The History of Pedagogy

by Gabriel Compayré

Book VIII., the last, entitled Of the interior government of schools and colleges, has a particular character. It does not treat of studies and intellectual exercises, but of discipline and moral education. It is, on all accounts, the most original and interesting part of Rollin’s work, and it opens to us the treasures of his experience. This eighth book has been justly called the “Memoirs of Rollin.” That which constitutes its merit and its charm is that the author here at last decides to be himself. He does not quote the ancients so much; but he speaks in his own name, and relates what he has done, or what he has seen done.

256. General Reflections on Education.—There is little to be gathered out of the Preliminary Discourse of Rollin. He is but slightly successful in general reflections. When he ventures to philosophize, Rollin easily falls into platitudes. He has a dissertation to prove that “study gives the mind more breadth and elevation; and that study gives capacity for business.”

On the purpose of education, Rollin, who copies the moderns when he does not translate from the ancients, is content with reproducing the preamble of the regulations of Henry IV., which assigned to studies three purposes: learning, morals and manners, and religion.

“The happiness of kingdoms and peoples, and particularly of a Christian State, depends on the good education of the youth, where the purpose is to cultivate and to polish, by the study of the sciences, the intelligence, still rude, of the young, and thus to fit them for filling worthily the different vocations to which they are destined, without which they will be useless to the State; and finally, to teach them the sincere religious practices which God requires of them, the inviolable attachment they owe to their fathers and mothers and to their country, and the respect and obedience which they are bound to render princes and magistrates.”

257. Primary Studies.—Rollin is original when he introduces us to the classes of the great colleges where he has lived; but is much less so when he speaks to us of little children, whom he has never seen near at hand. He has never known family life, and scarcely ever visited public schools; and it is through his recollections of Quintilian that he speaks to us of children.

There is, then, but little to note in the few pages that he has devoted to the studies of the first years, from three to six or seven.

One of the most interesting things we find here, perhaps, is the method which he recommends for learning to read,—“the typographic cabinet of du Mas.” “It is a novelty,” says the wise Rollin, “and it is quite common and natural that we should be suspicious of this word novelty.” But after the examination, he decides in favor of the system in question, which consists in making of instruction in reading, something analogous to the work of an apprentice who is learning to print. The pupil has before him a table, and on this table is placed a set of pigeon-holes, “logettes,” which contain the letters of the alphabet, printed on cards. The pupil is to arrange on the table the different letters needed to construct the words required of him. The reasons that Rollin gives for recommending this method, successful tests of which he had seen made, prove that he had taken into account the nature of the child and his need of activity:—

“This method of learning to read, besides several other advantages, has one which seems to me very considerable,—it is that of being amusing and agreeable, and of not having the appearance of study. Nothing is more wearisome or tedious in infancy than severe mental effort while the body is in a state of repose. With this device, the mind of the child is not wearied. He need not make a painful effort at recollection, because the distinction and the name of the boxes strike his senses. He is not constrained to a posture that is oppressive by being always tied to the place where he is made to read. There is free activity for eyes, hands, and feet. The child looks for his letters, takes them out, arranges them, overturns them, separates them, and finally replaces them in their boxes. This movement is very much to his taste, and is exactly adapted to the active and restless disposition of that age.”

Rollin seems really to believe that there “is no danger in beginning with the reading of Latin.” However, “for the schools of the poor, and for those in the country, it is better,” he says, “to fall in with the opinion of those who believe that it is necessary to begin with the reading of French.”

It may be thought that Rollin puts a little too much into the first years of the child’s course of study. Before the age of six or seven he ought to have learned to read, to write, to be nourished on the Historical Catechism of Fleury, to know some of the fables of La Fontaine by heart, and to have studied French grammar, and geography. At least, Rollin requires that “no thought, no expression, which is within the child’s range,” shall be allowed to be passed by. He requires that the teacher speak little, and that he make the child speak much, “which is one of the most essential duties and one of those that are the least practised.” He demands, above all else, clearness of statement, and commends the use of illustrations and pictures in reading books. “They are very suitable,” he says, “for striking the attention of children, and for fixing their memory; this is properly the writing of the ignorant.”[154]