“Where the period of instruction is necessarily short and its object limited, a wise choice of method is the thing of first importance, for upon this choice will depend the education itself. If that method is purely technical, if its exclusive object is reading, writing, and the rules of grammar and computation, the child of the common people will be poorly instructed and will not be educated at all. A difficult task burdens his memory without developing his soul. A new process is placed at his disposal, one workshop more is open to him, so to speak; but the trace left by that instruction will not be deep, will sometimes even be lost through lack of application and exercise, and will not have acted on the moral nature, too often absorbed eventually by a monotonous devotion to duty or the excessive fatigue of bodily labor. The only, the real people’s school, is then that in which all the elements of study serve for the culture of the soul, and in which the child grows better by the things which he learns and by the manner in which he learns them.”
552. Analysis of this Work.—The book of Girard is divided into four parts. The first contains general considerations on the manner in which the mother teaches her children to speak, upon the purpose of a course of instruction on the mother tongue, and on the elements which should compose it.
The second part is entitled: The Systematic Teaching of the Mother Tongue considered solely as the Expression of Thought. It is language considered in itself; but Girard desires that the word should always be united to the thought. It is not necessary that the teaching of grammar should be reduced to verbal instruction; it should also serve to develop the thought of pupils.
In the third part, the Systematic Teaching of the Mother Tongue considered as the Means of Intellectual Culture, Girard considers everything which can contribute to the development of the faculties.
In the fourth part, the Systematic Teaching of Language employed for the Culture of the Heart, Girard shows how the teaching of language may assist in moral education.
A fifth part, Use of the Course in the Mother Tongue, is, so to speak, the material part of the book, and, as it were, the outline of the great practical work of Girard, the Educative[229] Course in the Mother Tongue.
553. The Grammarian, the Logician, the Educator.—In other terms, Girard places himself in succession at four different points of view in the teaching of language:—
“Four persons,” he says, “ought to concur in constructing the course in the mother tongue: the grammarian, the logician, the educator, and, finally, the man of letters.”
The task of the grammarian is to furnish the material of the language and its proper forms.