Practical Education, Volume II

by Maria Edgeworth; Richard Lovell Edgeworth

S——. "Pope might have called the man that note."

S—— could not exactly explain his idea; somebody who was present said, that if he had been in Pope's place, he would have called the officer a note of admiration. S—— would have made this answer, if he had been familiarly acquainted with the name of the note of admiration. His judgment taught him how to set about looking for a proper answer; but it could not lead him to the exact place for want of experience.

We hope that we have, in the chapter on books, fully explained the danger of accustoming children to read what they do not understand. Poetry, they cannot early comprehend; and even if they do understand it, they cannot improve their reasoning faculty by poetic studies. The analogies of poetry, and of reasoning, are very different. "The muse," says an excellent judge upon this subject, "would make but an indifferent school-mistress." We include under the head poetry, all books in which declamation and eloquence are substituted for reasoning. We should accustom our pupils to judge strictly of the reasoning which they meet with in books; no names of high authority should ever preclude an author's arguments from examination.

The following passage from St. Pierre's Etudes de la Nature, was read to two boys: H——, 14 years old; S——, 10 years old.

"Hurtful insects, present (the same) oppositions and signs of destruction; the gnat, thirsty of human blood, announces himself to our sight by the white spots with which his brown body is speckled; and by the shrill sound of his wings, which interrupts the calm of the groves, he announces himself to our ear as well as to our eye. The carnivorous wasp is streaked like the tiger, with bands of black over a yellow ground."

H—— and S—— both at once exclaimed, that these spots in the gnat, and streaks in the wasp, had nothing to do with their stinging us. "The buzzing of the gnat," said S——, "would, I think, be a very agreeable sound to us, if we did not know that the gnat would sting, and that it was coming near us; and, as to the wasp, I remember stopping one day upon the stairs to look at the beautiful black and yellow body of a wasp. I did not think of danger, nor of its stinging me then, and I did not know that it was like the tiger. After I had been stung by a wasp, I did not think a wasp such a beautiful animal. I think it is very often from our knowing that animals can hurt us, that we think them ugly. We might as well say," continued S——, pointing to a crocus which was near him, "we might as well say, that a man who has a yellow face has the same disposition as that crocus, or that the crocus is in every thing like the man, because it is yellow."

Cicero's "curious consolation for deafness" is properly noticed by Mr. Hume. It was read to S—— a few days ago, to try whether he could detect the sophistry: he was not previously told what was thought of it by others.

"How many languages are there," says Cicero, "which you do not understand! The Punic, Spanish, Gallic, Egyptian, &c. With regard to all these, you are as if you were deaf, and yet you are indifferent about the matter. Is it then so great a misfortune to be deaf to one language more?"

"I don't think," said S——, "that was at all a good way to console the man, because it was putting him in mind that he was more deaf than he thought he was. He did not think of those languages, perhaps, till he was put in mind that he could not hear them."

In stating any question to a child, we should avoid letting our own opinion be known, lest we lead or intimidate his mind. We should also avoid all appearance of anxiety, all impatience for the answer; our pupil's mind should be in a calm state when he is to judge: if we turn his sympathetic attention to our hopes and fears, we agitate him, and he will judge by our countenances rather than by comparing the objects or propositions which are laid before him. Some people, in arguing with children, teach them to be disingenuous by the uncandid manner in which they proceed; they show a desire for victory, rather than for truth; they state the arguments only on their own side of the question, and they will not allow the force of those which are brought against them. Children are thus piqued, instead of being convinced, and in their turn they become zealots in support of their own opinions; they hunt only for arguments in their own favour, and they are mortified when a good reason is brought on the opposite side of the question to that on which they happen to have enlisted. To prevent this, we should never argue, or suffer others to argue for victory with our pupils; we should not praise them for their cleverness in finding out arguments in support of their own opinion; but we should praise their candour and good sense when they perceive and acknowledge the force of their opponent's arguments. They should not be exercised as advocates, but as judges; they should be encouraged to keep their minds impartial, to sum up the reasons which they have heard, and to form their opinion from these without regard to what they may have originally asserted. We should never triumph over children for changing their opinion. "I thought you were on my side of the question; or, I thought you were on the other side of the question just now!" is sometimes tauntingly said to an ingenuous child, who changes his opinion when he hears a new argument. You think it a proof of his want of judgment, that he changes his opinion in this manner; that he vibrates continually from side to side: let him vibrate, presently he will be fixed. Do you think it a proof that your scales are bad, because they vibrate with every additional weight that is added to either side?