Household Education

by Harriet Martineau

CHAPTER XVIII.
INTELLECTUAL TRAINING.—ITS REQUISITES.

We are all accustomed to speak of the Intellect and moral powers of man as if they were so distinct from one another that we can deal with each set of powers without touching the other.

It is true that there is a division between the intellectual and moral powers of man, as there is between one moral power and another. It is true that we can think of them separately, and treat them separately: but it does not follow that they will work separately. No part of the brain will act alone, no part begins its own action. It is always put in action by another part previously at work, and it excites in its turn some other portion. While we sleep, that part of the brain is at work on which depend those animal functions which are always going on: and, as we know by our dreams, other portions work with this, giving us ideas and feelings during sleep—perhaps as many as by day, if we could only recollect them. The animal portions of the brain set the intellectual and moral organs to work, and these act upon each other, so that there is no separating their action,—no possibility of employing one faculty at a time without help from any other. As memory cannot act till attention has been awakened,—in other words, as people cannot remember what they have never observed and received, so the timid cannot understand, unless it is in a docile and calm state; nor meditate well without the exercise of candour and truthfulness; nor imagine nobly without the help of veneration and hope. If we take any great intellectual work and examine it, we shall see what a variety of faculties, moral as well as intellectual, have gone to the making of it. Take "Paradise Lost," a work so glorious for the loftiness of its imagination, and the extent of its learning, and the beauty of its illustrations, and the harmony of its versification! These are its intellectual beauties: but look what moral beauties are inseparable from these. Look at the veneration,—not only towards God, but towards all holiness, and power, and beauty! Look at the purity, the love, the hopefulness, the strain of high honour throughout! And this intellectual and moral beauty are so blended, that we see how impossible it would be for the one to exist without the other. It is just so in the human character—the intellect of a human being cannot be of a high order, (though some particular faculties may be very strong) if the moral nature is low and feeble: and the moral state cannot be a lofty one where the intellect is torpid.

It does not follow from this that to be very good a child must be exceedingly clever and "highly educated," as we call it. There are plenty of highly-educated people who are not morally good; and there are many honest and amiable and industrious people who cannot read and write. The thing is, we misuse the word "Education." Book-learning is compatible with great poverty of intellect; and there may be a very fine understanding, great power of attention and observation, and possibly, though rarely, of reflection, in a person who has never learned to read,—if the moral goodness of that person has put his mind into a calm and teachable and happy state, and his powers of thought have been stimulated by active affections; if, as we say, his heart has quickened his head. These are truths very important to know; and they ought to be consolatory to parents who are grieved and alarmed because they cannot send their children to school,—supposing that their intellectual part must suffer and go to waste for want of school training and instruction from books. I will say simply and openly what I think about this.

I think that no children, in any rank of life, can acquire so much book-knowledge at home as at a good school, or have their intellectual faculties so well roused and trained. I have never seen an instance of such high attainment in languages, mathematics, history, or philosophy in young people taught at home,—even by the best masters,—as in those who have been in a good school. Without going into the reasons of this, which would lend us out of our way here, I would fully admit the fact.

There are two ways of taking it. First, it cannot be helped. A much larger number of people are unable to send their children to school than can do so. The queen cannot send her children to school: and the children of the peerage are under great disadvantage. The girls cannot, or do not, go from home; and the boys go only to one or another of a very small choice of public schools, where they must run tremendous risks to both morals and intellect. Then there are multitudes of families, in town and country, among rich and poor, where the children must be taught at home. The number is much larger of the children who do not go to school than of those who do. If we consider, again, how large a proportion of schools, taking them from the highest to the lowest, are so bad that children learn little in them, it is clear that the home-trained intellects are out of all proportion more numerous than the school-trained.

The other way of looking at the matter is in order to inquire what school advantages may be brought home—what there is in the school that children may have the benefit of at home.

The fundamental difference between school and home is clear enough. At school, everything is done by rule; by a law which was made without a view to any particular child, and which governs all alike: whereas, at home, the government is not one of law, working on from year to year without change, but of love, or, at least, of the mind of the parents, varying with circumstances, and with the ages and dispositions of the children. There is no occasion to point out here how great are the moral advantages of a good home in comparison with the best of schools. Our business now is with the intellectual training. Can the advantages of school law be brought into the home?

I think they may, to a certain extent: and I think it of great importance that they should. Law will not do all at home that it does at school. It is known to be new made, for the sake of the parties under it; and it cannot possibly work so undeviatingly in a family as in a school; and the children of a family, no two of whom are of the same age, cannot have their faculties so stimulated to achieve irksome labour as in a large class of comrades of the same age and standing. But still, rule and regularity will do much: and when we consider the amount of drudgery that children have to get through in acquiring the elements of knowledge, we shall feel it to be only humane and fair to give them any aid that can be afforded through the plans of the household.

Those kinds and parts of knowledge which interest the reasoning faculties and the imagination are not in question just now. They come by and by, and can better take care of themselves, or are more sure to be taken care of by others, than the drudgery which is the first stage in all learning. The drudgery comes first; and it is wise and kind to let it come soon enough. The quickness of eye, and tenacity and readiness of memory, which belong to infancy should be made use of while at their brightest, for gaining such knowledge as is to be had by the mere eye, ear, and memory. How easily can the most ordinary child learn a hymn or other piece of poetry by heart;—sometimes before it can speak plain, and very often indeed before it can understand the meaning! What a pity that this readiness should not be used,—that the child, for instance, should not learn to count, and to read, and to say the multiplication table, while it can learn these things with the least trouble! We must remember that while we see the child to be about a great and heavy work, the child himself does not know this, and cannot be oppressed by the thought. All he knows about is the little bit he learns every day. And that little bit is easy to him, if the support of law be given him. It is here that law must come in to help him. He should, if possible, be saved all uncertainty, all conflict in his little mind, as to his daily business. If there is a want of certainty and punctuality about his lessons, there will be room for the thought of something which, for the moment, he would like better; and again, his young faculties will become confused and irregular in their working from uncertainty of seasons and of plans. If there can be a particular place, and a particular time for him, every day but Sundays, and he is never put off, his faculties will come to their work with a freshness and steadiness which nothing but habit will secure. A law of work which leaves him no choice, but sets all his faculties free for his business, saves him half the labour of it; as it does in after life to those who are so blessed as to be destined to necessary, and not voluntary labour. In houses where there cannot be a room set apart for the lessons, perhaps there may be a corner. If there cannot be any place, perhaps there may be a time: and the time should be that which can best be secured from interruption. Where the father is so fond of his children, and so capable of self-denial for their sakes as to devote an hour or two of his evenings to the instruction of his children, he may rely upon it that he is heaping up blessings for himself with every minute of those hours. His presence, the presence of the worker of the household, is equal to school and home influence together. The scantiness of his leisure makes the law; and his devotedness in using it thus makes the inestimable home influence. Under his teaching, if it be regular and intelligent, head and heart will come on together, to his encouragement now, and his great future satisfaction.