On the Study of Words.
Pedagogues, who make such an imposing display of what they teach, are paid to talk in another strain than mine, but their conduct shows that they think as I do. For after all, what do they teach their pupils? Words, words, words. Among all their boasted subjects, none are selected because they are useful; such would be the sciences of things, in which these professors are unskilful. But they prefer sciences we seem to know when we know their nomenclature, such as heraldry, geography, chronology, languages; studies so far removed from human interests, and particularly from the child, that it would be wonderful if any of them could be of the least use at any time in life.
It may cause surprise that I account the study of languages one of the useless things in education. But remember I am speaking of the studies of earlier years, and whatever may be said, I do not believe that any child except a prodigy, will ever learn two languages by the time he is twelve or fifteen.[[11]]
I admit that if the study of languages were only that of words, that is, of forms, and of the sounds which express them, it might be suitable for children. But languages, by changing their signs, modify also the ideas they represent. Minds are formed upon languages; thoughts take coloring from idioms. Reason alone is common to all. In each language the mind has its peculiar conformation, and this may be in part the cause or the effect of national character. The fact that every nation's language follows the vicissitudes of that nation's morals, and is preserved or altered with them, seems to confirm this theory.
Of these different forms, custom gives one to the child, and it is the only one he retains until the age of reason. In order to have two, he must be able to compare ideas; and how can he do this when he is scarcely able to grasp them? Each object may for him have a thousand different signs, but each idea can have but one form; he can therefore learn to speak only one language. It is nevertheless maintained that he learns several; this I deny. I have seen little prodigies who thought they could speak six or seven: I have heard them speak German in Latin, French, and Italian idioms successively. They did indeed use five or six vocabularies, but they never spoke anything but German. In short, you may give children as many synonyms as you please, and you will change only their words, and not their language; they will never know more than one.
To hide this inability we, by preference, give them practice in the dead languages, of which there are no longer any unexceptionable judges. The familiar use of these tongues having long been lost, we content ourselves with imitating what we find of them in books, and call this speaking them. If such be the Greek and Latin of the masters, you may judge what that of the children is. Scarcely have they learned by heart the rudiments, without in the least understanding them, before they are taught to utter a French discourse in Latin words; and, when further advanced, to string together in prose, phrases from Cicero and cantos from Virgil. Then they imagine they are speaking Latin, and who is there to contradict them?[[12]]
In any study, words that represent things are nothing without the ideas of the things they represent. We, however, limit children to these signs, without ever being able to make them understand the things represented. We think we are teaching a child the description of the earth, when he is merely learning maps. We teach him the names of cities, countries, rivers; he has no idea that they exist anywhere but on the map we use in pointing them out to him. I recollect seeing somewhere a text-book on geography which began thus:
"What is the world? A pasteboard globe." Precisely such is the geography of children. I will venture to say that after two years of globes and cosmography no child of ten, by rules they give him, could find the way from Paris to St. Denis. I maintain that not one of them, from a plan of his father's garden, could trace out its windings without going astray. And yet these are the knowing creatures who can tell you exactly where Pekin, Ispahan, Mexico, and all the countries of the world are.
I hear it suggested that children ought to be engaged in studies in which only the eye is needed. This might be true if there were studies in which their eyes were not needed; but I know of none such.
A still more ridiculous method obliges children to study history, supposed to be within their comprehension because it is only a collection of facts.[[13]] But what do we mean by facts? Do we suppose that the relations out of which historic facts grow are so easily understood that the minds of children grasp such ideas without difficulty? Do we imagine that the true understanding of events can be separated from that of their causes and effects? and that the historic and the moral are so far asunder that the one can be understood without the other? If in men's actions you see only purely external and physical changes, what do you learn from history? Absolutely nothing; and the subject, despoiled of all interest, no longer gives you either pleasure or instruction. If you intend to estimate actions by their moral relations, try to make your pupils understand these relations, and you will discover whether history is adapted to their years.
If there is no science in words, there is no study especially adapted to children. If they have no real ideas, they have no real memory; for I do not call that memory which retains only impressions. Of what use is it to write on their minds a catalogue of signs that represent nothing to them? In learning the things represented, would they not also learn the signs? Why do you give them the useless trouble of learning them twice? Besides, you create dangerous prejudices by making them suppose that science consists of words meaningless to them. The first mere word with which the child satisfies himself, the first thing he learns on the authority of another person, ruins his judgment. Long must he shine in the eyes of unthinking persons before he can repair such an injury to himself.
No; nature makes the child's brain so yielding that it receives all kinds of impressions; not that we may make his childhood a distressing burden to him by engraving on that brain dates, names of kings, technical terms in heraldry, mathematics, geography, and all such words, unmeaning to him and unnecessary to persons at any age in life. But all ideas that he can understand, and that are of use to him, all that conduce to his happiness and that will one day make his duties plain, should early write themselves there indelibly, to guide him through life as his condition and his intellect require.
The memory of which a child is capable is far from inactive, even without the use of books. All he sees and hears impresses him, and he remembers it. He keeps a mental register of people's sayings and doings. Everything around him is the book from which he is continually but unconsciously enriching his memory against the time his judgment can benefit by it. If we intend rightly to cultivate this chief faculty of the mind, we must choose these objects carefully, constantly acquainting him with such as he ought to understand, and keeping back those he ought not to know. In this way we should endeavor to make his mind a storehouse of knowledge, to aid in his education in youth, and to direct him at all times. This method does not, it is true, produce phenomenal children, nor does it make the reputation of their teachers; but it produces judicious, robust men, sound in body and in mind, who, although not admired in youth, will make themselves respected in manhood.
Émile shall never learn anything by heart, not even fables such as those of La Fontaine, simple and charming as they are. For the words of fables are no more the fables themselves than the words of history are history itself. How can we be so blind as to call fables moral lessons for children? We do not reflect that while these stories amuse they also mislead children, who, carried away by the fiction, miss the truth conveyed; so that what makes the lesson agreeable also makes it less profitable. Men may learn from fables, but children must be told the bare truth; if it be veiled, they do not trouble themselves to lift the veil.[[14]]
Since nothing ought to be required of children merely in proof of their obedience, it follows that they can learn nothing of which they cannot understand the actual and immediate advantage, whether it be pleasant or useful. Otherwise, what motive will induce them to learn it? The art of conversing with absent persons, and of hearing from them, of communicating to them at a distance, without the aid of another, our feelings, intentions, and wishes, is an art whose value may be explained to children of almost any age whatever. By what astonishing process has this useful and agreeable art become so irksome to them? They have been forced to learn it in spite of themselves, and to use it in ways they cannot understand. A child is not anxious to perfect the instrument used in tormenting him; but make the same thing minister to his pleasures, and you cannot prevent him from using it.
Much attention is paid to finding out the best methods of teaching children to read. We invent printing-offices and charts; we turn a child's room into a printer's establishment.[[15]] Locke proposes teaching children to read by means of dice; a brilliant contrivance indeed, but a mistake as well. A better thing than all these, a thing no one thinks of, is the desire to learn. Give a child this desire, and you will not need dice or reading lotteries; any device will serve as well. If, on the plan I have begun to lay down, you follow rules exactly contrary to those most in fashion, you will not attract and bewilder your pupil's attention by distant places, climates, and ages of the world, going to the ends of the earth and into the very heavens themselves, but will make a point of keeping it fixed upon himself and what immediately concerns him; and by this plan you will find him capable of perception, memory, and even reasoning; this is the order of nature.[[16]] In proportion as a creature endowed with sensation becomes active, it acquires discernment suited to its powers, and the surplus of strength needed to preserve it is absolutely necessary in developing that speculative faculty which uses the same surplus for other ends. If, then, you mean to cultivate your pupil's understanding, cultivate the strength it is intended to govern. Give him constant physical exercise; make his body sound and robust, that you may make him wise and reasonable. Let him be at work doing something; let him run, shout, be always in motion; let him be a man in vigor, and he will the sooner become one in reason.
You would indeed make a mere animal of him by this method if you are continually directing him, and saying, "Go; come; stay; do this; stop doing that." If your head is always to guide his arm, his own head will be of no use to him. But recollect our agreement; if you are a mere pedant, there is no use in your reading what I write.
To imagine that physical exercise injures mental operations is a wretched mistake; the two should move in unison, and one ought to regulate the other.
My pupil, or rather nature's pupil, trained from the first to depend as much as possible on himself, is not continually running to others for advice. Still less does he make a display of his knowledge. On the other hand, he judges, he foresees, he reasons, upon everything that immediately concerns him; he does not prate, but acts. He is little informed as to what is going on in the world, but knows very well what he ought to do, and how to do it. Incessantly in motion, he cannot avoid observing many things, and knowing many effects. He early gains a wide experience, and takes his lessons from nature, not from men. He instructs himself all the better for discovering nowhere any intention of instructing him. Thus, at the same time, body and mind are exercised. Always carrying out his own ideas, and not another person's, two processes are simultaneously going on within him. As he grows robust and strong, he becomes intelligent and judicious.
In this way he will one day have those two excellences,—thought incompatible indeed, but characteristic of nearly all great men,—strength of body and strength of mind, the reason of a sage and the vigor of an athlete.
I am recommending a difficult art to you, young teacher,—the art of governing without rules, and of doing everything by doing nothing at all. I grant, that at your age, this art is not to be expected of you. It will not enable you, at the outset, to exhibit your shining talents, or to make yourself prized by parents; but it is the only one that will succeed. To be a sensible man, your pupil must first have been a little scapegrace. The Spartans were educated in this way; not tied down to books, but obliged to steal their dinners;[[17]] and did this produce men inferior in understanding? Who does not remember their forcible, pithy sayings? Trained to conquer, they worsted their enemies in every kind of encounter; and the babbling Athenians dreaded their sharp speeches quite as much as their valor.
In stricter systems of education, the teacher commands and thinks he is governing the child, who is, after all, the real master. What you exact from him he employs as means to get from you what he wants. By one hour of diligence he can buy a week's indulgence. At every moment you have to make terms with him. These bargains, which you propose in your way, and which he fulfils in his own way, always turn out to the advantage of his whims, especially when you are so careless as to make stipulations which will be to his advantage whether he carries out his share of the bargain or not. Usually, the child reads the teacher's mind better than the teacher reads his. This is natural; for all the sagacity the child at liberty would use in self-preservation he now uses to protect himself from a tyrant's chains; while the latter, having no immediate interest in knowing the child's mind, follows his own advantage by leaving vanity and indolence unrestrained.
Do otherwise with your pupil. Let him always suppose himself master, while you really are master. No subjection is so perfect as that which retains the appearance of liberty; for thus the will itself is made captive. Is not the helpless, unknowing child at your mercy? Do you not, so far as he is concerned, control everything around him? Have you not power to influence him as you please? Are not his work, his play, his pleasure, his pain, in your hands, whether he knows it or not?
Doubtless he ought to do only what he pleases; but your choice ought to control his wishes. He ought to take no step that you have not directed; he ought not to open his lips without your knowing what he is about to say.
In this case he may, without fear of debasing his mind, devote himself to exercises of the body. Instead of sharpening his wits to escape an irksome subjection, you will observe him wholly occupied in finding out in everything around him that part best adapted to his present well-being. You will be amazed at the subtilty of his contrivances for appropriating to himself all the objects within the reach of his understanding, and for enjoying everything without regard to other people's opinions.
By thus leaving him free, you will not foster his caprices. If he never does anything that does not suit him, he will soon do only what he ought to do. And, although his body be never at rest, still, if he is caring for his present and perceptible interests, all the reason of which he is capable will develop far better and more appropriately than in studies purely speculative.
As he does not find you bent on thwarting him, does not distrust you, has nothing to hide from you, he will not deceive you or tell you lies. He will fearlessly show himself to you just as he is. You may study him entirely at your ease, and plan lessons for him which he will all unconsciously receive.
He will not pry with suspicious curiosity into your affairs, and feel pleasure when he finds you in fault. This is one of our most serious disadvantages. As I have said, one of a child's first objects is to discover the weaknesses of those who have control of him. This disposition may produce ill-nature, but does not arise from it, but from their desire to escape an irksome bondage. Oppressed by the yoke laid upon them, children endeavor to shake it off; and the faults they find in their teachers yield them excellent means for doing this. But they acquire the habit of observing faults in others, and of enjoying such discoveries. This source of evil evidently does not exist in Émile. Having no interest to serve by discovering my faults, he will not look for them in me, and will have little temptation to seek them in other people.
This course of conduct seems difficult because we do not reflect upon it; but taking it altogether, it ought not to be so. I am justified in supposing that you know enough to understand the business you have undertaken; that you know the natural progress of the human mind; that you understand studying mankind in general and in individual cases; that among all the objects interesting to his age that you mean to show your pupil, you know beforehand which of them will influence his will.
Now if you have the appliances, and know just how to use them, are you not master of the operation?
You object that children have caprices, but in this you are mistaken. These caprices result from faulty discipline, and are not natural. The children have been accustomed either to obey or to command, and I have said a hundred times that neither of these two things is necessary. Your pupil will therefore have only such caprices as you give him, and it is just you should be punished for your own faults. But do you ask how these are to be remedied? It can still be done by means of better management and much patience.