Our conception of a child rules our relations towards him. Pour s’amuser is the rule of child-life proper for the “oyster” theory, and most of our children’s books and many of our theories of child-education are based upon this rule. “Oh! he’s so happy,” we say, and are content, believing that if he is happy he will be good; and it is so to a great extent; but in the older days the theory was, if you are good you will be happy; and this is a principle which strikes the keynote of endeavour, and holds good, not only through the childish “stage of evolution,” but for the whole of life, here and hereafter. The child who has learned to “endeavour himself” (as the Prayer Book has it) has learned to live.
If our conception of Whence? as regards the child, as of—
“A Being, breathing thoughtful breath,
A traveller betwixt life and death,”—
is old, that of our grandfathers; our conception of the aims and methods of education, is new, only made possible within the very last decades of the century; because it rests one foot upon the latest advances in the science of Biology and the other upon the potent secret of these latter days, that matter is the all-serviceable agent of spirit, and that spirit forms, moulds, is absolute lord, over matter, as capable of affecting the material convolutions of the brain as of influencing what used to be called the heart.
Knowing that the brain is the physical seat of habit, and that conduct and character, alike, are the outcome of the habits we allow: knowing, too, that an inspiring idea initiates a new habit of thought, and, hence, a new habit of life; we perceive that the great work of education is to inspire children with vitalising ideas as to the relations of life, departments of knowledge, subjects of thought: and to give deliberate care to the formation of those habits of the good life which are the outcome of vitalising ideas.
In this great work we seek and assuredly find the co-operation of the Divine Spirit, whom we recognise, in a sense rather new to modern thought, as the Supreme Educator of mankind in things that have been called secular, fully as much as in those that have been called sacred. We are free to give our whole force to these two great educational labours, of the inspiration of ideas and the formation of habits, because, except in the case of children somewhat mentally deficient, we do not consider that the “development of faculties” is any part of our work; seeing that the children’s so-called faculties are already greatly more acute than our own.
We have, too, in our possession, a test for systems that are brought under our notice, and can pronounce upon their educational value. For example, a little while ago, the London Board Schools held an exhibition of work; and great interest was excited by an exhibit which came from New York representing a week’s work in a school. The children worked for a week upon “an apple.” They modelled it in clay, they painted it in brushwork, they stitched the outline on cardboard, they pricked it, they laid it in sticks (the pentagonal form of the seed vessel). Older boys and girls modelled an apple-tree and made a little ladder on which to run up the apple-tree and gather the apples, and a wheel-barrow to carry the apples away, and a great deal more of the same kind. Everybody said, “How pretty, how ingenious, what a good idea!” and went away with the notion that here, at last, was education. But we ask, “What was the informing idea?” The external shape, the internal contents of an apple,—matters with which the children were already exceedingly well acquainted. What mental habitudes were gained by this week’s work? They certainly learned to look at the apple, but think how many things they might have got familiar acquaintance with in the time. Probably the children were not consciously bored, because the impulse of the teachers enthusiasm carried them on. But, think of it—
“Rabbits hot and rabbits cold,
Rabbits young and rabbits old,