The Century of the Child

by Ellen Key

But all these observations lead to a final result. The present reading-book system is neither the most attractive for children, nor does it best supply them with what they want. Instead of epic smoothness and unity, reading-books bring a confused mixture of all kinds, nursery rhymes, religious teaching, poetry, natural history, and history. Occasionally there comes a tale or a real poem, standing apart distinctly from its neighbours, in tone and in comprehensiveness. Instead of clear impressions, children get through the reading-book a disturbing jumble; instead of objectivity, they get instructive children's stories; instead of poetry, edifying versification; instead of action, reflection; instead of much of one thing, a little of everything; instead of continuity of impressions, constant change; instead of concrete impressions of life, essays; instead of naïve tales, things written down to their level.

I ask what is the result of this reading-book system on the development of the child from six to sixteen years old?

What, in general, is the result on the development of character when one flits from impression to impression, nipping in flight at different things, letting one picture after another slip away, making no halt anywhere?

As to the effect on adults, immediate answers can be given. These answers are so unfavourable that they do not need to be repeated. But, should a principle which applies to the adult be less suitable for the child? It really applies much more to the child. Adults generally have some work, some occupation, some one centre around which they can arrange manifold events, change may often be advantageous for them; but the whole school day of the child is change; the way the child absorbs knowledge is by the teaspoonful. Is not this condition enough to urge us to work with all our might against the system of diffusion wherever it is unnecessary?

In reading-books diffusion is not necessary; in foreign languages, as in his own tongue, the interest of the child is much more stimulated by a book than by a reader; his vocabulary is increased. But even if this were not the case, what the child gains through reading-books, in quick readiness in the mother tongue or in foreign languages, does not compensate for the loss their use signifies in development in the way already mentioned.

The schools deal improperly with the mental powers of youth, through their lack of specialising, of concentration, in their depreciation of initiative, in their being out of touch with reality.

High schools and colleges are absolutely destructive to personality. Here, where only oral examinations should take place from time to time, where all studies should tend to be individual, the hunger of the scholar for reality is hardly satisfied in any direction. Nothing is done to help his longing to see for himself, to read, to judge, to get impressions at first-hand, not from second-hand reports.

Certainly here, too, the direction of the teacher is necessary. He can economise superfluous work by clarifying generalisations; he can criticise a one-sided account in order to complete the picture fully himself. Often the teacher must excite interest by a vigorous account from his own point of view; by a fine psychological study, he can illustrate a complex historical picture. He will help the scholar to find laws, governing the phenomena which he has come to know by his own experiments, or he can suggest comparisons which lead to such experiments. Here, also, oral and written exercise must have great weight.

But the end of all instruction in college, as in the school, should not consist in examinations and diplomas; these must be obliterated from the face of the earth. The aim should be that the scholars themselves, at first hand, should acquire their knowledge, should get their impressions, should form their opinions, should work their way through to intellectual tastes, not as they now do, taking no trouble themselves, but being supposed to acquire these gifts through interesting lectures given by the teacher on five different subjects, heard every morning while the students are dozing, and soon forgotten. Facts slip away from every one's memory, quickest from the memory of those who have learned according to the dose and teaspoonful system. But education happily is not simply the knowledge of facts, it is, as an admirable paradox has put it, what is left over after we have forgotten all we have learnt.

The richer one is in such permanent acquisitions, the greater the profit of study. The more subjective pictures we have; the more numerous our vibrating emotions and associations of ideas are; the more we are filled with suggestively active impressions;—so much the more development we have, won by study for our personality. The fact that our students acquire so little, even if they have passed through every school with excellent marks, is a serious injustice they feel during their whole life. The beautifully systematised, ticketed, checkerboard knowledge given by examinations soon disappears. The person who has kept his desire for knowledge and his capacity for work by his free choice and by his independent labor can easily fill out the gaps left by this method of study in the knowledge he has acquired.