Household Education

by Harriet Martineau

Up to this point, and for some way beyond it, children are better off at home than at school; and no parent should be induced to think otherwise by what is seen to be achieved at Infant Schools. At some Infant Schools, little children who can scarcely speak, are found able to say and do many wonderful things which might make inexperienced mothers fear that their little ones at home had not been done justice to, and must be sadly backward in their education: but if the anxious mother will consider a little, and keep on the watch, she will perceive that her children are better at home. These Infant Schools were set on foot with the most benevolent of intentions; and they are really a vast benefit to a large class in society: but it does not follow that they afford the best training for infants. In their very nature they cannot do so. When we stand in the midst of such an assemblage, we feel what a blessing it is that little creatures who would be locked up in garrets all day while the parents were at work, liable to falls or fire, or who would be tumbling about in the streets or roads, dirty, quarrelsome, and exposed to bad company, should be collected here under safe guardianship, and taught, and kept clean, and amused with harmless play: but we cannot help seeing, at the same time, that there is something unnatural in the method; and whatever is unnatural is always radically bad. Nature makes households, family groups where no two children are of the same age, and where, with the utmost activity, there is a certain degree of quietness, retirement, and repose; whereas, in the Infant School there is a crowd of little creatures, dozens of whom are of the same age; and quietness can be obtained only by drilling, while play occasions an uproar which no nerves can easily bear. The brain and nerves of infants are tender and irritable; and in the quietest home, a sensible mother takes care that the little creature is protected from hurry, and loud noises, and fear, and fatigue of its faculties. She sees when it begins to look pale, or turns cross or sick, and instantly removes it from excitement. But it is impossible thus to protect each child in a school: and the consequence is that the amount of mortality in Infant Schools, as in every large assemblage of infants, is very great. There is no saying whether as many might not perish from accident and some kind of misery, if they were left in their garrets and street haunts; but the facts show that home is the proper place for little children whose parents make a real home for them; and no apparent forwardness of school infants can alter the case.

In truth, school is no place of education for any children whatever till their minds are well put in action. This is the work which has to be done at home, and which may be done in all homes where the mother is a sensible woman. This done, a good school is a resource of inestimable advantage for cultivating the intellect, and aiding the acquisition of knowledge: but it is of little or no use without preparation at home. So at the age of which we speak, parents may be satisfied that they have the matter in their own hands.

We have seen that the Perceptive faculties are the first of the intellectual powers which act: and that there is plenty of material for their exercise everywhere, and all day long.

The next set of faculties comes pretty early into operation, and so much of the future wealth of the mind depends on their cultivation that they ought to have the serious attention of parents. I refer to the Conceptive faculties. The time has come when the child is perhaps less intensely impressed by actual objects, while it becomes capable of conceiving of something that it does not see. At this period, the little boy drags about the horse that has lost head and tail and a leg or two: and the little girl hugs a rag bundle which she calls her doll. The boy does not want a better horse, nor the girl a real doll. The idea is everything to them, by virtue of their conceptive faculty. Staring, meagre pictures please them now,—better than the finest; and stories, with few incidents and no filling up. The faculty is so vigorous, while, of course, very narrow in its range, from the scantiness of the child's knowledge, that the merest sketch is enough to stimulate it to action; the rudest toys, the most meagre drawing, the baldest story. The mother's business is now clear and easy. Her business is to supply more and more material for these faculties to work upon:—to give, as occasion arises, more and more knowledge of actual things, and furnish representations or suggestions in the course of her intercourse with the child. Nothing is easier; for in fact she has only to make herself the child's cheerful companion: and in a manner which can go on while she is employed in her household occupations, or walking in the fields or the streets. The child asks a myriad of questions; and she must make some kind of cheerful answer to them all, if she lets him talk at all. She will often have to tell him that she does not know this or that; for a child's questions reach far beyond the bounds of our knowledge: but she must not leave him without some sort of answer to appease his restless faculties. And his questions will suggest to her a multitude of things to tell him which he will be eager to hear, as long as they hang upon any thing real which he knows already. Stories and pictures (including toys, which to him are pictures) are what he likes best; and she will make either stories or pictures,—short and vivid,—of what she tells him. The stories and pictures of her conversation must be simple and literal; and so must any sketches she may make for him with pencil and paper, or a bit of chalk upon the pavement. She may make four straight strokes, with two horizontal lines above, and a circle for a head, and call it a horse; and a horse it will be to him, because it calls up the image of a horse in his mind. But if she draws it ever so well, and puts wings to it, he will not like it half so much, even if she tells him that its name is Pegasus, and there are some pretty stories about such a horse. Perhaps he will be afraid of it.

There can scarcely be a stronger instance of the power of such a child's conceptive faculty than in his own attempts to draw. He draws the cat, or a soldier, and is in raptures with it. Mark his surprise when his mother points out to him that the cat's head is bigger than her body, and that the soldier is all legs and arms and gun, and has no body at all. He sees this, and admits it, and draws a better one: but he would not have found out for himself that there was anything amiss the first time. The idea was complete in his mind; and he thought he saw its representation on the paper, till his mother roused his perceptive powers by making him observe the real cat and soldier, and their proportions. I remember once being amused at seeing how very short a time was necessary to bring the perceptive faculties into their due relation to the conceptive. A little boy who had taken a journey, was exceedingly delighted with the river-side inn at Ferry-bridge in Yorkshire; and he must draw it. When he was a hundred miles further north, he must draw it again: and diligently enough he persevered, kneeling on a chair,—drawing the river and the bridge, and a house, and a heap of coals,—each coal being round, and almost as big as the house. When his paper was nearly all scrawled over, he went unwillingly away to his dinner, from which he hastened back to his drawing. But O! what consternation there was in his face, and what large tears rolled down his cheeks, till he hid his face with his pinafore. He wailed and sobbed:—"somebody had spoiled his drawing." When asked what made him think so, and assured that nobody had touched it, he sobbed out "I'm sure I never made it such a muddle." Before dinner, he saw his work with the conceptive,—after dinner with the perceptive faculties; and it is no wonder that he thought two persons had been at it.

Without going over again any of the ground traversed in the chapter on Fear, I may just observe that at this period children are particularly liable to fear. Almost any appearance suffices to suggest images; and the repetition of any image invariably, at any time or place, is in itself terrifying to those of older nerves than the children we are thinking of. Now is the time when portraits seem to stare at the gazer, and to turn their eyes wherever he moves. Now is the time when a crack in the plaster of a wall, or an outline in a chintz pattern or a paper-hanging, suggests the image of some monster, and perhaps makes the child afraid of his room or his bed, while his mother has no perception of the fact. The mother should be on the watch, without any appearance of being so.

I have spoken of only the early stage of the activity of the conceptive faculties. We see how it goes on in the appetite for fiction which is common to all children,—in the eagerness of boys for books of voyages and travels, and for playing soldiers, and school-master, and making processions, while the girls are playing school-mistress, and dressing up, and pretending to be the queen. The whole period is, or ought to be, very precious to the parents; for it is the time for storing their children's minds with images and ideas, which are the materials for the exercise of the higher faculties at a later time. The simple method of management is to practise the old maxim "Live and let live." The mother's mind must be awake, to meet the vivacious mind of the child: and she must see that the child's is lively and natural, and be careful neither to over-excite it by her anxiety to be always teaching, nor to baulk and depress it by discouraging too much its sometimes inconvenient loquacity and curiosity. It is well that there should be times when children of six and upwards should amuse themselves and one another without troubling their elders; but a vivacious child must talk and inquire a great deal every day, or, if repressed, suffer from some undue exercise of its mental activity.

It should never be forgotten that the happier a child is, the cleverer he will be. This is not only because, in a state of happiness, the mind is free, and at liberty for the exercise of its faculties, instead of spending its thoughts and energy in brooding over troubles; but also because the action of the brain is stronger when the frame is in a state of hilarity: the ideas are more clear; impressions of outward objects are more vivid; and the memory will not let them slip. This is reason enough for the mother to take some care that she is the cheerful guide and comforter that her child needs. If she is anxious or fatigued she will exercise some control over herself, and speak cheerfully, and try to enter freely into the subject of the moment;—to meet the child's mind, in short, instead of making his sink for want of companionship. A rather low instance of the effect of the stimulus of joy in quickening the powers occurred within my knowledge;—a rather low one, but illustrative enough. A little girl, the youngest of her class at school, did her French lessons fairly; but, as a matter of course, was always at or near the bottom, while a tall girl, five years older, clever and industrious, was always, as a matter of course, at the top. One day, there happened to be a long word in question in the vocabulary, which nobody knew but the little girl; so she went to the top. There was not much excitement of ambition in the case: she felt it to be an accident merely, and the tall girl was very kind to her;—there could hardly be less of the spirit of rivalry in such a case than there was here. But the joy of the child was great; and her surprise,—both at the fact of her position, and at the power she found in herself to keep it;—and keep it she did for many weeks, though the tall girl never missed a word in all that time. The dull French vocabulary suddenly became to the child a book of living imagery. The very letters of the words impressed themselves like pictures upon her memory; and each word, becoming suddenly interesting of itself, called up some imagery, which prevented its being forgotten. All this was pleasant; and then there was the comfort and security about the lesson being perfect. The child not only hoped every day that she should get well through, but felt it impossible that she should ever forget a word of it. When at last she failed, it was through depression of spirits. While she was learning her lesson at home, her baby-sister was ill, and crying sadly. It was impossible to get any impression out of the book:—the page turned into common French vocabulary again; and the next morning, not only the tall girl stepped into her proper place, but the little one rapidly passed down to her old stand at the bottom.

Children who read from the love of reading are usually supremely happy over their book. A wise parent will indulge the love of reading, not only from kindness in permitting the child to do what it likes best, but because what is read with enjoyment has intense effect upon the intellect. The practice of reading for amusement must not begin too soon: and it must be permitted by very slow degrees, till the child is so practised in the art of reading as to have its whole mind at liberty for the subject, without having to think about the lines or the words. Till he is sufficiently practised for this, he should be read to: and it will then soon appear whether he is likely to be moderate when he gets a book into his own hands.—My own opinion is that it is better to leave him to his natural tastes,—to his instincts,—when that important period of his life arrives which makes him an independent reader. Of course, his proper duty must be done;—his lessons, or work of other kinds, and his daily exercise. But it seems to me better to abstain from interfering with that kind of strong inclination than to risk the evils of thwarting it. Perhaps scarcely any person of mature years can conceive what the appetite for reading is to a child. It goes off, or becomes changed in mature years, to such a degree as to make the facts of a reading childhood scarcely credible in remembrance, or even when before the eyes. But it is all right; and the process had better not be disturbed. The apprehension of a child is so quick, his conceptive faculty is so ravenous for facts and pictures, or the merest suggestions, and he is so entirely free from those philosophical checks which retard in adults the process of reception from books, that he can, at ten years old, read the same book twice as fast as he can,—if he duly improves meanwhile,—twenty years later. I have seen a young girl read Moore's Lalla Rookh through, except a very few pages, before breakfast,—and not a late breakfast; and not a passage of the poem was ever forgotten. When she had done, the Arabian scenes appeared to be the reality, and the breakfast table and brothers and sisters the dream: but that was sure to come right; and all the ideas of the thick volume were added to her store. I have seen a school-boy of ten lay himself down, back uppermost, with the quarto edition of "Thalaba" before him, on the first day of the Easter holidays, and turn over the leaves, notwithstanding his inconvenient position, as fast as if he was looking for something, till, in a very few hours it was done, and he was off with it to the public library, bringing back the "Curse of Kehama." Thus he went on with all Southey's poems, and some others, through his short holidays,—scarcely moving voluntarily all those days except to run to the library. He came out of the process so changed, that none of his family could help being struck by it. The expression of his eye, the cast of his countenance, his use of words, and his very gait were changed. In ten days, he had advanced years in intelligence: and I have always thought that this was the turning-point of his life. His parents wisely and kindly let him alone,—aware that school would presently put an end to all excess in the new indulgence. I can speak from experience of what children feel towards parents who mercifully leave them to their own propensities,—forbearing all reproach about the ill manners and the selfishness of which the sinners are keenly conscious all the while. Some children's greediness for books is like a drunkard's for wine. They can no more keep their hands off a beloved book than the tippler from the bottle before him. The great difference as to the safety of the case is that the child's greediness is sure to subside into moderation in time, from the development of new faculties, while the drunkard's is sure to go on increasing till all is over with him. If parents would regard the matter in this way, they would neither be annoyed at the excess of the inconvenient propensity, nor proud of any child who has it. It is no sign yet of a superiority of intellect; much less of that wisdom which in adults is commonly supposed to arise from large book-knowledge. It is simply a natural appetite for that provision of ideas and images which should, at this season, be laid in for the exercise of the higher faculties which have yet to come into use.—As I have said, I know from experience the state of things which exists when a child cannot help reading to an amount which the parents think excessive, and yet are unwilling, for good reasons, to prohibit. One Sunday afternoon, when I was seven years old, I was prevented by illness from going to chapel;—a circumstance so rare that I felt very strange and listless. I did not go to the maid who was left in the house, but lounged about the drawing-room, where, among other books which the family had been reading, was one turned down upon its face. It was a dull-looking octavo volume, thick, and bound in calf, as untempting a book to the eyes of a child as could well be seen: but, because it happened to be open, I took it up. The paper was like skim milk,—thin and blue, and the printing very ordinary. Moreover, I saw the word Argument,—a very repulsive word to a child. But my eye caught the word "Satan;" and I instantly wanted to know how anybody could argue about Satan. I saw that he fell through chaos, found the place in the poetry;—and lived heart, mind, and soul in Milton from that day till I was fourteen. I remember nothing more of that Sunday, vivid as is my recollection of the moment of plunging into chaos: but I remember that from that time till a young friend gave me a pocket edition of Milton, the calf-bound volume was never to be found because I had got it somewhere; and that, for all those years, to me the universe moved to Milton's music. I wonder how much of it I knew by heart—enough to be always repeating some of it to myself, with every change of light and darkness, and sound and silence,—the moods of the day, and the seasons of the year. It was not my love of Milton which required the forbearance of my parents,—except for my hiding the book, and being often in an absent fit. It was because this luxury had made me ravenous for more. I had a book in my pocket,—a book under my pillow; and in my lap as I sat at meals: or rather, on this last occasion it was a newspaper. I used to purloin the daily London paper before dinner, and keep possession of it,—with a painful sense of the selfishness of the act; and with a daily pang of shame and self-reproach, I slipped away from the table when the dessert was set on, to read in another room. I devoured all Shakspere, sitting on a footstool, and reading by firelight, while the rest of the family were still at table. I was incessantly wondering that this was permitted; and intensely, though silently grateful I was for the impunity and the indulgence. It never extended to the omission of any of my proper business. I learned my lessons; but it was with the prospect of reading while I was brushing my hair at bedtime; and many a time have I stood reading, with the brush suspended, till I was far too cold to sleep. I made shirts with due diligence,—being fond of sewing; but it was with Goldsmith, or Thomson, or Milton open on my lap, under my work, or hidden by the table, that I might learn pages and cantos by heart. The event justified my parents in their indulgence. I read more and more slowly, fewer and fewer authors, and with ever-increasing seriousness and reflexion, till I became one of the slowest of readers, and a comparatively sparing one.—Of course, one example is not a rule for all; but the number of ravenous readers among children is so large, and among adults so small in comparison, that I am disposed to consider it a general fact that when the faculties, naturally developed, reach a certain point of forwardness, it is the time for laying in a store of facts and impressions from books which are needed for ulterior purposes.

The parents' main business during this process is to look to the quality of the books read:—I mean merely to see that the child has the freest access to those of the best quality. Nor do I mean only to such as the parent may think good for a child of such and such an age. The child's own mind is a truer judge in this case than the parents' suppositions. Let but noble books be on the shelf,—the classics of our language,—and the child will get nothing but good.