“The principles for instructing children should be those by which nature herself instructs them. Nature is the best of teachers.
“Every method which begins with abstract ideas is not made for children.
“Let children see many objects; let there be a variety of such, and let them be shown under many aspects and on various occasions. The memory and the imagination of children cannot be overcharged with useful facts and ideas of which they can make use in the course of their lives.”
Such are the principles according to which La Chalotais organizes his plan of studies.
383. The New Spirit in Education.—The purpose, then, is to replace that monastic and ultramontane education (this is the term employed by La Chalotais), and also that narrow education, and that repulsive and austere discipline, “which seems made only to abase the spirit”; that sterile and insipid teaching, “the most usual effect of which is to make study hated for life”; those scholastic studies where young men “contract the habit of disputing and caviling”; and those ascetic regulations “which set neatness and health at defiance.” The purpose is to initiate children into our most common and most ordinary affairs, into what forms the conduct of life and the basis of civil society.
“Most young men know neither the world which they inhabit, the earth which nourishes them, the men who supply their needs, the animals which serve them, nor the workmen and citizens whom they employ. They have not even any desire for this kind of knowledge. No advantage is taken of their natural curiosity for the purpose of increasing it. They know how to admire neither the wonders of nature nor the prodigies of the arts.”
This is equivalent to saying that they should henceforth learn all that up to this time they had been permitted to be ignorant of.
384. Studies of the First Period.—Education, according to La Chalotais, should be divided into two periods: the first from five to ten, the second from ten to seventeen.
During the first period, we have to do with children who have no experience because they have seen nothing, who have no power of attention because they are incapable of any sustained effort, and no judgment because they have not yet any general ideas; but who, by way of compensation, have senses, memory, and some power of reflection. It is necessary, then, to make a careful choice of the subjects of study which shall be proposed to these tender intelligences; and La Chalotais decides in favor of history, geography, natural history, physical and mathematical recreations.
“The exercises proposed for the first period,” he says, “are as follows: learning to read, write, and draw; dancing and music, which ought to enter into the education of persons above the commonalty; historical narratives and the lives of illustrious men of every country, of every age, and of every profession; geography, mathematical and physical recreations; the fables of La Fontaine, which, whatever may be said of them, ought not to be removed from the hands of children, but all of which they should be made to learn by heart; and besides this, walks, excursions, merriment, and recreations; I do not propose even the studies except as amusements.”