“He conceived,” says Naville, “that by means of a selection of problems adapted to the development of the social affections in the family, the commune, and the State, one might give to arithmetic such a wholesome direction that it might be made to contribute, not only to making the child prudent and economical, but even more to extend his views beyond the narrow circle of selfishness, and to cultivate in him beneficent dispositions.”[232]
557. Moral Geography.—It is in the same spirit that he claimed to find in the study of geography a means of contributing to the development of the moral nature.
“According to my honest conviction, every elementary work for children ought to be a means of education. If it is limited to giving knowledge, if it is limited to developing the faculties of the pupil, I can approve the order and the life which the author has known how to put into his work; but I am not satisfied with it. I am even offended to find only a teacher of language, of natural history, of geography, etc., when I expected something much greater,—an instructor of the young, training the mind in order to train the heart.... Geography lends itself as marvellously to this sublime purpose, although in a sphere a little narrower.”[233]
558. Educative Course in the Mother Tongue.—Girard is not content to state his doctrine in his book On the Systematic Teaching of the Mother Tongue; but in the four volumes of his Educative Course (1844-1846) he has applied his method. Full of new and radical views, original in the arrangement of material as in its system of exposition, revolutionary even in its grammatical terminology, this book is a mine from which we may borrow without stint, only we shall not advise wholesale adoption: there is matter to take and to leave.[234]
559. Analysis of this Work.—The title indicates the general character of the work. In his Cours éducatif, Girard does not separate education from instruction. The purpose is to develop the moral and religious sentiments of the child, no less than to teach him his native language.
The first lessons in grammar ought to be lessons in things. The child is made to name the objects which he knows,—persons, animals, things,—and through these he is made to acquire notions of nouns, common and proper, of gender and number. He is then induced to find for himself the physical, intellectual, and moral qualities of objects, and by this means is made familiar with qualifying adjectives. Care is taken, moreover, while causing each quality to be named, as farther on while causing each judgment to be expressed, to ask the child, “Is this right? Is this wrong?”
The agreement of adjective with noun is learned by practice. The child is drilled in applying adjectives to the nouns which he has found, and vice versa.
Once in possession of the essential elements of the proposition, the child begins the study of the proposition itself, and finally the study of the verb. Girard makes it a principle always to have the conjugations made by means of propositions. At first, however, he employs in simple propositions only the indicative, the infinitive, the imperative, and the participle; he postpones till later the study of the conditional and the subjunctive. It is to be noted, in addition, that he brings forward simultaneously the simple tenses of all the conjugations.
The order followed by Girard is wholly different from that of the ordinary grammars. This is how he explains it:—
“In their first part, the grammars set out in a row the nine sorts of words, and thus give in rapid succession their definitions, distinctions, and variable forms, which introduces a legion of terms wholly unknown to the child. The second part of these grammars takes up these words again in the same order, so as, in an uninteresting way, to regulate their use in construction,—a tedious and arid system, which affords the child no interest.”