson, Edward North, James Atwater, S. G. Williams, J. W. Balder, TV. N. Beid, S. D. Barr, J. Dorman Steele, J. H. Hoose, Edward Danforth, A. McMillan, H. B. Sanford, N. T. Clarke, Edward Smith, J. W. Mears, C. G. Brower, James Johonnot, Jerome Allen, A. B. TVatkins, John A. Nichols, H. H. Van Dyck, A, B. "Weaver, Neil Gilmour, S. B. Buggies, F. S. Jewell, Jonathan Tenney, E. V. DeGraff, Minnie Sherwood, Flora Parsons, Nellie Lloyd Knox, A. J. Bobb, C. T. Barnes, Warren Higley, H. B. Crut- tehden, C. T. Pooler, H. C. Northani, John Kennedy, J. H. French, F. P. I^antry, M. Mc Vicar, J. W. Armstrong, G. B. Perkins, D. H. Cochrane, Joseph Alden, C. D. Mcl^ean, H, B. Buckham, F. B. Palmer, J. M. Cassety, W. J. Milne, T. J. Morgan, E. P. Waterbury, J. B. Wells, O. F. Stiles, E. A. M'Math, S. G. Cooke, Geo, V. Chapin, E. W^ait, G. T. Crum- bv, John V. L.. Pruyn, E. C. Benedict, H. B. Pierson, David Murray, D. J. Pratt, A. Flack, G. K. Cutting, Sherman Wil- liams, W. F. Towle, Geo. A. Bacon, J. E. King, and others. There are excellent portraits of a large number of these per- sons on fine tinted paper. This history of the Association shows its action at each meeting, and the connection between its acts and important legislation is traced. The teachers will be proud of such a volume, for it shows the Association has had a notable history. Every one who is or has been interested in the schools of New York will want this book. Only a limited number have been printed ; no plates were made. When this edition is gone it is quite im probable that another will ever be printed. The prepara- tion has been a labor of love on th3 part of Mr. Kirk ; he has done his part admirably. Please send in your order at oncje. E. L. KELLOGG & CO., EDUCATIONAli PUBIilSHEBS, SI Park Place, New Tork. 543600 UNIVERSITY OF CAUFORNIA LIBRARY yyyyvyyFVvVvy'/Yyvs'vvvvv