The Century of the Child

by Ellen Key

The sense for art will not be awakened by direct artistic instruction, either in the school or when visiting museums. Classes can perhaps get such knowledge when taken around museums; but love for art can only be gained when the scholar is surrounded by art; when he can absorb it in peace and freedom. Let this quiet progress be anticipated by instruction—I don't mean the admiring criticism of the teacher himself, which he in passing expresses without explanation or questioning—and the inevitable result is troubling the water of a living well. Interference here, as in all other cases, destroys the individual pleasure of discovery. Constantly being taken about really impairs the capacity for seeing for oneself. In art, in literature, and in religion, all instruction is a mistake until the young mind has chosen some part of it as an object to be known. Knowledge destroys, feeling creates, life. But the roots of feeling are easily injured.

As to visits to museums under the direction of a teacher, they are only of use when the scholar has previously made, on his own account, his own discoveries. To these he should be stimulated by the teacher. When occupied in the study of Greek history, he will be asked for a description of Greek sculpture that is to be found in such and such a museum. When lectures are given on the Dutch War of Independence, Dutch pictures will be described. Only after the scholar has used his own eyes, and formed his own judgments, will a synthesis of his experiences under external guidance be of use. The same holds good of natural-history, historical, and ethnographical museums. Taking children around in herds produces very slight results unless they have been put in the way of noticing things by themselves.

Among the books of the school, the best literature in the original and in good accessible translations should be found. Works should be at hand capable of giving aid to those who have artistic interests. There is no greater fault in modern education than the care spent in selecting books for different ages. This is essentially an individual matter, and can only be decided by the choice of the child himself. A general crusade against all children's books, and freedom for the young to read great literature, is essential to the sound development of the modern child. What is too old for him may be set aside according to the taste of the child himself. Suppose at the age of ten years, the child is absorbed in Faust (I know such cases); the child then gets at this age an impression for life that does not prevent him receiving from the same poem another impression at twenty years, or again another at thirty or forty years. The so-called dangers in standard literature are, for the child, almost nil. Incidents that excite adults, his calm feelings pass over entirely. And even if children reach the emotional period of youth, only rarely does the plain downright expression of a great mind about natural things stain the imagination, falsify reality, and spoil taste. It is the modern romance, women's novels, just as much as French novels, that do this.

Children cannot in these days, even if parents are unreasonable enough to wish it, be kept in ignorance. Crude or stolen impurity gets a greater power over a mind that has not absorbed respect for the absolute seriousness of natural processes. This reverence is sure to come from education, and through the impressions of standard literature and first-class art.

Veiling this subject is apt to lead astray and to vulgarise. To those who can be harmed in this way the Bible is as suggestive as any of the crudities of modern literature. In the temperament which quietly accepts natural things as a matter of course, is laid the foundation of real purity, and only through real purity can life, like art and literature, become great and sound.

In the works of great minds, one meets an infinite world in which the erotic element is only one factor. This gives them great repose. Moreover imagination must have nourishment outside of itself; otherwise it will live upon its own product. Its nourishment should be what is most readable. The child's mind should be first fed on legends and then on great literature. This should be all the more insisted on because great literature often remains unread, when modern literature in its varied types begins later on to be absorbing.

To be able to use one's eyes in the worlds of nature, man, and art, to be able to read good things—these are the two great ends to which home and school education should direct their course. If the child has these capacities, he can learn almost everything else himself. I may remark in passing, that a sound development of the imagination has not only an æsthetic but an ethical significance. It is really the foundation for active sympathy all round. Numerous cruelties are committed now by people who have not sufficient imagination to see how their acts affect others.

In my dreamed-of school, founded along these lines, there is perfect freedom in selecting subjects. The school offers the subjects, but it forces no one to take them. English, German, French, natural science, mathematics, history, and geography are taught. The mother tongue is practiced fluently in speaking, reading, and writing. But in this case grammar is superfluous both for general education and for using a language; it belongs to scientific study, not to general culture. Grammar should be applied in the case of foreign languages, only so far as it is absolutely necessary to appreciate the literature. This is the sole aim general culture has in view. Those who wish to speak the languages fluently, and write them correctly, must attain facility by continual study. Those who have mastered the literature very easily learn the rest. Those who are familiar with the literature of a foreign language, write it, even with the mistakes they make, better than the person who has put together a perfectly correct composition according to grammatical rules. After the child, in his language study, has made enough progress to understand a fairly easy book, he ought to work through one book after another, with the help of a dictionary and explain in his own language extempore what he reads. In this way is laid the foundation of a knowledge of literature, not the ready-made opinions of the histories of literature. Both in their own and in foreign literatures, the young must be lead to reality, not, as now, to its copy; to the sea, not to the water pipe. While the teacher is directing the study of language, he should try at the same time to help the scholar to a definite choice of books, and his choice should if possible be brought into relation with other subjects. So he will recommend literature connected with historical, scientific, or geographical study. Afterwards he will give a general analysis, and will read a passage aloud, or will encourage the scholar to read some favorite poem. But all poetry mongering—such as hacking a poem to pieces by divisions into strophies and sections—is to be forbidden.

Since childhood is the best time for securing the familiar use of languages, after parents and teachers agree which scholars shall take up languages, children so selected will study English and French, each for two years successively, then let them have two years of German, or reverse this arrangement. In this way a language will always be studied with other subjects, never three languages together. It is really only possible to take in a language, as a possession to be kept through the future, and never lost, by giving to it alone two years of really thorough study.

Scholars who want to continue their drawing or learn any kind of handwork, can combine it with the study of the main subjects. Chorus singing should be practised every day for the whole year, indoors and in the open air. It should be treated as a means of expressing the feelings, not as an introduction for developing musical capacities, though for that matter singing can give a lead to the discovery of musical talent.