Practical Education, Volume II

by Maria Edgeworth; Richard Lovell Edgeworth

A good memory for business depends upon local, well arranged associations. The man of business makes an artificial memory for himself out of the trivial occurrences of the day, and the hours as they pass recall their respective occupations. Children can acquire these habits very early in their education; they are eager to give their companions an account of any thing they have seen or heard; their tutors should become their companions, and encourage them by sympathy to address these narrations to them. Children who forget their lessons in chronology, and their pence tables, can relate with perfect accuracy any circumstances which have interested themselves. This shows that there is no deficiency in their capacity. Every one, who has had any experience of the pleasure of talking, knows how intimately it is connected with the pleasure of being listened to. The auditors, consequently, possess supreme power over narrative childhood, without using any artifice, by simply showing attention to well arranged, and well recollected narratives, and ceasing to attend when the young orator's memory and story become confused, he will naturally be excited to arrange his ideas. The order of time is the first and easiest principle of association to help the memory. This, till young people acquire the ideas of cause and effect, will be their favourite mode of arrangement. Things that happen at the same time; things that are said, thoughts that have occurred, at the same time, will recur to the mind together. We may observe, that ill educated people continue through life to remember things by this single association; and, consequently, there is a heterogeneous collection of ideas in their mind, which have no rational connection with each other; crowds which have accidentally met, and are forced to live for ever together.

A vulgar evidence, when he is examined about his memory of a particular fact, gives as a reason for his remembering it, a relation of a number of other circumstances, which he tells you happened at the same time; or he calls to witness any animate or inanimate objects, which he happened to see at the same time. All these things are so joined with the principal fact in his mind, that his remembering them distinctly, seems to him, and he expects will seem to others, demonstration of the truth and accuracy of his principal assertion. When a lawyer tells him he has nothing to do with these ideas, he is immediately at a stand in his narrative; he can recollect nothing, he is sure of nothing; he has no reason to give for his belief, unless he may say that it was Michaelmas-day when such a thing happened, that he had a goose for dinner that day, or that he had a new wig. Those who have more enlarged minds, seldom produce these strange reasons for remembering facts. Indeed, no one can reason clearly, whose memory has these foolish habits; the ill matched ideas are inseparably joined, and hence they imagine there is some natural connection between them. Hence arise those obstinate prejudices which no arguments can vanquish.

To prevent children from arguing ill, we must, therefore, take care, in exercising their memory, to discourage them in this method of proving that they remember one thing by telling us a number of others which happened at the same time; rather let them be excited to bring their reasoning faculty into play in support of their memory. Suppose, for instance, that a child had mislaid his hat, and was trying to recollect where he had put it. He first may recollect, from the association of time, that he had the hat the last time he went out; but when he wants to recollect when that time was, he had better go back, if he can, to his motive for going out; this one idea will bring a number of others in right order into his mind. He went out, suppose, to fetch his kite, which he was afraid would be wet by a shower of rain; then the boy recollects that his hat must have been wet by the same rain, and that when he came in, instead of hanging it up in its usual place, it was put before the fire to be dried. What fire, is the next question, &c.

Such an instance as this may appear very trivial; but children whose minds are well managed about trifles, will retain good habits when they are to think about matters of consequence. By exercising the memory in this manner about things, instead of about books and lessons, we shall not disgust and tire our pupils, nor shall we give the false notion, that all knowledge is acquired by reading.

Long before children read fluently for their own amusement, they like to hear others read aloud to them, because they have then the entertainment without the labour. We may exercise their memory by asking for an account of what they have heard. But let them never be required to repeat in the words of the book, or even to preserve the same arrangement; let them speak in words of their own, and arrange their ideas to their own plan; this will exercise at once their judgment, invention, and memory.

"Try if you can explain to me what I have just been explaining to you," a sensible tutor will frequently say to his pupils; and he will suffer them to explain in a different manner from himself; he will only require them to remember what is essential to the explanation. In such repetitions as these, the mind is active, therefore it will strengthen and improve.

Children are all, more or less, pleased with the perception of resemblances and of analogy. This propensity assists us much in the cultivation of the memory; but it must be managed with discretion, or it will injure the other powers of the understanding. There is, in some minds, a futile love of tracing analogies, which leads to superstition, to false reasoning, and false taste. The quick perception of resemblances is, in other minds, productive of wit, poetic genius, and scientific invention. The difference between these two classes, depends upon this—the one has more judgment, and more the habit of using it, than the other. Children who are pleased by trifling coincidences, by allusions, and similitudes, should be taught with great care to reason: when once they perceive the pleasure of demonstration, they will not be contented with the inaccuracy of common analogies. A tutor is often tempted to teach pupils, who are fond of allusions, by means of them, because he finds that they remember well whatever suits their taste for resemblances. By following the real analogies between different arts and sciences, and making use of the knowledge children have on one subject to illustrate another, we may at once amuse their fancy, and cultivate their memory with advantage. Ideas laid up in this manner, will recur in the same order, and will be ready for further use. When two ideas are remembered by their mutual connection, surely it is best that they should both of them be substantially useful; and not that one should attend merely to answer for the appearance of the other.

As men readily remember those things which are every day useful to them in business, what relates to their amusements, or to their favourite tastes in arts, sciences, or in literature; so children find no difficulty in remembering every thing which mixes daily with their little pleasures. They value knowledge, which is useful and agreeable to them, as highly as we do; but they consider only the present, and we take the future into our estimate. Children feel no interest in half the things that are committed, with the most solemn recommendations, to the care of their memory. It is in vain to tell them, "You must remember such a thing, because it will be useful to you when you grow up to be a man." The child feels like a child, and has no idea of what he may feel when he grows up to be a man. He tries to remember what he is desired, perhaps, because he wishes to please his wiser friends; but if the ideas are remote from his every day business, if nothing recall them but voluntary exertion, and if he be obliged to abstract his little soul from every thing it holds dear, before he can recollect his lessons, they will have no hold upon his memory; he will feel that recollection is too operose, and he will enjoy none of the "pleasures of memory."

To induce children to exercise their memory, we must put them in situations where they may be immediately rewarded for their exertion. We must create an interest in their minds—nothing uninteresting is long remembered. In a large and literary family, it will not be difficult to invent occupations for children which may exercise all their faculties. Even the conversation of such a family, will create in their minds a desire for knowledge; what they hear, will recall to their memory what they read; and if they are encouraged to take a reasonable share in conversation, they will acquire the habit of listening to every thing that others say. By permitting children to talk freely of what they read, we are more likely to improve their memory for books, than by exacting from them formal repetitions of lessons.

Dr. Johnson, who is said to have had an uncommonly good memory, tells us, that when he was a boy, he used, after he had acquired any fresh knowledge from his books, to run and tell it to an old woman, of whom he was very fond. This exercise was so agreeable to him, that it imprinted what he read upon his memory.