PART IV.
ON THE SELECTION OF PROPER TRUTHS AND SUBJECTS TO BE TAUGHT IN SCHOOLS AND FAMILIES.
CHAP. I.
On the General Principles which ought to regulate our choice of
Truths and Subjects to be taught to the Young.
In all cases where our temporal interests are concerned, a proper discrimination in the selection of such exercises and studies as shall best suit our purpose, is considered as not only prudent, but necessary. The neglect of this would, indeed, by men of the world, be esteemed the height of folly. No ship-master thinks of perfecting his apprentices by lectures on agriculture; nor does the farmer train his son and successor to cultivate the land, by enforcing upon him the study of navigation. In a public school, therefore, when all classes of the community are to be taught, the truths and exercises should be selected in such a manner, that they shall, if possible, be equally useful to all; leaving the navigator and the agriculturist, the surgeon and the lawyer, to supplement their general education, by the study of those special branches of learning which their several professions require.
But even this is not enough:—Among those subjects and exercises in which all the children in a school may be equally interested, there are many which are neither equally useful, nor equally indispensable. A thorough consideration, and a careful selection of those which are most valuable in themselves, and which are most likely to be useful during life, become both prudent and necessary. In all ordinary cases, men act upon this principle. Health, food, and recreation, are all good and useful things; but even from among these we are sometimes compelled to make a choice, and the principle of our decision is always the same. When we cannot procure all, we chuse those which appear to us the most necessary, and abandon the others without regret. A man readily denies himself to sports and amusement, when he finds that he must labour for a supply of food and necessaries; and even the pleasures of the table are willingly sacrificed, for the purpose of securing or restoring the blessings of health. In like manner, those branches of education which are most important for securing the welfare of the pupils, and most for the benefit of society, ought to be selected and preferred before all others; seeing that to neglect, or wilfully to err in this matter, would be injurious to the child, and unjust to the community.—Our object at present therefore is, to enquire what those general principles are which ought to regulate us in our choice of subjects and exercises for the education of youth.
1. The first and fundamental rule which ought to guide the Educationist and the Parent in the selection of subjects for the school, is to chuse those which are to promote the happiness and welfare of the pupil himself; without regard, in the first instance at least, to the interests or the ease of his friends, of the teacher, or of any third party whatever.—Children are not the property of their parents, nor even of the community. They are strictly and unalienably the property of the Almighty, whose servants and stewards the parents and the public are. The child's happiness and welfare are entirely his own;—the free gift of his Maker and Master, of which no man, without his full consent, has a right to deprive him. This happiness, and the full enjoyment of what he receives, both here and hereafter, have been made to depend on his allegiance and his faithfulness, not to his parents, nor even to the public, but to the great Lord of both. This allegiance therefore, is his first and chief concern, with which the will and the wishes, the interests or the ease, of teachers and parents, have nothing to do. If the directions of his Maker and Lord are attended to, he has nothing to fear. There is in that case secured for him an inheritance that is incorruptible, and far beyond the reach or the power of any creature. It is for the enjoyment of this inheritance that he has been born;—it is with the design of attaining it, and for increasing its amount, that his time is prolonged upon earth;—it is to secure it for him, and to prepare him for it, that the parent has been appointed his guardian and guide;—and it is for the purpose of promoting and overseeing all this among its members, that a visible church, and church officers, have been established and perpetuated in the world.
In so far as each individual child is concerned, the parent is the immediate agent appointed by the Almighty for attending to these objects; and although, in a matter of so much importance, he is permitted to avail himself of the assistance of the teacher, he, and he only, is responsible to God for the due performance of those momentous duties which he owes to his child. When therefore the parents, for the purpose of forwarding some trifling personal advantage, or the teacher, for his own ease or caprice, are found indifferent to the kind of exercises used in the school, or to the results of what is taught in it;—doing any thing, or nothing, provided the time is allowed to pass, with at least the appearance of teaching;—they are, in such a case, betraying an important trust; they are heedlessly frustrating the wishes, and resisting the commands of their Master and Lord; they are sapping the foundations of society; and are thoughtlessly and basely defrauding the helpless and unconscious pupil of a most valuable patrimony.—In committing to parents the keeping and administration of this sacred deposit, reason, conscience, and Scripture, all unite in declaring, that it is given them, not for the promotion of their own personal advantages, but for the child's benefit; and that, while they never can be permanently bettered by its neglect, their good, even in this world, will be best and most surely advanced by a faithful discharge of their duty to their offspring.