The Education of Catholic Girls Part 6

The influences which determine these early steps are, first, the natural habit of mind, for thoughtful children see most interesting and strange things in their surroundings; secondly, the tone of their ordinary conversation, but especially a disposition that is unselfish and affectionate. Warm-hearted children who are gifted with sympathy have an intuition of what will give pleasure, and that is one of the great secrets of letter-writing. But the letters they write will always depend in a great measure on the letters they receive, and a family gift for letter-writing is generally the outcome of a happy home-life in which all the members are of interest to each other and their doings of importance.

What sympathy gives to letter-writing, imagination gives to the first essays of children in longer compositions. Imagination puts them in sympathy with all the world, with things as well as persons, as affection keeps them in touch with every detail of the home world. But its work is not so simple. Home affection is true and is a law to itself; if it is present it holds all the little child's world in a right proportion, because all heavenly affection is bound up with it.

But the awakening and the rapid development of imagination as girls grow up needs a great deal of guidance and training. Fancy may overgrow itself, and take an undue predominance, so that life is tuned to the pitch of imagination and not imagination to the pitch of life. It is hardly possible and hardly to be desired that it should never overflow the limits of perfect moderation; if it is to be controlled, there must be something to control, in pruning there must be some strong shoots to cut back, and in toning down there must be some over-gaudy colours to subdue. It is better that there should be too much life than too little, and better that criticism should find something vigorous enough to lay hold of, rather than something which cannot be felt at all. This is the time to teach children to begin their essays without preamble, by something that they really want to say, and to finish them leaving something still unsaid that they would like to have expressed, so as not to pour out to the last drop their mind or their fancy on any subject.

This discipline of prompt.i.tude in beginning and restraint at the end will tell for good upon the quality of their writing.

But the work of the imagination may also betray something unreal and morbid--this is a more serious fault and means trouble coming. It generally points to a want of focus in the mind; because self predominates in the affections feeling and interest are self-centred.

Then the whole development of mind comes to a disappointing check--the mental power remains on the level of unstable sixteen years old, and the selfish side develops either emotionally or frivolously--according to taste, faster than it can be controlled.

There are cross-roads at about sixteen in a girl's life. After two or three troublesome years she is going to make her choice, not always consciously and deliberately, but those who are alive to what is going on may expect to hear about this time her speech from the throne, announcing what the direction of her life is going to be. It is not necessarily the choice of a vocation in life, that belongs to an order of things that has neither day nor hour determined for it, but it is when the mental outlook takes a direction of its own, literary, or artistic, or philosophical, or worldly, or turning towards home; it may sometimes be the moment of decisive vocation to leave all things for G.o.d, or, as has so often happened in the lives of the Saints, the time when a child's first desire, forgotten for a while, a.s.serts itself again. In any case it is generally a period of new awakenings, and if things are as they ought to be, generally a time of deep happiness--the ideal hour in the day of our early youth. All this is faithfully rendered in the essays of that time; we unsuspectingly give ourselves away.

After this, for those who are going to write at all, comes the "viewy"

stage, and this is full of interest. We are so dogmatic, so defiant, so secure in our persuasions. It is impossible to believe that they will ever alter. Yet who has lived through this phase of abounding activity and has not found that, at first with the shock of disappointment, and afterwards without regret, a memorial cross had to be set by our wayside, here and there, marking the place of rest for our most enthusiastic convictions. In the end one comes to be glad of it, for if it means anything it means a growth in the truth.

The criticism of essays is one of the choice opportunities which education offers, for then the contact of mind with mind is so close that truth can be told under form of criticism, which as exhortation would have been less easily accepted. It is evident that increasing freedom must be allowed as the years go on, and that girls have a right to their own taste and manner--and within the limits of their knowledge to form their own opinions; but it is in this period of their development that they are most sensitive to the mental influence of those who are training them, and their quick responsiveness to the best is a constant stimulus to go on for their sakes, discovering and tasting and training one's discernment in what is most excellent.

From this point we may pa.s.s to what is first in the order of things--but first and last in this department of an English education--and that is reading, with the great field of literature before us, and the duty of making the precious inheritance all that it ought to be to this young generation of ours--heiresses to all its best.

English literature will be to children as they grow up, what we have made it to them in the beginning. There will always be the exceptional few, privileged ones, who seem to have received the key to it as a personal gift. They will find their way without us, but if we have the honour of rendering them service we may do a great deal even for them in showing where the best things lie, and the way to make them one's own.

But the greater number have to be taken through the first steps with much thought and discernment, for taste in literature is not always easy to develop, and may be spoiled by bad management at the beginning. We are not very teachable as a nation in this matter--our young taste is wayward, and sometimes contradictory, it will not give account of itself, very likely it cannot. We have inarticulate convictions that this is right, and suits us, and something else is wrong as far as our taste is concerned, and that we have rights to like what we like and condemn what we do not like, and we have gone a considerable way along the road before we can stop and look about us and see the reason of our choice. English literature itself fosters this independent spirit of criticism by its extraordinary abundance, its own wide liberty of spirit, its surpa.s.sing truthfulness. Our greatest poets and our truest do not sing to an audience but to their Maker and to His world, and let anyone who can understand it catch the song, and sing it after them. No doubt many have fallen from the truth and piped an artificial tune, and they have had their following. But love for the real and true is very deep and in the end it prevails, and as far as we can obtain it with children it must prevail.

Their first acquaintance with beautiful things is best established by reading aloud to them, and this need not be limited entirely to what they can understand at the time. Even if we read something that is beyond them, they have listened to the cadences, they have heard the song without the words, the words will come to them later. If there is good ground for the seed to fall upon, and we sow good seed, it will come up with its thirtyfold or more, as seed sown in the mind seems always to come up, whether it be good or bad, and even if it has lain dormant for years. There are good moments laid up in store for the future when the words, which have been familiar for years, suddenly awake to life, and their meaning, full-grown, at the moment when we need it, or at the moment when we are able to understand its value, dawns upon the mind. Then we are grateful to those who invested these revenues for us though we knew it not. We are not grateful to those who give us the less good though pleasant and easy to enjoy. A little severity and fastidiousness render us better service. And this is especially true for girls, since for them it is above all important that there should be a touch of the severe in their taste, and that they should be a little exacting, for if they once let themselves go to what is too light-heartedly popular they do not know where to draw the line and they go very far, with great loss to themselves and others.

One of the beautiful things of to-day in England is the wealth of children's literature. It is a peculiar grace of our time that we are all trying to give the best to the children, and this is most of all remarkable in the books published for them. We had rather a silly moment in which we kept them babies too long and thought that rhymes without reason would please them, and another moment when we were just a little morbid about them; but now we have struck a very happy vein, free from all morbidness, very innocent and very happy, abounding in life and in no way unfitting for the experiences that have to be lived through afterwards. No one thinks it waste of time to write and ill.u.s.trate books for children, and to do their very best in both, and the result of historical research and the most critical care of texts is put within the children's reach with a real understanding of what they can care for. A true appreciation of the English cla.s.sics must result from this, and the mere reading of what is choice is an early safeguard against the less good.

Reading, without commentary, is what is best accepted; we are beginning to come back to this belief. It is agreed almost generally that there has been too much comment and especially too much a.n.a.lysis in our teaching of literature, and that the majesty or the loveliness of our great writers' works have not been allowed to speak for themselves. We have not trusted them enough, and we have not trusted the children so much as they deserved. The little boy who said he could understand if only they would not explain has become historical, and his word of warning, though it may not have sounded quite respectful, has been taken into account. We have now fewer of the literary Baedeker's guides who stopped us at particular points, to look back for the view, and gave the history and date of the work with its surrounding circ.u.mstances, and the meaning of every word, while they took away the soul of the poem, and robbed us of our whole impression. We realize now that by reading and reading again, until they have mastered the music, and the meaning dawns of itself, children gain more than the best annotations can give them; these will be wanted later on, but in the beginning they set the att.i.tude of mind completely wrong for early literary study in which reverence and receptiveness and delight are of more account than criticism. The memory of these things is so much to us in after life, and if the living forms of beautiful poems have been torn to pieces to show us the structure within, and the matter has been shaken out into ungainly paraphrase and pursued with relentless a.n.a.lysis until it has given up the last secret of its meaning, the remembrance of this destructive process will remain and the spirit will never be the same again. The best hope for beautiful memories is in perfect reading aloud, with that reverence of mind and reticence of feeling which keeps itself in the background, not imposing a marked per-Bonal interpretation, but holding up the poem with enough support to make it speak for itself and no more. There is a vexed question about the reading allowed to girls which cannot be entirely pa.s.sed over. It is a point on which authorities differ widely among themselves, according to the standard of their family, the whole early training which has given their mind a particular bent, the quality of their own taste and their degree of sensitiveness and insight, the views which they hold about the character of girls, their ideas of the world and the probable future surroundings of those whom they advise, as well as many other considerations. It is quite impossible to arrive at a uniform standard, or at particular precepts or at lists of books or authors which should or should not be allowed. Even if these could be drawn up, it would be more and more difficult to enforce them or to keep the rules abreast of the requirements of each publis.h.i.+ng season. In reading, as in conduct, each one must bear more and more of their own personal responsibility, and unless the law is within themselves there is no possibility of enforcing it.

The present Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, when rector of St.

John's Seminary, Wonersh, used to lay down the following rules for his students, and on condition of their adhering to these rules he allowed them great freedom in their reading, but if they were disregarded, it was understood that the rector took no responsibility about the books they read:--

1. "Be perfectly conscientious, and if you find a book is doing you harm stop reading it at once. If you know you cannot stop you must be most careful not to read anything you don't know about."

2. "Be perfectly frank with your confessor and other superiors. Don't keep anything hidden from them."

3. "Don't recommend books to others which, although they may do no harm to you, might do harm to them."

These rules are very short but they call for a great deal of self-control, frankness, and discretion. They set up an inward standard for the conscience, and, if honestly followed, they answer in practice any difficulty that is likely to arise as to choice of reading. [1--In the Appendix will be found a pastoral letter by Cardinal Bourne, Archbishop of Westminster, then Bishop of Southwark, bearing on this subject and full of instruction for all who have to deal with it.]

But the application of these rules presupposes a degree of judgment and self-restraint which are hardly to be found in girls of school-room years, and before they can adjust themselves to the relative standard and use the curb for themselves, it is necessary to set before them some fixed rules by which to judge. While life is young and character plastic and personal valuations still in formation, the difficulty is to know what is harmful. "How am I to know," such a one may ask, "whether what seems harmful to me may not be really a gain, giving me a richer life, a greater expansion of spirit, a more independent and human character? May not this effect which I take to be harm, be no more than necessary growing pains; may it not be bringing me into truer relation with life as it is, and as a whole?"

There will always be on one side timid and mediocre minds, satisfied to shut themselves up and safeguard what they already have; and on the other more daring and able spirits who are tempted beyond the line of safety in a thirst for discovery and adventure, and are thus swept out beyond their own immature control. Books that foster the spirit of rebellion, of doubt and discontent concerning the essentials and inevitable elements of human life, that tend to sap the sense of personal responsibility, and to disparage the cardinal virtues and the duty of self-restraint as against impulse, are emphatically bad. They are particularly bad for girls with their impressionable minds and tendency to imitation, and inclination to be led on by the glamour of the old temptation; "Your eyes shall be opened; you shall be as G.o.ds, knowing good and evil."

To follow a doubt or a lie or a by-way of conduct with the curiosity to see what comes of it in the end, is to prepare their own minds for similar lines of thought and action, and in the crises of life, when they have to choose for themselves, often unadvised and without time to deliberate, they are more likely to fall by the doubt or the lie or the spirit of revolt which has become familiar to them in thought and sympathy.

CHAPTER IX.

MODERN LANGUAGES.

"All nations have their message from on high, Each the messiah of some central thought, For the fulfilment and delight of Man: One has to teach that Labour is divine; Another Freedom and another Mind; And all, that G.o.d is open-eyed and just, The happy centre and calm heart of all."

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

We cannot have a perfect knowledge even of our own language without some acquaintance with more than one other, either cla.s.sical or modern. This is especially true of English because it has drawn its strength and wealth from so many sources, and absorbed them into itself. But this value is usually taken indirectly, by the way, and the understanding of it only comes to us after years as an appreciable good. It is, however, recognized that no education corresponding to the needs of our own time can be perfected or even adequately completed in one language alone. Not only do the actual conditions of life make it imperative to have more than one tongue at our command from the rapid extension of facilities for travelling, and increased intercourse with other nations; but in proportion to the cooling down of our extreme ardour for experimental science in the school-room we are returning to recognize in language a means of education more adapted to prepare children for life, by fitting them for intercourse with their fellow-creatures and giving them some appreciative understanding of the works of man's mind. Thus languages, and especially modern languages, are a.s.suming more and more importance in the education of children, not only with us, but in most other countries of Europe. In some of them the methods are distinctly in advance of ours.

Much has been written of late years in the course of educational discussions as to the value of cla.s.sical studies in education. As the best authorities are not yet in agreement among themselves it would be obviously out of place to add anything here on the subject. But the controversy princ.i.p.ally belongs to cla.s.sics in boys' schools; as to the study of Latin by girls, and in particular to its position in Catholic schools, there is perhaps something yet to be said.

In non-Catholic schools for girls Latin has not, even now, a great hold.

It is studied for certain examinations, but except for the few students whose life takes a professional turn it scarcely outlives the school-room. Girl students at universities cannot compete on equal terms with men in a cla.s.sical course, and the fact is very generally acknowledged by their choosing another. Except in the rarest instances--let us not be afraid to own it--our Latin is that of amateurs, brilliant amateurs perhaps, but unmistakable. Latin, for girls, is a source of delight, a beautiful enrichment of their mental life, most precious in itself and in its influence, but it is not a living power, nor a familiar instrument, nor a great discipline; it is deficient in hardness and closeness of grain, so that it cannot take polish; it is apt to betray by unexpected transgressions the want of that long, detailed, severe training which alone can make cla.s.sical scholars.h.i.+p. It is usually a little tremulous, not quite sure of itself, and indeed its best adornment is generally the sobriety induced by an overshadowing sense of paternal correction and solicitude always present to check rashness and desultoriness, and make it at least "gang warily" with a finger on its lip; and their attainments in Latin are, at the best, receptively rather than actively of value.

In Catholic girls' schools, however, the elements of Latin are almost necessity. It is wanting in courtesy, it is almost uncouth for us to grow up without any knowledge of the language of Holy Church. It is almost impossible for educated Catholics to have right taste in devotion, the "love and relish" of the most excellent things, without some knowledge of our great liturgical prayers and hymns in the original. We never can really know them if we only hear them halting and plunging and splas.h.i.+ng through translations, wasting their strength in many words as they must unavoidably do in English, and at best only reaching an approximation to the sense. The use of them in the original is discipline and devotion in one, and it strengthens the Catholic historical hold on the past, with a sense of nearness, when we dwell with some understanding on the very words which have been sung in the Church subsisting in all ages and teaching all nations. This is our birthright, but it is not truly ours unless we can in some degree make use of what we own.

It has often been pointed out that even to the most uneducated amongst our people Latin is never a dead language to Catholics, and that the familiar prayers at Ma.s.s and public devotions make them at home in the furthest countries of the earth as soon as they are within the church doors. So far as this, it is a universal language for us, and even if it went no further than the world-wide home feeling of the poor in our churches it would make us grateful for every word of Latin that has a familiar sound to them, and this alone might make us anxious to teach Catholic children at school, for the use of prayer and devotion, as much Latin as they can learn even if they never touch a cla.s.sic.

Our att.i.tude towards the study of modern languages has had its high and low tides within the last century. We have had our submissive and our obstinate moods; at present we are rather well and affably disposed.

French used to be acknowledged without a rival as the universal language; it was a necessity, and in general the older generation learned it carefully and spoke it well. At that time Italian was learned from taste and German was exceptional. Queen Victoria's German marriage and all the close connexion that followed from it pressed the study of German to the front; the influence of Carlyle told in the same direction, and the study of Italian declined. Then in our enthusiasm for physical sciences for a time we read more German, but not German of the best quality, and in another line we were influenced by German literary criticism. Now, the balance of things has altered again. For scholars.h.i.+p and criticism German is in great request; in commercial education it is being outrun by Spanish; for the intercourse of ordinary life Germans are learning English much more eagerly than we are learning German. We have had a fit of--let us call it--shyness, but we are trying to do better. We recognize that these fits of shyness are not altogether to our credit, not wholly reasonable, and that we are not incapable of learning foreign languages well. We know the story of the little boy reprimanded by the magistrate for his folly in running away from home because he was obliged to learn French, and his haughty reply that if foreigners wished to speak to him they might learn his language. But our children have outgrown him, as to his declaration if not as to his want of diligence, and we are in general reforming our methods of teaching so much that it will soon be inexcusable not to speak one or two languages well, besides our own.

The question of p.r.o.nunciation and accent has been haunted by curious prejudices. An English accent in a foreign tongue has been for some speakers a refuge for their shyness, and for others a stronghold of their patriotism. The first of these feared that they would not be truly themselves unless their personality could take shelter beneath an accent that was unmistakably from England, and the others felt that it was like hauling down the British flag to renounce the long-drawn English "A-o-o." And, curiously, at the other extreme, the slightest tinge of an English accent is rather liked in Paris, perhaps only among those touched with Anglomania. But now we ought to be able to acquire whatever accent we choose, even when living far away from every instructor, having the gramophone to repeat to us untiringly the true Spanish "manana" and the French "ennui." And the study of phonetics, so much developed within the last few years, makes it unpardonable for teachers of modern languages to let the old English faults prevail.

We have had our succession of methods too. The old method of learning French, with a _bonne_ in the nursery first, and then a severely academic governess or tutor, produced French of unsurpa.s.sed quality-But it belonged to home education, it required a great deal of leisure, it did not adapt itself to school curricula in which each child, to use the expressive American phrase, "carries" so many subjects that the hours and minutes for each have to be jealously counted out. There have been a series of methods succeeding one another which can scarcely be called more than quack methods of learning languages, claiming to be the natural method, the maternal method, the only rational method, etc.

Educational advertis.e.m.e.nts of these have been magnificent in their promise, but opinions are not entirely at one as to the results.

The conclusions which suggest themselves after seeing several of these methods at work are:--

1. That good teachers can make use of almost any method with excellent results but that they generally evolve one of their own.

2. That if the teachers and the children take a great deal of trouble the progress will be very remarkable, whatever method is employed, and that without this both the cla.s.sical and the "natural" methods can accomplish very little.

3. That teachers with fixed ideas about children and about methods arrest development.

4. That the self-instruction courses which "work out at a penny a lesson" (the lesson lasts ten minutes and is especially recommended for use in trams), and the gramophone with the most elaborate records, still bear witness to the old doctrine that there is no royal road to the learning of languages, and that it is not cheap in the end. In proportion to the value we set upon perfect acquirement of them will be our willingness to spend much labour upon foundations. By this road we arrive again at the fundamentals of an educator's calling, love and labour.

The value to the mind of acquiring languages is so great that all our trouble is repaid. It is not utilitarian value: what is merely for usefulness can be easily acquired, it has very little beauty. It is not for the sake of that commonplace usefulness that we should care to spend trouble upon permanent foundations in any tongue. The mind is satisfied only by the genius of the language, its choicest forms, its characteristic movement, and, most of all, the possession of its literature from within, that is to say of the spirit as it speaks to its own, and in which the language is most completely itself.

The special fitness of modern languages in a girl's education does not appear on the surface, and it requires more than a superficial, conversational knowledge to reap the fruit of their study. The social, and at present the commercial values are obvious to every one, and of these the commercial value is growing very loud in its a.s.sertions, and appears very exacting in its demands. For this the quack methods promise the short and easy way, and perhaps they are sufficient for it. A knowledge sufficient for business correspondence is not what belongs to a liberal education; it has a very limited range, hard, plain, brief communications, supported on cast-iron frames, inelastic forms and crudest courtesies, a mere formula for each particular case, and a small vocabulary suited to the dealings of every branch of business. We know the parallel forms of correspondence in English, which give a means of communication but not properly a language. Even the social values of languages are less than they used to be, as the finer art of conversation has declined. A little goes a long way; the rush of the motor has cut it short; there is not time to exchange more than a few commonplaces, and for these a very limited number of words is enough.

But let our girls give themselves time, or let time be allowed them, to give a year or two to the real study of languages, not in the threadbare phrases of the tourist and motorist, nor to mere drawing-room small talk; not with "matriculation standard" as an object, but to read the best that has been written, and try to speak according to the best that can be said now, and to write according to the standard of what is really excellent to-day; then the study of modern languages is lifted quite on to another plane. The particular advantage of this plane is that there is a view from it, wider in proportion to the number of languages known and to the grasp that is acquired of each, and the particular educational gift to be found there is width of sympathy and understanding. Defective sympathies, national and racial prejudices thrive upon a lower level. The _elect_ of all nations understand one another, and are strangely alike; the lower we go down in the various grades of each nation the more is the divergency accentuated between one and another. Corresponding to this is mutual understanding through language; the better we possess the language of any nation the closer touch we can acquire with all that is theirs, with their best.

A superficial knowledge of languages rather accentuates than removes limitations, multiplies mistakes and embitters them. With a half-knowledge we misunderstand each other's ideals, we lose the point of the best things that are said, we fail to catch the aroma of the spices and the spirit of the living word; in fact, we are mere tourists in each other's mental world, and what word could better express the att.i.tude of mind of one who is a stranger, but not a pilgrim, a tramp of a rather more civilized kind, having neither ties nor sympathies nor obligations, nothing to give, and more inclined to take than to receive.

To create ties, sympathies, and obligations in the mental life, is a grace belonging to the study of languages, and makes it possible to give and receive hospitality on the best terms with the minds of those of other nations than our own. This is particularly a gift for the education of girls, since all graces of hospitality ought to be peculiarly theirs. To lift them above prejudices, to make them love other beauties than those of their own mental kindred, to afford them a wider possibility of giving happiness to others, and of making themselves at home in many countries, is to give them a power over the conditions of life which reaches very far into their own mental well-being and that of others, and makes them in the best meaning of the word cosmopolitan.

The choice of languages to be learnt must depend upon many considerations, but the widest good for English girls, though not the most easy to attain, is to give them perfect French. German is easier to learn from its kins.h.i.+p with our own language, but its grammar is of less educational value than French, and it does not help as French does to the acquirement of the most attractive of other European languages.

As a second language, however, and for a great deal that is not otherwise attainable, German is in general the best that can be chosen.

Italian and Spanish have their special claims, but at present in England their appeal is not to the many. German gives the feeling of kindred minds near to us, ourselves yet not ourselves; with primitive Teutonic strength and directness, with a sweet freshness of spring in its more delicate poetry, and both of these elements blended at times in an atmosphere as of German forests in June. In some writers the flicker of French brilliancy illumines the depth of these Teutonic woods, producing a German which, in spite of the condemnation of the Emperor, we should like to write ourselves if the choice were offered to us.

But, notwithstanding the depth and strength of German, it is generally agreed that as an instrument of thought French prose in a master-hand is unrivalled, by its subtlety and precision, and its epigrammatic force.

Every one knows and laments the decadent style which is eating into it; and every one knows that the deplorable tone of much of its contemporary literature makes discernment in French reading a matter not only of education but of conscience and sanity; but this does not make the danger to be inherent in the French language; obliging translators are ready to furnish us, in our own language and according to taste, with the very worst taken, from everywhere. And these faults do not affect the beauty of the instrument, nor its marvellous apt.i.tude for training the mind to precision of expression. The logical bent of the French mind, its love of rule, the elaborateness of its conventions in literature, its ceremonial observances dating from by-gone times, the custom of giving account of everything, of letting no nuance pa.s.s unchallenged or uncommented, have given it a power of expression and definiteness which holds together as a complete code of written and unwritten laws, and makes a perfect instrument of its kind. But the very completeness of it has seemed to some writers a fetter, and when they revolt against and break through it, their extravagance pa.s.ses beyond all ordinary bounds. French represents the two extremes, unheard-of goodness, unequalled perfection, or indescribable badness and unrestraint. Unfortunately the unrestraint is making its way, and as with ourselves in England, the magazine literature in France grows more and more undesirable.