To hide this inability we, by preference, give them practice in the dead languages, of which there are no longer any unexceptionable judges. The familiar use of these tongues having long been lost, we content ourselves with imitating what we find of them in books, and call this speaking them. If such be the Greek and Latin of the masters, you may judge what that of the children is. Scarcely have they learned by heart the rudiments, without in the least understanding them, before they are taught to utter a French discourse in Latin words; and, when further advanced, to string together in prose, phrases from Cicero and cantos from Virgil. Then they imagine they are speaking Latin, and who is there to contradict them?[[12]]
In any study, words that represent things are nothing without the ideas of the things they represent. We, however, limit children to these signs, without ever being able to make them understand the things represented. We think we are teaching a child the description of the earth, when he is merely learning maps. We teach him the names of cities, countries, rivers; he has no idea that they exist anywhere but on the map we use in pointing them out to him. I recollect seeing somewhere a text-book on geography which began thus:
"What is the world? A pasteboard globe." Precisely such is the geography of children. I will venture to say that after two years of globes and cosmography no child of ten, by rules they give him, could find the way from Paris to St. Denis. I maintain that not one of them, from a plan of his father's garden, could trace out its windings without going astray. And yet these are the knowing creatures who can tell you exactly where Pekin, Ispahan, Mexico, and all the countries of the world are.
I hear it suggested that children ought to be engaged in studies in which only the eye is needed. This might be true if there were studies in which their eyes were not needed; but I know of none such.
A still more ridiculous method obliges children to study history, supposed to be within their comprehension because it is only a collection of facts.[[13]] But what do we mean by facts? Do we suppose that the relations out of which historic facts grow are so easily understood that the minds of children grasp such ideas without difficulty? Do we imagine that the true understanding of events can be separated from that of their causes and effects? and that the historic and the moral are so far asunder that the one can be understood without the other? If in men's actions you see only purely external and physical changes, what do you learn from history? Absolutely nothing; and the subject, despoiled of all interest, no longer gives you either pleasure or instruction. If you intend to estimate actions by their moral relations, try to make your pupils understand these relations, and you will discover whether history is adapted to their years.
If there is no science in words, there is no study especially adapted to children. If they have no real ideas, they have no real memory; for I do not call that memory which retains only impressions. Of what use is it to write on their minds a catalogue of signs that represent nothing to them? In learning the things represented, would they not also learn the signs? Why do you give them the useless trouble of learning them twice? Besides, you create dangerous prejudices by making them suppose that science consists of words meaningless to them. The first mere word with which the child satisfies himself, the first thing he learns on the authority of another person, ruins his judgment. Long must he shine in the eyes of unthinking persons before he can repair such an injury to himself.
No; nature makes the child's brain so yielding that it receives all kinds of impressions; not that we may make his childhood a distressing burden to him by engraving on that brain dates, names of kings, technical terms in heraldry, mathematics, geography, and all such words, unmeaning to him and unnecessary to persons at any age in life. But all ideas that he can understand, and that are of use to him, all that conduce to his happiness and that will one day make his duties plain, should early write themselves there indelibly, to guide him through life as his condition and his intellect require.
The memory of which a child is capable is far from inactive, even without the use of books. All he sees and hears impresses him, and he remembers it. He keeps a mental register of people's sayings and doings. Everything around him is the book from which he is continually but unconsciously enriching his memory against the time his judgment can benefit by it. If we intend rightly to cultivate this chief faculty of the mind, we must choose these objects carefully, constantly acquainting him with such as he ought to understand, and keeping back those he ought not to know. In this way we should endeavor to make his mind a storehouse of knowledge, to aid in his education in youth, and to direct him at all times. This method does not, it is true, produce phenomenal children, nor does it make the reputation of their teachers; but it produces judicious, robust men, sound in body and in mind, who, although not admired in youth, will make themselves respected in manhood.
Émile shall never learn anything by heart, not even fables such as those of La Fontaine, simple and charming as they are. For the words of fables are no more the fables themselves than the words of history are history itself. How can we be so blind as to call fables moral lessons for children? We do not reflect that while these stories amuse they also mislead children, who, carried away by the fiction, miss the truth conveyed; so that what makes the lesson agreeable also makes it less profitable. Men may learn from fables, but children must be told the bare truth; if it be veiled, they do not trouble themselves to lift the veil.[[14]]
Since nothing ought to be required of children merely in proof of their obedience, it follows that they can learn nothing of which they cannot understand the actual and immediate advantage, whether it be pleasant or useful. Otherwise, what motive will induce them to learn it? The art of conversing with absent persons, and of hearing from them, of communicating to them at a distance, without the aid of another, our feelings, intentions, and wishes, is an art whose value may be explained to children of almost any age whatever. By what astonishing process has this useful and agreeable art become so irksome to them? They have been forced to learn it in spite of themselves, and to use it in ways they cannot understand. A child is not anxious to perfect the instrument used in tormenting him; but make the same thing minister to his pleasures, and you cannot prevent him from using it.