Perhaps they were distressed by it? Too great a strain was bad for young heads.
“Let us stop,” said Bouvard.
There is nothing so stupid as to make children learn by heart; yet, if the memory is not exercised, it will go to waste, and so they taught the youngsters to recite like parrots the first fables of La Fontaine. The children expressed their approval of the ant that heaped up treasure, of the wolf that devoured the lamb, and of the lion that took everyone’s share.
When they had become more audacious, they spoiled the garden. But what amusement could be provided for them?
Jean Jacques Rousseau in Emile advises the teacher to get the pupil to make his own playthings. Bouvard could not contrive to make a hoop or Pécuchet to sew up a ball. They passed on to toys that were instructive, such as cut-paper work. Pécuchet showed them his microscope. When the candle was lighted, Bouvard would sketch with the shadow of his finger on the wall the profile of a hare or a pig. But the pupils grew tired of it.
Writers have gone into raptures about the delightfulness of an open-air luncheon or a boating excursion. Was it possible for them really to have such recreations? Fénelon recommends from time to time “an innocent conversation.” They could not invent one. So they had to come back to the lessons—the multiplying bowls, the erasures of their scrawlings, and the process of teaching them how to read by copying printed characters. All had proved failures, when suddenly a bright idea struck them.
As Victor was prone to gluttony, they showed him the name of a dish: he soon ran through Le Cuisinier Français with ease. Victorine, being a coquette, was promised a new dress if she wrote to the dressmaker for it: in less than three weeks she accomplished this feat. This was playing on their vices—a pernicious method, no doubt; but it had succeeded.
Now that they had learned to read and write, what should they be taught? Another puzzle.
Girls have no need of learning, as in the case of boys. All the same, they are usually brought up like mere animals, their sole intellectual baggage being confined to mystical follies.
Is it expedient to teach them languages? “Spanish and Italian,” the Swan of Cambray lays down, “scarcely serve any purpose save to enable people to read dangerous books.”