THE VILLAGE TEACHER.
It was finely remarked by an Indian, that the white man has not so deep and intimate a sense of his dependence upon God as the Indian. He owes more, apparently, to himself and his fellows. Entrenched in his palaces of stone, he can smile at the pitiless storm, and defy the blasts of winter. The great business of his early life, is to provide against its decline. He has artisans to administer to every want, and to alleviate every pain. Hence his own importance is magnified in his view; and he thinks less frequently of the great Being, from whom all his comforts spring. The Indian, on the other hand, leads a life of privation and adventure. He wanders alone through the forest; and seeks companionship and communion with nature. He looks abroad on the majesty of creation, and feels that there must be a Deity. In the uncertainty of his supplies of food, he knows that he is at the mercy of an invisible Protector; and the feeling of gratitude for unexpected relief, is more vivid than can enter into the heart of the civilized man.
Without stopping to inquire into the justice of the Indian's remark, I shall go on to observe, that there is a like difference between the occupations of the city and country. Every thing in a great metropolis is artificial. As the division of labour is the great secret of national wealth, so it is carried to its greatest extent in the capital. The members of the community are there more interlocked with each other, more helpless by themselves, than is the case with us. Accordingly they look to each other for the principal part of their enjoyments. To begin with the most necessary things of life, a citizen is dependant upon a dozen tradesmen, perhaps, for those articles of food and clothing, which a farmer works up at home. He accomplishes himself for one object of pursuit; and although profoundly ignorant of all others, is enabled thereby to fill his station, to keep his place as a key-stone in the arch of society. It never occurs to him how helpless and impotent he would be by himself. He is accommodated to things around—the artificial creature of an artificial system. Nor is it only in this dependence upon his fellows, that, the citizen differs from the countryman. His contrivances against the unavoidable evils and calamities of life, are more numerous, and cast a veil, in some degree, between him and his Creator. The overruling of that hand, which dispenses and withholds the rain and the harvest, affect him, as it were, but at a distance.—His merchandise is the product of art. His system of credit equalizes, if I may use the expression, the dispensations of Providence. The tempest may bury his wealth in the bosom of the deep; but an insurance office repairs the ravage of the elements. Every means in his power is used to thwart the original decree, "By the sweat of thy brow," &c.—He looks into futurity, and calculates the unfruitfulness of the seasons—not as a motive to humble dependence—not as an incentive to prayer and repentance—but that he may build his fortune upon the wants and the casualties of his fellow creatures. He even grapples with death itself—calculates with unfeeling selfishness the days and the infirmities of his neighbours, and wagers upon the length of his life. All his arrangements are predicated upon this artificial system. The thought, if it ever occur to him, of the great God of nature, is as much shut out by it, as the fair face of creation from the alleys and courts of the city. And in proportion as he becomes impressed with a deep sense of that overruling Providence, will these things become hateful in his eyes. No doubt the mind is, as Milton has it, "its own place," and can transform the natural aliment of vice into a medicament of virtue. The noblest examples of active goodness are generally to be found in a large metropolis; for it must be virtue of a superior cast that can resist the temptations which are there presented.—But minds of a contemplative turn may be allowed to shun the combat which they find it so hard to sustain, and to seek for aids to their good resolutions in external circumstances.
To all such I may venture to recommend the pursuits of a country life as eminently salutary. Every month and week has there its appropriate labours, which cannot be neglected; and it is from this cause a life of activity and variety. The events of the season are full of interest, and it is peculiarly delightful to observe how Providence still delights to bless. Shortsighted and presumptuous that we are, we are constantly auguring this or that misfortune—lamenting the unpropitiousness in some respect or another of the year; and yet from harvest to harvest are our barns filled, and our granaries laden. The labours of the country do not, like those of the city, deform the body, and undermine the constitution; and there is in its clear atmosphere, and silent serenity, an influence as invigorating to the soul as the touch of earth to Antæus. In the country, the silent and manifest workings of the Deity are constantly before us, and meet our eyes in every phase of organized life: The mind must be worse than insensible that does not feel and respond to the voice of praise, which seems to be constantly ascending, as from one great altar.
Some philosophers have placed virtue in a state of lofty contemplation; and others, of continued activity. The truth seems to be, that they are both essential to the perfect character.—He who gives himself up to indolent meditation, will become a prey to the enemies of his own household, and will fall by a servile foe. He who never retires to "plume his feathers, and let grow his wings," will find himself less and less able to sustain his flight; and discover, perhaps, when it is too late, that he has lost the energy of virtue, and the love of moral beauty.
But as the temptations of the more selfish passions are the strongest, that state of society in which we are the most exposed to them, is the most dangerous; and we have more need of having our eyes and our hearts fixed upon pure and lofty objects, than of having excessive stimulants applied to that activity, of which every condition in life requires a steady and vigorous application. To reflecting minds, therefore, the labour and the relaxation which the country holds out, are both more salutary and invigorating, than that which is required amid the smoke, and bustle, and jarring interests of a great metropolis.
AN ACCOUNT
Of the Agricultural School at Hofwyl,
in Switzerland.
(From the Edinburgh Review.)
Mr. de Fellenberg was first known merely as an agriculturist, and still keeps up his original establishment of husbandry at Buchsie, an old chateau near Hofwyl; but agriculture was always with him a secondary object, and subservient to that system of education to which his thoughts were very early directed. He is a man of an unusually ardent as well as persevering turn of mind, and conceals a character of deep and steady enthusiasm, under a very calm exterior and manners. Although born to patrician rank in his own country, he early imbibed those political doctrines of which such tremendous misapplication was so soon to be made in his neighbourhood: and the disappointment filled his mind with melancholy views of the moral state and future prospects of mankind. It appeared to him, that the world was blindly hurrying on to irretrievable ruin; and that a sounder system of education for the great body of the people, could alone stop the progress of error and corruption. He has sometimes mentioned in conversation the particular circumstances, which finally determined him to the course he has since pursued. In the year 1798 or 1799, he happened to be at Paris as one of the commission sent by the provisional government established in Switzerland after the French invasion; and in that capacity he had an official conversation with the Director Reubel, at his country-house near Paris,—in the course of which he laid before him, in glowing colours, a picture of the miserable state to which his country was reduced, and which might soon lead to a Vendean war, destructive to both parties. The Director appeared for some time to listen with profound attention, and Mr. de Fellenberg ascribed his silence to conviction of the truths he urged, and something like a feeling of compunction,—when, all at once, the worthy republican throwing open a window, called aloud to one of his servants—'Jacques! apportez moi Finette!' A little spaniel was brought accordingly with its litter of young ones in a basket—and there was no chance of his hearing another word about Switzerland or liberty! After this rebuff, he gave up the idea of serving his country as a politician; and, asking for his passport the next day, made the best of his way home, determined to set about the slow work of elementary reformation, by a better mode of education, and to persevere in it for the rest of his life!
It is now upwards of twelve years since Mr. de Fellenberg undertook to systematize domestic education, and to show on a large scale how the children of the poor might be best taught, and their labour at the same time most profitably applied: in short, how the first twenty years of a poor man's life might be so employed as to provide for his support and his education. The peasants in his neighbourhood were at first rather shy of trusting their children for a new experiment; and being thus obliged to take his pupils where he could find them, many of the earliest were the sons of vagrants, and literally picked up on the highways; and this is the case with one or two of the most distinguished. He had very soon, however, the good fortune of finding an excellent co-operator in the person of a young man of the name of Vehrli, the son of a schoolmaster of Thurgovia, who, coming to Hofwyl in 1809, to see the establishment and inform himself of the mode of teaching, was so struck with the plan of the school of industry, that he offered his son, then about 18, as an assistant. This young man devoted himself from that moment to the undertaking.——Although admitted at first to Mr. de Fellenberg's table, he soon left it for that of his pupils, with whom he has ever since lived night and day. Working with them in the fields, their playfellow in their hours of relaxation,—and, learning himself what he is to teach as a master, his zeal has not cooled a moment during a trial of more than ten years' unremitting exertions, under the guidance of his patron, and assisted now by four other masters. The number of his pupils has increased successively to 43: They obey him as well as Mr. de Fellenberg, entirely from love and a sense of duty:—punishment has been inflicted only twice since the beginning; and their treatment is nearly that of children under the paternal roof. They go out every morning to their work soon after sunrise—having first breakfasted and received a lesson of about half an hour. They return at noon. Dinner takes them half an hour,—a lesson of one hour follows; then to work again till six in the evening. On Sunday, the different lessons take six hours instead of two; and they have butcher's meat on that day only. They are divided into three classes, according to age and strength; an entry is made in a book, every night, of the number of hours each class has worked, specifying the sort of labour done, in order that it may be charged to the proper account, each particular crop having an account opened for it, as well as every new building, the live stock, the machines, the schools themselves, &c. &c. In winter, and whenever there is no out-of-doors' work, the boys plait straw for chairs; make baskets; saw logs with the cross saw, and split them; thrash and winnow corn, grind colours, knit stockings, or assist the wheel-wright and other artificers, of whom there are many employed on the establishment. For all which different sorts of labour an adequate salary is credited each boy's class.
Mr. de Fellenberg indeed observes, that the boys being most of them only just come to the age of productive labour, it is presumed the Establishment will not only support itself in future, but repay past expenses; particularly as certain outfits charged to the first years will not recur again.—He observes also, that several grown boys have been suffered to go away, and have been replaced by young children, to the great injury of the Establishment. It may be added, that the pupils have been indulged of late with better clothes than formerly, or than is strictly necessary, as well as a better table; and that, from attention to their feelings, the cast-off clothes of the school of the rich are not turned to their use, but given away to the poor of the neighbourhood, that they may not appear in the light of dependants on any but their adoptive father and their own labour. It is undoubtedly a very striking circumstance, that only one, out of the whole number of boys admitted into this school since the beginning, has been dismissed as irrecoverably vicious; all the others have got rid of their former habits;—and, when final sentence was passed upon the unfortunate boy, the others begged leave to contribute each one batz towards a present to him, that he might remember them with kindness.
The labours of the field, their various sports, their lessons, their choral songs, the necessary rest, fill the whole circle of the twenty-four hours; and judging from their open, cheerful, contented countenances, nothing seems wanting to their happiness.—But it is a great point gained, to have brought young men to the age of 18 or 20, uncontaminated by the general licentiousness which prevails in the country. When their time is out, and they mix with other people, they will no doubt marry; but the probability is, they will be more difficult in their choice than other men of the same rank, and will shrink from vulgarity and abject poverty. Long habits of self-restraint, too, will enable them to look out with comparative patience for a suitable establishment, before they burden themselves with a family. In short, if the only check of the mild kind to an excessive increase of population is self-restraint, from motives of prudence and morality, where may we look for it with better hopes than among the pupils of Mr. de Fellenberg?
We shall now proceed, however, to lay before our readers a more detailed account of the internal management of the school of industry. The lessons are given mostly viva voce, and various questions continually interposed, respecting measures of capacity, length and weight, and their fractional parts; the cubic contents of a piece of timber, or a stack of hay; the time necessary to perform any particular task, under such or such circumstances; the effects of gravitation; the laws of mechanics; rules of grammar and different parts of speech, &c. &c. The boys endeavour to find the solution of arithmetical and mathematical problems without writing, and at the same time to proceed with the mechanical processes in which they may happen to be engaged. Aware of the difficulties with which they are thus made to grapple, as it were, without assistance, they are the more sensible of the value of those scientific short cuts, which carry you in the dark indeed, but safely and speedily, to your journey's end, and the more delighted with their beauty as well as their use. They acquire the rationale of the thing, together with the practice; their understandings are exercised, and their attention kept awake. None of them are ever seen to look inattentive or tired, although just returned from their day's labour in the fields. Contrivance, and some degree of difficulty to overcome, is a necessary condition, it would seem, of our enjoyments.
The pupils are not always questioned, but, in their turn, propose questions to the masters, and difficulties to be solved, which they do sometimes with considerable ingenuity.—They draw outlines of maps, from memory, exhibiting the principal towns, rivers, and chains of mountains; they draw correctly from nature, and in perspective, all sorts of machines for agriculture; and are very fond of trying chymically the different sorts of soil, and have tables of them very well arranged.
Various gymnastic games are also practised occasionally; but mental exercises find their place better after hard labour: They do indeed in the fields full as well as on the benches of the school. For instance, when the boys are employed in digging trenches to irrigate a meadow, and while directing the water along artificial ridges, and round hills, so as to regulate the fall and distribute the moisture equally, they put each other in mind of what they have heard about the laws of hydraulics. When they clear a field of the stones turned up by the plough, and are directed to separate those which are calcareous, in order to be burned into lime, they know and practise the different tests by which their nature is ascertained, and can point out in the horizon, the particular mountains which have furnished these various fragments.
In order to encourage the attachment to property acquired by our own industry, the pupils are allowed certain emoluments, such as the proceeds of the seeds they collect, some part of their gleanings, and what they raise in a small garden of their own; all which accumulates, and forms a fund for the time of their going away. No ambitious views are fostered by this mode of training the poorest class, beyond that of being good husbandmen. The pupils of the school of industry are not raised above their station; but their station, dignified and improved, is raised to them. It has been remarked before, that men born in the poorest class of society, constituted as it is at present, especially those who subsist in part on public charity, find it almost as difficult to get out of their dependant situation as a Hindoo to leave his cast,—kept down as they are by a sort of inbred ignorance and improvidence, and, above all, by their multitude; which is one of the worst consequences of that improvidence. The higher and middling ranks scarcely keep up their numbers any where; while multiplication goes on, unrestrained by any consideration of prudence, precisely among those who are least able to support a family. The poor may, in the bitterness of want, exclaim against taxes and ill government, and certainly not always without reason;—but the worst government is their own of themselves.
Agricultural labour is not the only occupation which can be made the base of such an education. Manufactures, with all their disadvantages, might answer the purpose, provided the children were not collected together in vast numbers in the same rooms—provided they were under the care of intelligent and kind masters and overseers, and were allowed gardens of their own, and a certain number of hours each day to work in them, or take exercise in the open air—all which must abridge necessarily the time allotted to productive labour, or to learning. One of the great advantages of husbandry is, that it affords sufficient exercise, and leaves more time for mental improvement. Such of Vehrli's pupils as have a turn for any of the trades in demand at Hofwyl—wheelwright, carpenter, smith, &c. tailor or shoemaker—are allowed to apply to them. These boys will leave the Institution at the age of one-and-twenty, understanding agriculture better than any peasants ever did before, besides being practically acquainted with a trade, and with a share of learning quite unprecedented among the same class of people; and yet as hard-working and abstemious as any of them, and with the best moral habits and principles. It seems impossible to desire or imagine a better condition of the peasantry.
Public education, Mr. de Fellenberg observes, is too generally a uniform process, imposed indiscriminately, and by force, upon every variety of disposition, talents, and character. His object, on the other hand, is to suit the education to the pupil, and not the pupil to the education.—A good preceptor should be an experienced friend, who guides,—not a master who commands, and, above all, not an irascible master. Punishments and rewards he considers as equally objectionable: for fear makes slaves, and the love of distinction unfolds, in the end, most of the bad passions. Do as you would be done by is, he maintains, the only safe rule of conduct to inculcate; a lively feeling of right and wrong, goodwill and kindness to all men, the only sentiments fit to be encouraged. Emulation, perhaps, is too powerful and universal a stimulant to be altogether excluded; but it needs more frequently to be repressed than excited. Such a vigilant and cautious system of training would be best carried on certainly under the parental roof, in a well regulated and united family; and therefore he wishes a school to resemble as nearly as possible such a family, and to be as unlike as possible to a mere manufactory of learning.
The whole course of studies may be considered as divided into three periods, of three years each. In the first, they study Greek and the Grecian History, the knowledge of animals, plants, and minerals. In the second, Latin, Roman History, and the Geography of the Roman world. And in the third, Modern Languages and Literature, Modern History to the last century, and Geography—the Physical Sciences, and Chymistry. During the whole nine years, they apply to Mathematics, Drawing, Music, and Gymnastic Exercises.
The geometrical representation of near objects—the house, the garden, the course of the river, the surrounding country, the mountains beyond it, taken by approximation in the shape of a map—is the natural introduction to Geography. When the pupils feel a curiosity to know more of the world than they can see, maps are then laid before them, and the globe and its uses are explained. They are made to delineate correctly, from memory, the shape of continents and seas; and to place and name the principal chains of mountains, the course of rivers, the boundaries of states, their provinces and capitals;—and this leads to an inquiry into the particular history of each, and their natural productions.
Drawing is early cultivated, from natural objects first, then by copying, and finally by composing characteristic heads, or rather endeavouring to imitate the effect of passions on the human countenance. The execution is generally correct, but hard and dry—in the style of Perugino certainly, rather than of Rembrandt. Music likewise is much practised; not however with a view to execution, but for the sake of the Poetry of music, and its Piety—as an elevated language, in which certain ideas and feelings are expressed, which no other human means can reach or convey. The gymnastic exercises have for their object, health, and the dexterous use of the bodily faculties; but they never are exhibited in public, and made an occasion of show and display.
It is the endeavour of the master to encourage his pupils to express freely, both in writing and conversation, the opinions and feelings which have been suggested by their reading; and thus to enable them to rectify their mistakes, either as to facts or inferences; never dictating to them what they should think, and yet restraining and directing the flights of a young imagination. The pupils do not read the history of the last century before their twentieth year, when judgment is sufficiently matured; and even then, all reference to the politics of the day is avoided, that they may enter the world with minds wholly free from party spirit, and able to form unprejudiced opinions. Common newspapers and political pamphlets are never seen at Hofwyl.
The study of Mathematics continues during the whole period of education, to an extent determined entirely by the individual capacity and disposition of each pupil, who is not hurried on or retarded for the sake of keeping pace with others. Every problem is analyzed and explained thoroughly before passing to another. The interest and attention of those of ordinary abilities, is kept up by practical applications of the science; and none but those properly qualified apply to the pure mathematics: In doing so, they are carefully guarded against the pride of successful calculation, which is apt to overlook Divine power in the consideration of its own.
At the same time that Mr. de Fellenberg dwells with delight and confidence on the natural proofs of the existence of the Supreme Being, he admits fully, and establishes the necessity of a Revelation to supply the insufficiency of human reason. Socrates himself, he observes, did not know how to establish the dogma of the unity of God. His pupils, brought up in purity and simplicity of heart, under the influence of reason and kindness, are in a great degree Christians before they are taught Christianity,—and best prepared, therefore, to understand and receive the Divine doctrine; but all dogmatic points are reserved for the ministers of their respective communions, who are to instruct them; and controversial disputes are unknown and interdicted.
It has been said also that Mr. de Fellenberg's husbandry is ruinous. This would only add to the wonder of his being able to do what he does by his own slender means; but, in point of fact, his farm affords a very considerable profit. We have, upon this point, the evidence of a gentleman well versed in those matters, Mr. Crud of Genthod, one of the commissioners appointed by the Swiss Diet to inquire into the agricultural establishment at Hofwyl, the result of whose statements is, that the farm (2141⁄2 poses, equal to about 172 English acres) has produced net in 4 years from 1810 to 1814, 56,705l. Swiss money, and for one year 14,176l. which, deducting interest at 6 per cent. on 14,382l. the average value of stock on the farm, or 843l., leaves a clear profit of 13,313l., equal to 3l. 17s. 6d. Sterling a pose (nearly equal to 4⁄5ths of an English acre;)[1] and, valuing the farm at the high price of 750l. a pose, (47l. Sterling,) gives something more than 81⁄4 per cent. interest, net of all charges. The farm is undoubtedly benefited by the Institution, which affords a ready market for its produce, and perhaps by the low price at which the labour of Vehrli's boys is charged: But the farm, on the other hand, affords regular employment to the boys; and also enables Mr. de Fellenberg to receive his richer pupils at a lower price than he could otherwise do. Hofwyl, in short, is a great whole; where 120 or 130 pupils, more than 50 masters and professors, as many servants, and a number of day-labourers, six or eight families of artificers and tradesmen, altogether about 300 persons, find a plentiful, and in many respects a luxurious subsistence, exclusive of education, out of the produce of 170 acres, and a money income of six or seven thousand pounds, reduced more than half by salaries, affords a very considerable surplus to lay out in additional buildings.
Not satisfied with what we had ourselves learned and thought on this subject, we have been anxious to learn what was thought of it in the neighbourhood, and by persons not particularly friendly to the Institution. We have scarcely heard an objection against the School of Industry. The opinion is universally favourable to it; and though there is more difference of sentiment as to the higher school, the worst we have heard is, that the pupils are not so advanced in any one science as some young men brought up in other schools are. It is admitted that they are eminently moral and amiable in their deportment; that they are very intelligent; and that their ideas have a wide range. In short, the objection, as it appears to us, is, that they are likely to become liberal-minded gentlemen, but not professors. Hofwyl is not a college where the only object is learning;—still less a monastery, where an austere and uniform rule prevails;—it is a little world, composed of different ranks and professions, and where individuality of character is preserved, and a variety of talents unfolded.
The patricians of Berne have been generally, from the beginning, unfavourable to the Institution; yet several of them have their sons in it, and many more are now endeavouring to procure admittance. We have learned very lately, that a decided and active enemy, many years first magistrate of the district where Hofwyl is situated, and lately dead, enjoined expressly in his last-will, that his sons should, if possible, be educated exclusively at Hofwyl!