One naturally compares Fénelon with Seneca. To both were committed children, heirs apparent to thrones,—willful, cruel, disobedient, and hard to control. In Seneca's pupil the seeds of cruelty remained, to germinate into the awful tyrant; in Fénelon's the evil seemed to be permanently eradicated, and the result was a prince with generous impulses and noble intentions. And this result was largely owing to the difference in the teachers,—Fénelon, the gentle, but firm, patient, painstaking conscientious man; Seneca, the more brilliant, but vacillating and timeserving sycophant.
Fénelon's Pedagogy.—1. There must be systematic care of the body. Therefore regular meals and plain food, plenty of sleep, exercise, etc., are essential.
2. All instruction must be made pleasant and interesting. Play is to be utilized in teaching. In this he anticipated Froebel.
3. Let punishments be as light as possible. Encourage children to be open and truthful, and do not prevent confession by making punishments too frequent or too severe. Punishment should be administered privately, as a rule, and publicly only when all other means have failed.
4. Present the thing before its name,—the idea before the word. Study things, investigate. Employ curiosity. In this he was a disciple of Bacon and Comenius, and a prophet to Pestalozzi.
5. Allow nothing to be committed to memory that is not understood.
6. Girls, also, must share the benefits of education. Especial attention should be given to teaching them modesty, gentleness, piety, household economy, the duties of their station in life, and those of motherhood.
7. Morality should be taught early and by means of fables, stories, and concrete examples.
8. Proceed from the near at hand to the remote, from the known to the unknown. Thus in language, after the mother tongue, teach other living languages, and then the classics. The latter are to be learned by conversation about common objects, and by application of the rules of grammar in connection therewith. In geography and history one's own environment and country should be learned first, then other countries.
9. Example is of great importance to all periods of life, but especially to childhood. This Fénelon practically illustrated by his own life and by the concrete cases which he used. Voltaire says of Fénelon, "His wit was overflowing with beauty, his heart with goodness."