Essays On Education And Kindred Subjects (Fiscle Part- 11), Herbert Spencer [historical books to read .txt] 📗
- Author: Herbert Spencer
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Get Materials On Which To Exercise Its Perceptions As It Is To Get
Supplies For Its Stomach. Unable To Prepare Its Own Food, It Is In Like
Manner Unable To Reduce Many Kinds Of Knowledge To A Fit Form For
Assimilation. The Language Through Which All Higher Truths Are To Be
Gained, It Wholly Derives From Those Surrounding It. And We See In Such
An Example As The Wild Boy Of Aveyron, The Arrest Of Development That
Results When No Help Is Received From Parents And Nurses. Thus, In
Providing From Day To Day The Right Kind Of Facts, Prepared In The Right
Manner, And Giving Them In Due Abundance At Appropriate Intervals, There
Is As Much Scope For Active Ministration To A Child's Mind As To Its
Body. In Either Case, It Is The Chief Function Of Parents To See That
The _Conditions_ Requisite To Growth Are Maintained. And As, In
Supplying Aliment, And Clothing, And Shelter, They May Fulfil This
Function Without At All Interfering With The Spontaneous Development Of
The Limbs And Viscera, Either In Their Order Or Mode; So, They May
Supply Sounds For Imitation, Objects For Examination, Books For Reading,
Problems For Solution, And, If They Use Neither Direct Nor Indirect
Coercion, May Do This Without In Any Way Disturbing The Normal Process
Of Mental Evolution; Or Rather, May Greatly Facilitate That Process.
Hence The Admission Of The Doctrines Enunciated Does Not, As Some Might
Argue, Involve The Abandonment Of Teaching; But Leaves Ample Room For An
Active And Elaborate Course Of Culture.
Passing From Generalities To Special Considerations, It Is To Be
Remarked That In Practice The Pestalozzian System Seems Scarcely To Have
Fulfilled The Promise Of Its Theory. We Hear Of Children Not At All
Interested In Its Lessons,--Disgusted With Them Rather; And, So Far As
We Can Gather, The Pestalozzian School Have Not Turned Out Any Unusual
Proportion Of Distinguished Men: If Even They Have Reached The Average.
We Are Not Surprised At This. The Success Of Every Appliance Depends
Mainly Upon The Intelligence With Which It Is Used. It Is A Trite
Remark That, Having The Choicest Tools, An Unskilful Artisan Will Botch
His Work; And Bad Teachers Will Fail Even With The Best Methods. Indeed,
The Goodness Of The Method Becomes In Such Case A Cause Of Failure; As,
To Continue The Simile, The Perfection Of The Tool Becomes In
Undisciplined Hands A Source Of Imperfection In Results. A Simple,
Unchanging, Almost Mechanical Routine Of Tuition, May Be Carried Out By
The Commonest Intellects, With Such Small Beneficial Effect As It Is
Capable Of Producing; But A Complete System--A System As Heterogeneous
In Its Appliances As The Mind In Its Faculties--A System Proposing A
Special Means For Each Special End, Demands For Its Right Employment
Powers Such As Few Teachers Possess. The Mistress Of A Dame-School Can
Hear Spelling-Lessons; And Any Hedge-Schoolmaster Can Drill Boys In The
Multiplication-Table. But To Teach Spelling Rightly By Using The Powers
Of The Letters Instead Of Their Names, Or To Instruct In Numerical
Combinations By Experimental Synthesis, A Modicum Of Understanding Is
Needful; And To Pursue A Like Rational Course Throughout The Entire
Range Of Studies, Asks An Amount Of Judgment, Of Invention, Of
Intellectual Sympathy, Of Analytical Faculty, Which We Shall Never See
Applied To It While The Tutorial Official Is Held In Such Small Esteem.
True Education Is Practicable Only By A True Philosopher. Judge, Then,
What Prospect A Philosophical Method Now Has Of Being Acted Out! Knowing
So Little As We Yet Do Of Psychology, And Ignorant As Our Teachers Are
Of That Little, What Chance Has A System Which Requires Psychology For
Its Basis?
Further Hindrance And Discouragement Has Arisen From Confounding The
Pestalozzian Principle With The Forms In Which It Has Been Embodied.
Because Particular Plans Have Not Answered Expectation, Discredit Has
Been Cast Upon The Doctrine Associated With Them: No Inquiry Being Made
Part 1 Chapter 2 (Intellectual Education) Pg 27Whether These Plans Truly Conform To The Doctrine. Judging As Usual By
The Concrete Rather Than The Abstract, Men Have Blamed The Theory For
The Bunglings Of The Practice. It Is As Though The First Futile Attempt
To Construct A Steam-Engine Had Been Held To Prove That Steam Could Not
Be Used As A Motive Power. Let It Be Constantly Borne In Mind That While
Right In His Fundamental Ideas, Pestalozzi Was Not Therefore Right In
All His Applications Of Them. As Described Even By His Admirers,
Pestalozzi Was A Man Of Partial Intuitions--A Man Who Had Occasional
Flashes Of Insight Rather Than A Man Of Systematic Thought. His First
Great Success At Stantz Was Achieved When He Had No Books Or Appliances
Of Ordinary Teaching, And When "The Only Object Of His Attention Was To
Find Out At Each Moment What Instruction His Children Stood Peculiarly
In Need Of, And What Was The Best Manner Of Connecting It With The
Knowledge They Already Possessed." Much Of His Power Was Due, Not To
Calmly Reasoned-Out Plans Of Culture, But To His Profound Sympathy,
Which Gave Him A Quick Perception Of Childish Needs And Difficulties. He
Lacked The Ability Logically To Co-Ordinate And Develop The Truths Which
He Thus From Time To Time Laid Hold Of; And Had In Great Measure To
Leave This To His Assistants, Kruesi, Tobler, Buss, Niederer, And
Schmid. The Result Is, That In Their Details His Own Plans, And Those
Vicariously Devised, Contain Numerous Crudities And Inconsistencies. His
Nursery-Method, Described In _The Mother's Manual_, Beginning As It Does
With A Nomenclature Of The Different Parts Of The Body, And Proceeding
Next To Specify Their Relative Positions, And Next Their Connections,
May Be Proved Not At All In Accordance With The Initial Stages Of Mental
Evolution. His Process Of Teaching The Mother-Tongue By Formal Exercises
In The Meanings Of Words And In The Construction Of Sentences, Is Quite
Needless, And Must Entail On The Pupil Loss Of Time, Labour, And
Happiness. His Proposed Lessons In Geography Are Utterly Unpestalozzian.
And Often Where His Plans Are Essentially Sound, They Are Either
Incomplete Or Vitiated By Some Remnant Of The Old Regime. While,
Therefore, We Would Defend In Its Entire Extent The General Doctrine
Which Pestalozzi Inaugurated, We Think Great Evil Likely To Result From
An Uncritical Reception Of His Specific Methods. That Tendency,
Constantly Exhibited By Mankind, To Canonise The Forms And Practices
Along With Which Any Great Truth Has Been Bequeathed To Them--Their
Liability To Prostrate Their Intellects Before The Prophet, And Swear By
His Every Word--Their Proneness To Mistake The Clothing Of The Idea For
The Idea Itself; Renders It Needful To Insist Strongly Upon The
Distinction Between The Fundamental Principle Of The Pestalozzian
System, And The Set Of Expedients Devised For Its Practice; And To
Suggest That While The One May Be Considered As Established, The Other
Is Probably Nothing But An Adumbration Of The Normal Course. Indeed, On
Looking At The State Of Our Knowledge, We May Be Quite Sure That Is The
Case. Before Educational Methods Can Be Made To Harmonise In Character
And Arrangement With The Faculties In Their Mode And Order Of Unfolding,
It Is First Needful That We Ascertain With Some Completeness How The
Faculties _Do_ Unfold. At Present We Have Acquired, On This Point, Only
A Few General Notions. These General Notions Must Be Developed In
Detail--Must Be Transformed Into A Multitude Of Specific Propositions,
Before We Can Be Said To Possess That _Science_ On Which The _Art_ Of
Education Must Be Based. And Then, When We Have Definitely Made Out In
What Succession And In What Combinations The Mental Powers Become
Active, It Remains To Choose Out Of The Many Possible Ways Of Exercising
Each Of Them, That Which Best Conforms To Its Natural Mode Of Action.
Evidently, Therefore, It Is Not To Be Supposed That Even Our Most
Advanced Modes Of Teaching Are The Right Ones, Or Nearly The Right Ones.
Bearing In Mind Then This Distinction Between The Principle And The
Practice Of Pestalozzi, And Inferring From The Grounds Assigned That The
Last Must Necessarily Be Very Defective, The Reader Will Rate At Its
True Worth The Dissatisfaction With The System Which Some Have
Expressed; And Will See That The Realisation Of The Pestalozzian Idea
Remains To Be Achieved. Should He Argue, However, From What Has Just
Been Said, That No Such Realisation Is At Present Practicable, And That
All Effort Ought To Be Devoted To The Preliminary Inquiry; We Reply,
That Though It Is Not Possible For A Scheme Of Culture To Be Perfected
Either In Matter Or Form Until A Rational Psychology Has Been
Established, It Is Possible, With The Aid Of Certain Guiding Principles,
To Make Empirical Approximations Towards A Perfect Scheme. To Prepare
The Way For Further Research We Will Now Specify These Principles. Some
Of Them Have Been More Or Less Distinctly Implied In The Foregoing
Pages; But It Will Be Well Here To State Them All In Logical Order.
1. That In Education We Should Proceed From The Simple To The Complex,
Is A Truth Which Has Always Been To Some Extent Acted Upon: Not
Professedly, Indeed, Nor By Any Means Consistently. The Mind Develops.
Like All Things That Develop It Progresses From The Homogeneous To The
Heterogeneous; And A Normal Training System, Being An Objective
Counterpart Of This Subjective Process, Must Exhibit A Like Progression.
Moreover, Thus Interpreting It, We May See That This Formula Has Much
Wider Application Than At First Appears. For Its _Rationale_ Involves,
Not Only That We Should Proceed From The Single To The Combined In The
Teaching Of Each Branch Of Knowledge; But That We Should Do The Like
With Knowledge As A Whole. As The Mind, Consisting At First Of But Few
Active Faculties, Has Its Later-Completed Faculties Successively Brought
Into Play, And Ultimately Comes To Have All Its Faculties In
Simultaneous Action; It Follows That Our Teaching Should Begin With But
Few Subjects At Once, And Successively Adding To These, Should Finally
Carry On All Subjects Abreast. Not Only In Its Details Should Education
Proceed From The Simple To The Complex, But In Its _Ensemble_ Also.
2. The Development Of The Mind, As All Other Development, Is An Advance
From The Indefinite To The Definite. In Common With The Rest Of The
Organism, The Brain Reaches Its Finished Structure Only At Maturity; And
In Proportion As Its Structure Is Unfinished, Its Actions Are Wanting In
Precision. Hence Like The First Movements And The First Attempts At
Speech, The First Perceptions And Thoughts Are Extremely Vague. As From
A Rudimentary Eye, Discerning Only The Difference Between Light And
Darkness, The Progress Is To An Eye That Distinguishes Kinds And
Gradations Of Colour, And Details Of Form, With The Greatest Exactness;
So, The Intellect As A Whole And In Each Faculty, Beginning With The
Rudest Discriminations Among Objects And Actions, Advances Towards
Discriminations Of Increasing Nicety And Distinctness. To This General
Law Our Educational Course And Methods Must Conform. It Is Not
Practicable, Nor Would It Be Desirable If Practicable, To Put Precise
Ideas Into The Undeveloped Mind. We May Indeed At An Early Age
Communicate The Verbal Forms In Which Such Ideas Are Wrapped Up; And
Teachers, Who Habitually Do This, Suppose That When The Verbal Forms
Have Been Correctly Learnt, The Ideas Which Should Fill Them Have Been
Acquired. But A Brief Cross-Examination Of The Pupil Proves The
Contrary. It Turns Out Either That The Words Have Been Committed To
Memory With Little Or No Thought About Their Meaning, Or Else That The
Perception Of Their Meaning Which Has Been Gained Is A Very Cloudy One.
Only As The Multiplication Of Experiences Gives Materials For Definite
Conceptions--Only As Observation Year By Year Discloses The Less
Conspicuous Attributes Which Distinguish Things And Processes Previously
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