A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education

by James Gall

On the Exercises by which Nature may be imitated in cultivating
the Powers of the Mind.

In the educational processes of Nature, her first object appears to be the cultivation of her pupil's mind; and this, therefore, ought also to be the first concern of the parent and teacher.—The wisdom of this arrangement is obvious. For as success in a great measure depends upon the vigour and extent of those powers, their early cultivation will render the succeeding exercises easy and pleasant, and will greatly abridge the anxiety and labour of both teacher and scholar.

There is no doubt a great diversity in the natural capacities of children; and phrenology, as well as daily experience shews, that children who are apt in learning one thing, may be exceedingly dull and backward in acquiring others. But after making every allowance for this variety in the intellectual powers of children, it is well established by experience, and repeated experiments have confirmed the fact,[9] that the very dullest and most obtuse of the children found in any of our schools, are really capable of rapid cultivation, and may, by the use of proper means, be very soon brought to bear their part in the usual exercises fitted for the ordinary children. A large proportion of the dulness so frequently complained of by teachers arises, not so much from any natural defect, or inherent mental weakness in the child, as from the want of that early mental exercise,—real mental culture,—of which we are here speaking. Whenever this dulness in a sane scholar continues for any length of time, there is good reason to fear that it is owing to some palpable mismanagement on the part of the parent or teacher. On examination it will most likely be found, either that the pupil has had exercises prescribed to him which the powers of his mind were as yet incapable of accomplishing; or, if the exercises themselves have been suitable, there has been more prescribed than he was able to overtake. In either case the effect will be the same. The mind has been unnaturally burdened, or overstretched; confusion of ideas and mental weakness have been the consequence; and if so, the very attempt to keep up with his companions in the class only tends to aggravate the evil. Hence arises the propriety of following Nature in making the expansion and cultivation of the powers of the mind our first object; and our design in the present chapter is to examine into the means by which, in the exercises of the school, she may be successfully imitated in the operations which she employs for this purpose.

We have in our previous investigations seen, that the cultivation of the mental powers is a work of extraordinary simplicity, depending entirely upon one act of the mind,—the reiteration of ideas. We have proved, by a variety of familiar instances, that wherever this act takes place, the mind is, and must be exercised, and so far strengthened; while, on the contrary, wherever it does not take place, there is neither mental exercise, nor any perceptible accession of mental strength. It does not depend upon the particular form of the exercise, whether it consists of reading, hearing, writing, or speaking; but simply and entirely upon the reality and the frequency of the reiteration of the included ideas during it. This makes the cultivation and strengthening of the powers of the mind a very simple and a very certain operation. For if the teacher can succeed by any means in producing frequent and successive repetitions of this act of the mind in any of his pupils, Nature will be true to her own law, and mental culture, and mental strength will assuredly follow;—but, on the contrary, whenever in a school exercise this act is awanting, there can be no permanent progression in the education of the pupil, and no amelioration in the state of his mind. The mechanical reading or repeating of words, for example, like the fingering of musical instruments, may be performed for months or years successively, without the powers of the mind being actively engaged in the process at all; leaving the child without mental exercise, and consequently without improvement.

In following out the only legitimate plan for the accomplishment of this fundamental object, that of imitating Nature, the first thing required by the teacher is an exercise, or series of exercises, by which he shall be able at his own will to enforce upon his pupils this important act of the mind. If this object can be successfully attained, then the proper means for the intellectual improvement of the child are secured; but as long as it is awanting, his mental cultivation is either left to chance, or to the capricious decision of his own will;—for experience shews, that although a child may be compelled to read, or to repeat the words of his exercises, they contain no power by which the teacher can ensure the reiteration of the ideas they contain. The words may correctly and fluently pass from the tongue, while the mind is actively engaged upon something else, and as much beyond the reach of the teacher as ever. But if the desiderated exercise could be procured, the power of enforcing mental activity upon a prescribed subject would then remain, not in the possession of the child, but would be transferred to the teacher, at whose pleasure the mental cultivation of the pupil would proceed, whether he himself willed it or no.

In the "catechetical exercise," as it has been called, and which has of late years been extensively used by our best teachers, the desideratum above described has been most happily and effectively supplied to the Educationist. This valuable exercise may not perhaps be new;—but certainly its nature, and its importance in education, till of late years, has been altogether overlooked, or unknown. It differs from the former mode of catechising, (or rather of using catechisms) in this, that whereas a catechism provides an answer for the child in a set form of words,—the catechetical exercise, having first provided him with the means, compels him to search for, to select, and to construct an answer for himself. For example, an announcement is given by his teacher, or it is read from his book. This is the raw material upon which both the teacher and the child are to work, and within the boundaries of which the teacher especially must strictly confine himself. Upon this announcement a question is founded,[10] which obliges the child, before he can even prepare an answer, to reiterate in his own mind, not the words,—for that would not answer his purpose,—but the several ideas contained in the sentence or truth announced. All these ideas must be perceived,—they must pass in review before the mind,—and from among them he must select the one required, arrange it in his own way, and give it to the teacher entirely as his own idea, and clothed altogether in his own words.

In the common method of making use of catechisms, the words of the answer may be read, or they may be committed to memory, and may be repeated with ease and fluency; while the ideas,—the truths they contain,—may neither be perceived nor reiterated. In this there is neither mental exercise, nor mental improvement;—and, what is worse, without the catechetical exercise, the teacher has no means of knowing whether it be so or not. By means of the catechetical exercise, on the contrary, there can be no evasion,—no doubt as to the mental activity of the pupil, and his consequent mental improvement. Its benefits are very extensive; and in employing it the teacher is not only sure that the ideas in the announcement have been perceived and reiterated, but that a numerous train of useful mental operations must have taken place, before his pupil could by any possibility return him an answer to his questions. We shall, before proceeding, point out a few of these.

Let us then suppose that a child either reads, or repeats as the answer to a question, the words, "Jesus died for sinners."—At this point in the former mode of using a catechism, the exercise of the pupil stopped; and the parent or teacher understanding the meaning of the sentence, and clearly perceiving the ideas himself, usually took it for granted that the child also did so, or at least at some future time would do so. This was mere conjecture; and he had no means of ascertaining its certainty, however important. It is at this point that the catechetical exercise commences its operations. When the child has repeated the words, or when the teacher for the first time announces them, the mind of the child may be in a state very unfavourable to its improvement; but as soon as the teacher asks him a question founded upon one or more of the ideas which the announcement contains, and which he must answer without farther help, the state of his mind is instantly and materially changed. Hitherto he may have been altogether passive on the subject;—nay, his mind while reading or repeating the words, may have been busily engaged on something else, or altogether occupied with his companions or his play;—but as soon as the teacher asks him "Who died?" there is an instant withdrawal of the mind from every thing else, and an exclusive concentration of its powers upon the ideas in the announcement. He must think,—and he must think in a certain way, and upon the specific ideas presented to him by the teacher,—before it is possible for him to return an answer. It is on this account that this exercise is so effective an instrument in cultivating the powers of the mind;—and it is to the long series of exercises which take place in this operation, that we are now calling the attention of the reader, that he may perceive how closely this exercise follows in the line prescribed by Nature, in creating occasions for the successive reiteration of different ideas suggested by one question.

When, in pursuing the catechetical exercise, a question is asked from an announcement, there is first a call upon the attention, and an exercise of mind upon the question asked, the words of which must be translated by the pupil into their proper ideas, which accordingly he must both perceive and understand. He has then to revert to the ideas (not the words) contained in the original announcement, the words of which are perhaps still ringing in his ears; and these he must also perceive and reiterate in his mind, before he can either understand them or prepare to give an answer. At this point the child is necessarily in possession of the ideas—the truths—conveyed by the announcement; and therefore at this point one great end of the teacher has in so far been gained. But the full benefit of the exercise, in so far as it is capable of fixing these truths still more permanently on the memory, and of disciplining the mind, has not yet been exhausted. After the pupil has reiterated in his mind the ideas contained in the original sentence, or passage announced, he has again to revert to the question of the teacher, and compare it with the several ideas which the announcement contains. He has then to chuse from among them,—all of them being still held in review by the mind,—the particular idea to which his attention has been called by the question;—and last of all, and which is by no means the least as a mental exercise, he has to clothe this particular idea in words, and construct his sentence in such a way as to make it both sense and grammar. In this last effort, it is worthy of remark, children, after having been but a short while subjected to this exercise, almost invariably succeed, although they know nothing about grammar, and may perhaps never have heard of the name.

But even this is not all. There has as yet been only one question asked, and the answer to this question refers to only one idea contained in the announcement. But it embraces at least three several ideas; and each of these ideas, by the catechetical exercise, is capable of originating other questions, perfectly distinct from each other, and each of which gives rise to a similar mental process, and with equally beneficial results, in exercising and strengthening the powers of the mind.