After tea that evening, Lucy’s father and mother, and Mary Jay, sat down to talk about Lucy’s studies.
“I believe,” said Lucy’s father, “that teachers have often very wrong ideas about the proper studies for children. The question is, not what studies are the easiest, but what can be pursued to best advantage. Now, there are some things which children can learn thoroughly, as far as they learn them at all, and others that they cannot learn thoroughly.”
“Not if they are thoroughly taught?” said Mary Jay.
“No,” said he, “because they cannot be thoroughly taught; for the very things that the study relates to, are such that they cannot really appreciate them. Take history, for example. If a child, like Lucy, is to study history, she reads, perhaps, in her book, that a rebellion broke out, and the leaders of it beheaded the king. Now, she may commit the words to memory, it is true, and recite the lesson fluently; but she cannot have any adequate idea of the truth, because the elements of it are beyond her capacity.”
“I don’t understand one word that you say,” said Lucy.
“Why, if you read in a book of history,” said her father, “that a rebellion broke out, and that the leaders of it beheaded the king, you cannot really understand it, because you cannot understand what a rebellion is, or what the leaders are, or even what a king is.”
“Why, father,” said Lucy, “I know what a king is already; and Mary Jay could tell me the other things.”
“What is a king?” asked her father.
“Why he—he—is a kind of man, and he lives in a great palace;—and he makes people obey him, I believe,” said Lucy.
Her father did not say any thing in reply to her description of a king; but Mary Jay saw very clearly, that she could not possibly have any thing more than a very inadequate and childish idea of a king.