617. The Theorists of Education.—Along with the progress of primary instruction, the historian of the pedagogy of the nineteenth century would have also to follow the development of secondary instruction and of superior instruction. He would have to write the history of the University, reforming the methods of its lycées and its colleges, and ever enlarging in a noble spirit of liberty the studies of its faculties. But we should depart from the limits of our plan, were we to undertake this order of inquiries, and were we to enter into details which pertain to contemporary history.
That which should engage our attention is the theoretical reflections of the different thinkers who, in our century, have discussed the principles and the laws of education, of those at least who have become celebrated for their novel views.
618. Jacotot (1770-1840).—Jacotot, who has maintained scarcely any celebrity in France except for the singularity of his paradoxes, is perhaps of all French educators of the nineteenth century the one who has received most attention abroad, particularly in Germany. “Jacotot,” says Doctor Dittes, “has incited a lasting improvement in the public instruction of Germany. The reform which he introduced into the teaching of reading is important. He started with an entire sentence, which was pronounced, explained, and learned by heart by the children, and afterward analyzed into its constituent parts.”[266] On the other hand, a French critic, Bernard Perez, has drawn the following portrait of Jacotot:—
“He was the best and the most lovable of men. He had the firmness, patience, honesty, and candor of superior minds, an inexhaustible goodness and a universal charity which make him close all his letters with this formula, ‘I especially commend to you the poor.’ This ardent philanthropy, as well as his enthusiasm and his zeal for instruction, pervades even his writings, though full of inequalities and verbal eccentricities.”[267]
619. Paradoxes of Jacotot.—In his principal work, Universal Instruction,[268] Jacotot has set forth his principles, which are so many paradoxes, “All intelligences are equal”; “Every man can teach, and even teach that which he himself does not know”; “One can instruct himself all alone”; “All is in all.”
Doubtless at the basis of Jacotot’s paradoxes there is an element of truth; for example, the very just idea that the best teaching is that which encourages young minds to think for themselves. Doubtless also he qualified the exaggeration of his statement when he said that the inequality of wills at once destroys the equality of intelligences. But the violent and unreasonable form which he gave to his ideas has compromised them in public opinion. That which is true and fruitful in his system has been forgotten, and we recall only the whimsical formulas in which he delighted.
620. All is in All.—The most famous of Jacotot’s paradoxes is the formula, “All is in all.” The whole of Latin is in a page of Latin; the whole of music is in a piece of music; the whole of arithmetic, in a rule of computation.
In practice, Jacotot made his pupils learn the first six books of the Telemachus. Upon this text, once learned, and recited twice a week, there were constructed all sorts of exercises, and these sufficed for the complete knowledge of the French language. In the same way the Epitome Historiæ Sacræ, put in the hands of pupils, and learned in two months, was almost the sole instrument for the study of Latin. In fact, and aside from evident exaggerations, Jacotot rightly thought that it is necessary, as he said, “to learn something well, and to connect with this all the rest.”