The Altar Fire, Arthur Christopher Benson [book recommendations for young adults txt] 📗

in bad type that we read, and partly from the absurd character of the books chosen. The Cid and Voltaire's Charles XII.! I used to wonder dimly how it was ever worth any one's while to string such ugly and meaningless sentences together. Now I read with the children Sans Famille and Colomba; and they acquire the language with incredible rapidity. I tell them any word they do not know; and we have a simple system of emulation, by which the one who recollects first a word we have previously had, receives a mark; and the one who first reaches a total of a hundred marks gets sixpence. The adorable nature of women! Maggie, whose verbal memory is excellent, went rapidly ahead, and spent her sixpence on a present to console Alec for the indignity of having been beaten. Then, too, they write letters in French to their mother, which are solemnly sent by post. It is not very idiomatic French, but it is amazingly flexible; and it is delicious to see the children at breakfast watching Maud as she opens the letters and smiles over them.

Perhaps this is not a very exalted type of education; it certainly seems to fulfil its purpose very wonderfully in making them alert, inquisitive, eager, and without any shadow of priggishness. It is established as a principle that it is stupid not to know things, and still more stupid to try and make other people aware that you know them; and the apologies with which Maggie translated a French menu at a house where we stayed with the children the other day were delightful to behold.

I am very anxious that they should not be priggish, and I do not think they are in any danger of becoming so. I suppose I rather skim the cream of their education, and leave the duller part to the governess, a nice, tranquil person, who lives in the village, the daughter of a previous vicar, and comes in in the mornings. I don't mean that their interest and alertness does not vary, but they are obedient and active-minded children, and they prefer their lessons with me so much that it has not occurred to them to be bored. If they flag, I don't press them. I tell them a story, or show them pictures. While I write these words in my armchair, they are sitting at the table, writing an account of something I have told them. Maggie lays down her pen with a sigh of satisfaction. "There, that is beautiful! But I dare say it is not as good as yours, Alec." "Don't interrupt me," says Alec sternly, "and don't push against me when I'm busy." Maggie looks round and concludes that I am busy too. In a minute, Alec will have done, and then I shall read the two pieces aloud; then we shall criticise them respectfully. The aim is to make them frankly recognise the good points of each other's compositions as well as the weak points, and this they are very ready to do.

In all this I do not neglect the physical side. They can ride and swim. They go out in all weathers and get wholesomely wet, dirty, and tired. Games are a difficulty, but I want them to be able, if necessary, to do without games. We botanise, we look for nests, we geologise, we study birds through glasses, we garden. It is all very unscientific, but they observe, they perceive, they love the country. Moreover, Maud has a passion for knowing all the village people, and takes the children with her, so that they really know the village-folk all round; they are certainly tremendously happy and interested in everything. Of course they are volatile in their tastes, but I rather encourage that. I know that in the little old moral books the idea was that nothing should be taken up by children, unless it was done thoroughly and perseveringly; but I had rather that they had a wide experience; the time to select and settle down upon a pursuit is not yet, and I had rather that they found out for themselves what they care about, than practise them in a premature patience. The only thing I object to is their taking up something which they have tried and dropped; then I do require a pledge that they shall stick to it. I say to them, "I don't mind how many things you try, and if you find you don't care about one, you may give it up when you have given it a trial; but it is a bad thing to be always changing, and everybody can't do everything; so don't take up this particular thing again, unless you can give a good reason for thinking you will keep to it."

One of the things I insist upon their doing, whether they like it or not, is learning to play the piano. There are innumerable people, I find, who regret not having been made to overcome the initial difficulties of music; and the only condition I make is, that they shall be allowed to stop when they can play a simple piece of music at sight correctly, and when they have learnt the simple rules of harmony.

For teaching them geography, I have a simple plan; my own early geography lessons were to my recollection singularly dismal. I used, as far as I can remember, to learn lists of towns, rivers, capes, and mountains. Then there were horrible lists of exports and imports, such as hides, jute, and hardware. I did not know what any of the things were, and no one explained them to me. What we do now is this. I read up a book of travels, and then we travel in a country by means of atlases, while I describe the sort of landscape we should see, the inhabitants, their occupations, their religion, and show the children pictures. I can only say that it seems to be a success. They learn arithmetic with their governess, and what is aimed at is rapid and accurate calculations. As for religious instruction, we read portions of the Bible, striking scenes and stories, carefully selected, and the Gospel story, with plenty of pictures. But here I own I find a difficulty. With regard to the Old Testament, I have frankly told them that many of the stories are legends and exaggerations, like the legends of other nations. That is not difficult; I say that in old days when people did not understand science, many things seemed possible which we know now to be impossible; and that things which happened naturally, were often thought to have happened supernaturally; moreover, that both imagination and exaggeration crept in about famous people. I am sure that there is a great danger in teaching intelligent children that the Bible is all literally true. And then the difficulty comes in, that they ask artlessly whether such a story as the miracle of Cana, or the feeding of the five thousand, is true. I reply frankly that we cannot be sure; that the people who wrote it down believed it to be true, but that it came to them by hearsay; and the children seem to have no difficulty about the matter. Then, too, I do not want them to be too familiar, as children, with the words of Christ, because I am sure that it is a fact that, for many people, a mechanical familiarity with the Gospel language simply blurs and weakens the marvellous significance and beauty of the thought. It becomes so crystallised that they cannot penetrate it. I have treated some parts of the Gospel after the fashion of Philochristus, telling them a story, as though seen by some earnest spectator. I find that they take the deepest interest in these stories, and that the figure of Christ is very real and august to them. But I teach them no doctrine except the very simplest--the Fatherhood of God, the Divinity of Christ, the indwelling voice of the Spirit; and I am sure that religion is a pure, sweet, vital force in their lives, not a harsh thing, a question of sin and punishment, but a matter of Love, Strength, Forgiveness, Holiness. The one thing I try to show them is that God was not, as I used to think, the property, so to speak, of the Jews; but that He is behind and above every race and nation, slowly leading them to the light. The two things I will not allow them to think of are the Doctrines of the Fall and the Atonement; the doctrine of the Fall is contrary to all true knowledge, the doctrine of the Atonement is inconsistent with every idea of justice. But it is a difficult matter. They will hear sermons, and Alec, at school, may have dogmatic instruction given him; but I shall prepare him for Confirmation here, and have him confirmed at home, and thus the main difficulty will be avoided; neither do I conceal from them that good people think very differently on these points. It is curious to remember that, brought up as I was on strict Evangelical lines, I was early inculcated into the sin of schism, with the result that I hurried with my Puritan nurse swiftly and violently by a Roman Catholic chapel and a Wesleyan meeting-house which we used to pass in our walks, with a sense of horror and wickedness in the air. Indeed, I remember once asking my mother why God did not rain down fire and brimstone on these two places of worship, and received a very unsatisfactory answer. To develop such a spirit was, it seems to me, a monstrous sin against Christian charity, and my children shall be saved from that.

Meantime my own hours are increasingly filled. It takes me a long time to prepare for the children's lessons; and I have my reward abundantly in the delight of seeing their intelligence, their perception, their interest grow. I am determined that the beginnings of knowledge shall be for them a primrose path; I suppose there will have to be some stricter mental discipline later; but they shall begin by thinking and expecting things to be interesting and delightful, before they realise that things can also be hard and dull.


June 20, 1889.


When I read books on education, when I listen to the talk of educational theorists, when I see syllabuses and schedules, schemes and curricula, a great depression settles on my mind; I feel I have no interest in education, and a deep distrust of theoretical methods. These things seem to aim at missing the very thing of which we are in search, and to lose themselves in a sort of childish game, a marshalling of processions, a lust for organisation. I care so intensely for what it all means, I loathe so deeply the motives that seem at work. I suppose that the ordinary man considers a species of success, a bettering of himself, the acquisition of money and position and respectability, to be the end of life; and such as these look upon education primarily as a means of arriving at their object. Such was the old education given by the sophists, which aimed at turning out a well-balanced, effective man. But all this, it seems to me, has the wrong end in view. The success of it depends upon the fact that every one is not so capable of rising, that the rank and file must be in the background, forming the material out of which the successful man makes his combinations, and whom he contrives to despoil.

The result of it is that the well-educated man becomes hard, brisk, complacent, contemptuous, knowing his own worth, using his equipment for precise and definite ends.

My idea would rather be that education should aim at teaching