Friends in Council Part 10

There is another point connected with this branch of the subject which requires, perhaps, to be noted. If government provision is made in any case, might it not be combined with private payment in other cases, or enter in the way of rewards, so as to do good throughout each step of the social ladder? The lowest kind of school education is a power, and it is desirable that the gradations of this power should correspond to other influences which we know to be good. For instance, a hard-working man saves something to educate his children; if he can get a little better education for them than other parents of his own rank for theirs, it is an incentive and a reward to him, and the child's bringing up at home is a thing which will correspond to this better education at school.

In this there are the elements at once of stability and progress.

These views may possibly seem too refined, but at any rate they require consideration.

The next branch of the subject is the ordinary education of young persons not of the poorest cla.s.ses, with which the State has. .h.i.therto had little or nothing to do. This may be considered under four heads: religious, moral, intellectual, and physical education.

With regard to the first, there is not much that can be put into rules about it. Parents and tutors will naturally be anxious to impress those under their charge with the religious opinions which they themselves hold. In doing this, however, they should not omit to lay a foundation for charity towards people of other religious opinions. For this purpose, it may be requisite to give a child a notion that there are other creeds besides that in which it is brought up itself. And especially, let it not suppose that all good and wise people are of its church or chapel. However desirable it may appear to the person teaching that there should be such a thing as unity of religion, yet as the facts of the world are against his wishes, and as this is the world which the child is to enter, it is well that the child should in reasonable time be informed of these facts. It may be said in reply that history sufficiently informs children on these points. But the world of the young is the domestic circle; all beyond is fabulous, unless brought home to them by comment. The fact, therefore, of different opinions in religious matters being held by good people should sometimes be dwelt upon, instead of being shunned, if we would secure a ground-work of tolerance in a child's mind.

INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION.

In the intellectual part of education there is the absolute knowledge to be acquired, and the ways of acquiring knowledge to be gained. The latter of course form the most important branch. They can, in some measure, be taught. Give children little to do, make much of its being accurately done. This will give accuracy. Insist upon speed in learning, with careful reference to the original powers of the pupil. This speed gives the habit of concentrating attention, one of the most valuable of mental habits. Then cultivate logic. Logic is not the hard matter that is fancied. A young person, especially after a little geometrical training, may soon be taught to perceive where a fallacy exists, and whether an argument is well sustained. It is not, however, sufficient for him to be able to examine sharply and to pull to pieces. He must learn how to build. This is done by method. The higher branches of method cannot be taught at first. But you may begin by teaching orderliness of mind. Collecting, cla.s.sifying, contrasting and weighing facts, are some of the processes by which method is taught.

When these four things, accuracy, attention, logic, and method are attained, the intellect is fairly furnished with its instruments.

As regards the things to be taught, they will vary to some extent in each age. The general course of education pursued at any particular time may not be the wisest by any means, and greatness will overleap it and neglect it, but the ma.s.s of men may go more safely and comfortably, if not with the stream, at least by the side of it.

In the choice of studies too much deference should not be paid to the bent of a young person's mind. Excellence in one or two things which may have taken the fancy of a youth (or which really may suit his genius) will ill compensate for a complete ignorance of those branches of study which are very repugnant to him; and which are, therefore, not likely to be learnt when he has freedom in the choice of his studies.

Amongst the first things to be aimed at in the intellectual part of education is variety of pursuit. A human being, like a tree, if it is to attain to perfect symmetry, must have light and air given to it from all quarters. This may be done without making men superficial. Scientific method may be acquired without many sciences being learnt. But one or two great branches of science must be accurately known. So, too, the choice works of antiquity may be thoroughly appreciated without extensive reacting. And pa.s.sing on from mere learning of any kind, a variety of pursuits, even in what may be called accomplishments, is eminently serviceable. Much may be said of the advantage of keeping a man to a few pursuits, and of the great things done thereby in the making of pins and needles. But in this matter we are not thinking of the things that are to be done, but of the persons who are to do them.

Not wealth but men. A number of one-sided men may make a great nation, though I much incline to doubt that; but such a nation will not contain a number of great men.

The very advantage that flows from division of labour, and the probable consequences that men's future bread-getting pursuits will be more and more sub-divided, and therefore limited, make it the more necessary that a man should begin life with a broad basis of interest in many things which may cultivate his faculties and develop his nature. This multifariousness of pursuit is needed also in the education of the poor. Civilisation has made it easy for a man to brutalise himself: how is this to be counteracted but by endowing him with many pursuits which may distract him from vice?

It is not that kind of education which leads to no employment in after-life that will do battle with vice. But when education enlarges the field of life-long good pursuits, it becomes formidable to the soul's worst enemies.

MORAL EDUCATION.

In considering moral education we must recollect that there are three agents in this matter--the child himself, the influence of his grown-up friends, and that of his contemporaries. All that his grown-up friends tell him in the way of experience goes for very little, except in palpable matters. They talk of abstractions which he cannot comprehend: and the "Arabian Nights" is a truer world to him than that they talk of. Still, though they cannot furnish experience, they can give motives. Indeed, in their daily intercourse with the child, they are always doing so. For instance, truth, courage, and kindness are the great moral qualities to be instilled. Take courage, in its highest form--moral courage. If a child perpetually hears such phrases (and especially if they are applied to his own conduct), as, "What people will say," "How they will look at you," "What they will think," and the like, it tends to destroy all just self-reliance in that child's mind, and to set up instead an exaggerated notion of public opinion, the greatest tyrant of these times. People can see this in such an obvious thing as animal courage. They will avoid over-cautioning children against physical dangers, knowing that the danger they talk much about will become a bug-bear to the child which it may never get rid of. But a similar peril lurks in the application of moral motives. Truth, courage, and kindness are likely to be learnt, or not, by children, according as they hear and receive encouragement in the direction of these pre-eminent qualities. When attempt is made to frighten a child with these worldly maxims, "What will be said of you?" "Are you like such a one?" and such things, it is meant to draw him under the rule of grown-up respectability. The last thing thought of by the parent or teacher is, that such maxims will bring the child under the especial guidance of the most unscrupulous of his contemporaries. They will use ridicule and appeal to their little world, which will be his world, and ask, "What will be said" of him.

There should be some stuff in him of his own to meet these awful generalities.

PHYSICAL EDUCATION.

The physical education of children is a very simple matter, too simple to be much attended to without great perseverance and resolution on the part of those who care for the children. It consists, as we all know, in good air, simple diet, sufficient exercise, and judicious clothing. The first requisite is the most important, and by far the most frequently neglected. This neglect is not so unreasonable as it seems. It arises from pure ignorance.

If the ma.s.s of mankind knew what scientific men know about the functions of the air, they would be as careful in getting a good supply of it as of their other food. All the people that ever were supposed to die of poison in the middle ages, and that means nearly everybody whose death was worth speculating about, are not so many as those who die poisoned by bad air in the course of any given year. Even a slightly noxious thing, which is constant, affecting us every moment of the day, must have considerable influence; but the air we breathe is not a thing that slightly affects us, but one of the most important elements of life. Moreover, children are the most affected by impurity of air. We need not weary ourselves with much statistics to ascertain this. One or two broad facts will a.s.sure us of it. In Nottingham there is a district called Byron Ward, "the densest and worst-conditioned quarter of the town." A table has been made by Mr. William Hawksley of the mortality of equal populations in different parts of the town:

"On comparing the diagram No. 1, relating to Park Ward, with the diagram No. 7, relating to Byron Ward, it will be seen that the heavier pressure of the causes of mortality occasions in the latter district such an undue destruction of early life, that towards 100 deaths, however occurring, Byron Ward contributes fifty per cent.

more of children under five years of age than the Park Ward, for the former sends sixty children to an early grave, while the latter sends only forty." {116a}

Mr. Hawksley, the former witness alluded to, goes on to say--

"It has been long known that, with increase of years, up to that period of life which has been denominated the second childhood, the human const.i.tution becomes gradually more resistful, and as it were slowly hardened against the repeated attacks of those more acute disorders, incident to an inferior degree of sanitary civilisation, by which large portions of an infant population are continually overcome and rapidly swept away. From the operation of these and more extraneous influences of a disturbing character, an infant population is almost entirely exempted; and on this account it is considered that an infant population const.i.tutes, as it were, a delicate barometer, from which we may derive more early and more certain indications of the presence and comparative force of local causes of mortality and disease than can be obtained from the more general methods of investigation usually pursued."

The above evidence is confirmed by Mr. Toynbee: --

"The disease of hydrocephalus, of water in the brain, so fatal to children, I find a.s.sociated with symptoms of scrofula, and arising in abundance in these close rooms. I believe water in the brain, in the cla.s.s of patients whom I visit, to be almost wholly a scrofulous affection." {116b}

But supposing people aware of the necessity for good air, and therefore for ventilation, what is to be done? In houses in great towns certainly, and I should say in all houses, some of the care and expense that are devoted to ornamental work, which when done is often a care, a trouble, an eyesore, and a mischief, should be given to modes of ventilation, {117a} sound building, abundant access of light, largeness of sleeping-rooms, and such useful things. Less ormolu and tinsel of all kinds in the drawing-rooms, and sweeter air in the regions above. Similar things may be done for and by the poor. {117b} And it need hardly be said that those people who care for their children, if of any enlightenment at all, will care greatly for the sanitary condition of their neighbourhood generally.

At present you will find at many a rich man's door {117c} a nuisance which is poisoning the atmosphere that his children are to breathe, but which he could entirely cure for less than one day's ordinary expenses.

I am afraid that ventilation is very little attended to in school- rooms, either for rich or poor. Now it may be deliberately said that there is very little learned in any school-room that can compensate for the mischief of its being learned in the midst of impure air. This is a thing which parents must look to, for the grown-up people in the school-rooms, though suffering grievously themselves from insufficient ventilation, will be un.o.bservant of it.

{118} In every system of government inspection, ventilation must occupy a prominent part.

The advantage of simple food for children is a thing that people have found out. And as regards exercise, children happily make great efforts to provide a sufficiency of this for themselves. In clothing, the folly and conformity of grown-up people enter again.

Loving mothers, in various parts of the world, carry about at present, I believe, and certainly in times past, carried their little children strapped to a board, with nearly as little power of motion as the board itself. Could we get the returns of stunted miserable beings, or of deaths, from this cause, they would be something portentous. Less in degree, but not less fatally absurd in principle, are many of the strappings, bandages, and incipient stays for children amongst us. They are all mischievous. Allow children, at any rate, some freedom of limbs, some opportunity of being graceful and healthy. Give Nature--dear motherly, much-abused Nature--some chance of forming these little ones according to the beneficent intentions of Providence, and not according to the angular designs of ill-educated men and women.

I do not say that attention to the above matters of good air, judicious clothing, and freedom from bandages, will absolutely secure health, because these very things may have been so ill attended to in the parents or in the parental stock as to have introduced special maladies; but at least they are the most important objects to be minded now; and, perhaps, the more to be minded in the children of those who have suffered most from neglect in these particulars.

When we are considering the health of children, it is imperative not to omit the importance of keeping their brains fallow, as it were, for several of the first years of their existence. The mischief perpetrated by a contrary course in the shape of bad health, peevish temper, and developed vanity, is incalculable. It would not be just to attribute this altogether to the vanity of parents; they are influenced by a natural fear lest their children should not have all the advantages of other children. Some infant prodigy which is a standard of mischief throughout its neighbourhood misleads them.

But parents may be a.s.sured that this early work is not by any means all gain, even in the way of work. I suspect it is a loss; and that children who begin their education late, as it would be called, will rapidly overtake those who have been in harness long before them.

And what advantage can it be that the child knows more at six years old than its compeers, especially if this is to be gained by a sacrifice of health which may never be regained? There may be some excuse for this early book-work in the case of those children who are to live by manual labour. It is worth while, perhaps, to run the risk of some physical injury to them, having only their early years in which we can teach them book-knowledge. The chance of mischief, too, will be less, being more likely to be counteracted by their after-life. But for a child who has to be at book-work for the first twenty-one years of its life, what folly it is to exhaust in the least the mental energy, which, after all, is its surest implement.

A similar course of argument applies to taking children early to church, and to over-developing their minds in any way. There is no knowing, moreover, the disgust and weariness that may grow up in the minds of young persons from their attention being prematurely claimed. We are now, however, looking at early study as a matter of health; and we may certainly put it down in the same cla.s.s with impure air, stimulating diet, unnecessary bandages, and other manifest physical disadvantages. Civilised life, as it advances, does not seem to have so much repose in it, that we need begin early in exciting the mind, for fear of the man being too lethargical hereafter.

EDUCATION OF WOMEN.

It seems needful that something should be said specially about the education of women. As regards their intellects they have been unkindly treated--too much flattered, too little respected. They are shut up in a world of conventionalities, and naturally believe that to be the only world. The theory of their education seems to be, that they should not be made companions to men, and some would say, they certainly are not. These critics, however, in the high imaginations they justly form of what women's society might be to men, forget, perhaps, how excellent a thing it is already. Still the criticism is not by any means wholly unjust. It appears rather as if there had been a falling off since the olden times in the education of women. A writer of modern days, arguing on the other side, has said, that though we may talk of the Latin and Greek of Lady Jane Grey and Queen Elizabeth, yet we are to consider that that was the only learning of the time, and that many a modern lady may be far better instructed, although she knew nothing of Latin and Greek. Certain it is, she may know more facts, have read more books: but this does not a.s.sure us that she may not be less conversable, less companionable. Wherein does the cultivated and thoughtful man differ from the common man? In the method of his discourse. His questions upon a subject in which he is ignorant are full of interest. His talk has a groundwork of reason. This rationality must not be supposed to be dulness. Folly is dull.

Now, would women be less charming if they had more power, or at least more appreciation, of reasoning? Their flatterers tell them that their intuition is such that they need not man's slow processes of thought. One would be very sorry to have a grave question of law that concerned oneself decided upon by intuitive judges, or a question of fact by intuitive jurymen. And so of all human things that have to be canva.s.sed, it is better, and more amusing too, that they should be discussed according to reason. Moreover, the exercise of the reasoning faculties gives much of the pleasure which there is in solid acquirements; so that the obvious facts in life and history will hardly be acquired by those who are not in the habit of reasoning upon them. Hence it comes, that women have less interest in great topics, and less knowledge of them, than they might have.

Again, if either s.e.x requires logical education, it is theirs. The sharp practice of the world drives some logic into the most vague of men; women are not so schooled.

But, supposing the deficiency we have been considering to be admitted, how is it to be remedied? Women's education must be made such as to ensure some accuracy and reasoning. This may be done with any subject of education, and is done with men, whatever they learn, because they are expected to produce and use their requirements. But the greatest object of intellectual education, the improvement of the mental powers, is as needful for one s.e.x as the other, and requires the same means in both s.e.xes. The same accuracy, attention, logic, and method that are attempted in the education of men should be aimed at in that of women. This will never be sufficiently attended to, as there are no immediate and obvious fruits from it. And, therefore, as it is probable, from the different career of women to that of men, that whatever women study will not be studied with the same method and earnestness as it would be by men, what a peculiar advantage there is in any study for them, in which no proficiency whatever can be made without some use of most of the qualities we desire for them. Geometry, for instance, is such a study. It may appear pedantic, but I must confess that Euclid seems to me a book for the young of both s.e.xes. The severe rules upon which the acquisition of the dead languages is built would of course be a great means for attaining the logical habits in question. But Latin and Greek is a deeper pedantry for women than geometry, and much less desirable on many accounts: and geometry would, perhaps, suffice to teach them what reasoning is. I daresay, too, there are accomplishments which might be taught scientifically; and so even the prejudice against the manifest study of science by women be conciliated. But the appreciation of reasoning must be got somehow.

It is a narrow view of things to suppose that a just cultivation of women's mental powers will take them out of their sphere: it will only enlarge that sphere. The most cultivated women perform their common duties best. They see more in those duties. They can do more. Lady Jane Grey would, I daresay, have bound up a wound, or managed a household, with any unlearned woman of her day. Queen Elizabeth did manage a kingdom: and we find no pedantry in her way of doing it.

People who advocate a better training for women must not, necessarily, be supposed to imagine that men and women are by education to be made alike, and are intended to fulfil most of the same offices. There seems reason for thinking that a boundary line exists between the intellects of men and women which, perhaps, cannot be pa.s.sed over from either side. But, at any rate, taking the whole nature of both s.e.xes, and the inevitable circ.u.mstances which cause them to differ, there must be such a difference between men and women that the same intellectual training applied to both would produce most dissimilar results. It has not, however, been proposed in these pages to adopt the same training: and would have been still less likely to be proposed if it could be shown that such training would tend to make men and women unpleasantly similar to each other. The utmost that has been thought of here is to make more of women's faculties, not by any means to translate them into men's--if such a thing were possible, which, we may venture to say, is not. There are some things that are good for all trees--light, air, room--but no one expects by affording some similar advantages of this kind to an oak and a beech, to find them a.s.similate, though by such means the best of each may be produced.

Moreover, it should be recollected that the purpose of education is not always to foster natural gifts, but sometimes to bring out faculties that might otherwise remain dormant; and especially so far as to make the persons educated cognisant of excellence in those faculties in others. A certain tact and refinement belong to women, in which they have little to learn from the first: men, too, who attain some portion of these qualities, are greatly the better for them, and I should imagine not less acceptable on that account to women. So, on the other side, there may be an intellectual cultivation for women which may seem a little against the grain, which would not, however, injure any of their peculiar gifts--would, in fact, carry those gifts to the highest, and would increase withal, both to men and women, the pleasure of each other's society.

There is a branch of general education which is not thought at all necessary for women; as regards which, indeed, it is well if they are not brought up to cultivate the opposite. Women are not taught to be courageous. Indeed, to some persons courage may seem as unnecessary for women as Latin and Greek. Yet there are few things that would tend to make women happier in themselves, and more acceptable to those with whom they live, than courage. There are many women of the present day, sensible women in other things, whose panic-terrors are a frequent source of discomfort to themselves and those around them. Now, it is a great mistake to imagine that harshness must go with courage; and that the bloom of gentleness and sympathy must all be rubbed off by that vigour of mind which gives presence of mind, enables a person to be useful in peril, and makes the desire to a.s.sist overcome that sickliness of sensibility which can only contemplate distress and difficulty. So far from courage being unfeminine, there is a peculiar grace and dignity in those beings who have little active power of attack or defence, pa.s.sing through danger with a moral courage which is equal to that of the strongest. We see this in great things. We perfectly appreciate the sweet and n.o.ble dignity of an Anne Bullen, a Mary Queen of Scots, or a Marie Antoinette. We see that it is grand for these delicately-bred, high-nurtured, helpless personages to meet Death with a silence and a confidence like his own. But there would be a similar dignity in women's bearing small terrors with fort.i.tude.

There is no beauty in fear. It is a mean, ugly, dishevelled creature. No statue can be made of it that a woman would like to see herself like.

Women are pre-eminent in steady endurance of tiresome suffering: they need not be far behind men in a becoming courage to meet that which is sudden and sharp. The dangers and the troubles, too, which we may venture to say they now start at unreasonably, are many of them mere creatures of the imagination--such as, in their way, disturb high-mettled animals brought up to see too little, and therefore frightened at any leaf blown across the road.

We may be quite sure that, without losing any of the most delicate and refined of feminine graces, women may be taught not to give way to unreasonable fears, which should belong no more to the fragile than to the robust.

There is no doubt that courage may in some measure be taught. We agree that the lower kinds of courage are matter of habit, therefore of teaching: and the same thing holds good to some extent of all courage. Courage is as contagious as fear. The saying is, that the brave are the sons and daughters of the brave; but we might as truly say that they must be brought up by the brave. The great novelist, when he wants a coward descended from a valorous race, does well to take him from his clan and bring him up in an unwarlike home. {126} Indeed, the heroic example of other days is in great part the source of courage of each generation; and men walk up composedly to the most perilous enterprises, beckoned onwards by the shades of the brave that were. In civil courage, moral courage, or courage shown in the minute circ.u.mstances of everyday life, the same law is true.

Courage may be taught by precept, enforced by example, and is good to be taught to men, women, and children.

EDUCATION TO HAPPINESS.

It is a curious phenomenon in human affairs, that some of those matters in which education is most potent should have been amongst the least thought of as branches of it. What you teach a boy of Latin and Greek may be good; but these things are with him but a little time of each day in his after-life. What you teach him of direct moral precepts may be very good seed: it may grow up, especially if it have sufficient moisture from experience; but then, again, a man is, happily, not doing obvious right or wrong all day long. What you teach him of any bread-getting art may be of some import to him, as to the quant.i.ty and quality of bread he will get; but he is not always with his art. With himself he is always. How important, then, it is, whether you have given him a happy or a morbid turn of mind; whether the current of his life is a clear wholesome stream, or bitter as Marah. The education to happiness is a possible thing--not to a happiness supposed to rest upon enjoyments of any kind, but to one built upon content and resignation. This is the best part of philosophy. This enters into the "wisdom" spoken of in the Scriptures. Now it can be taught.

The converse is taught every day and all day long.

To take an example. A sensitive disposition may descend to a child; but it is also very commonly increased, and often created.

Captiousness, sensitiveness, and a Martha-like care for the things of this world, are often the direct fruits of education. All these faults of the character, and they are amongst the greatest, may be summed up in a disproportionate care for little things. This is rather a growing evil. The painful neatness and exactness of modern life foster it. Long peace favours it. Trifles become more important, great evils being kept away. And so, the tide of small wishes and requirements gains upon us fully as fast as we can get out of its way by our improved means of satisfying them. Now the unwholesome concern that many parents and governors manifest as to small things must have a great influence on the governed. You hear a child reprimanded about a point of dress, or some trivial thing, as if it had committed a treachery. The criticisms, too, which it hears upon others are often of the same kind. Small omissions, small commissions, false shame, little stumbling-blocks of offence, trifling grievances of the kind that Dr. Johnson, who had known hunger, stormed at Mrs. Thrale for talking about, are made much of; general dissatisfaction is expressed that things are not complete, and that everything in life is not turned out as neat as a Long-Acre carriage; commands are expected to be fulfilled by agents, upon very rapid and incomplete orders, exactly to the mind of the person ordering;--these ways, to which children are very attentive, teach them in their turn to be querulous, sensitive, and full of small cares and wishes. And when you have made a child like this, can you make a world for him that will satisfy him? Tax your civilisation to the uttermost: a punctilious, tiresome disposition expects more.

Indeed, Nature, with her vague and flowing ways, cannot at all fit in with a right-angled person. Besides, there are other precise, angular creatures, and these sharp-edged persons wound each other terribly. Of all the things which you can teach people, after teaching them to trust in G.o.d, the most important is, to put out of their hearts any expectation of perfection, according to their notions, in this world. This expectation is at the bottom of a great deal of the worldliness we hear so much reprehended, and necessarily gives to little things a most irrational importance.