Practical Education, Volume II

by Maria Edgeworth; Richard Lovell Edgeworth

CHAPTER XXV.

SUMMARY.

"The general principle," that we should associate pleasure with whatever we wish that our pupils should pursue, and pain with whatever we wish that they should avoid, forms, our readers will perceive, the basis of our plan of education. This maxim, applied to the cultivation of the understanding, or of the affections, will, we apprehend, be equally successful; virtues, as well as abilities, or what is popularly called genius, we believe to be the result of education, not the gift of nature. A fond mother will tremble at the idea, that so much depends upon her own care in the early education of her children; but, even though she may be inexperienced in the art, she may be persuaded that patience and perseverance will ensure her success: even from her timidity we may prophesy favourably; for, in education, to know the danger, is often to avoid it. The first steps require rather caution and gentle kindness, than any difficult or laborious exertions: the female sex are, from their situation, their manners, and talents, peculiarly suited to the superintendence of the early years of childhood. We have, therefore, in the first chapters of the preceding work, endeavoured to adapt our remarks principally to female readers, and we shall think ourselves happy, if any anxious mother feels their practical utility.

In the chapters on Toys, Tasks, and Attention, we have attempted to show how the instruction and amusements of children may be so managed as to coincide with each other. Play, we have observed, is only a change of occupation; and toys, to be permanently agreeable to children, must afford them continued employment. We have declared war against tasks, or rather against the train of melancholy, which, associated with this word, usually render it odious to the ears of the disgusted scholar. By kind patience, and well timed, distinct, and above all, by short lessons, a young child may be initiated in the mysteries of learning, and in the first principles of knowledge, without fatigue, or punishment, or tears. No matter how little be learned in a given time, provided the pupil be not disgusted; provided the wish to improve be excited, and the habits of attention be acquired. Attention we consider as the faculty of the mind which is essential to the cultivation of all its other powers.

It is essential to success in what are called accomplishments, or talents, as well as to our progress in the laborious arts or abstract sciences. Believing so much to depend upon this faculty or habit, we have taken particular pains to explain the practical methods by which it may be improved. The general maxims, that the attention of young people should at first be exercised but for very short periods; that they should never be urged to the point of fatigue; that pleasure, especially the great pleasure of success, should be associated with the exertions of the pupil; are applicable to children of all tempers. The care which has been recommended, in the use of words, to convey uniformly distinct ideas, will, it is hoped, be found advantageous. We have, without entering into the speculative question concerning the original differences of temper and genius, offered such observations as we thought might be useful in cultivating the attention of vivacious, and indolent children; whether their idleness or indolence proceed from nature, or from mistaken modes of instruction, we have been anxious to point out means of curing their defects; and, from our successful experience with pupils apparently of opposite dispositions, we have ventured to assert with some confidence, that no parent should despair of correcting a child's defects; that no preceptor should despair of producing in his pupil the species of abilities which his education steadily tends to form. These are encouraging hopes, but not flattering promises. Having just opened these bright views to parents, we have paused to warn them, that all their expectations, all their cares, will be in vain, unless they have sufficient prudence and strength of mind to follow a certain mode of conduct with respect to servants, and with respect to common acquaintance. More failures in private education have been occasioned by the interference of servants and acquaintance, than from any other cause. It is impossible, we repeat it in the strongest terms, it is impossible that parents can be successful in the education of their children at home, unless they have steadiness enough to resist all interference from visiters and acquaintance, who from thoughtless kindness, or a busy desire to administer advice, are apt to counteract the views of a preceptor; and who often, in a few minutes, undo the work of years. When our pupils have formed their habits, and have reason and experience sufficient to guide them, let them be left as free as air; let them choose their friends and acquaintance; let them see the greatest variety of characters, and hear the greatest variety of conversation and opinions: but whilst they are children, whilst they are destitute of the means to judge, their parents or preceptors must supply their deficient reason; and authority, without violence, should direct them to their happiness. They must see, that all who are concerned in their education, agree in the means of governing them; in all their commands and prohibitions, in the distribution of praise and blame, of reward and punishment, there must be unanimity. Where there does not exist this unanimity in families; where parents have not sufficient firmness to prevent the interference of acquaintance, and sufficient prudence to keep children from all private communication with servants, we earnestly advise that the children be sent to some public seminary of education. We have taken some pains to detail the methods by which all hurtful communication between children and servants, in a well regulated family, may be avoided, and we have asserted, from the experience of above twenty years, that these methods have been found not only practicable, but easy.

In the chapters on Obedience, Temper and Truth, the general principle, that pleasure should excite to exertion and virtue, and that pain should be connected with whatever we wish our pupils to avoid, is applied to practice with a minuteness of detail which we knew not how to avoid. Obedience we have considered as a relative, rather than as a positive, virtue: before children are able to conduct themselves, their obedience must be rendered habitual: obedience alters its nature as the pupil becomes more and more rational; and the only method to secure the obedience, the willing, enlightened obedience of rational beings, is to convince them by experience, that it tends to their happiness. Truth depends upon example more than precept; and we have endeavoured to impress it on the minds of all who are concerned in education, that the first thing necessary to teach their pupils to love truth, is in their whole conduct to respect it themselves. We have reprobated the artifices sometimes used by preceptors towards their pupils; we have shown that all confidence is destroyed by these deceptions. May they never more be attempted! May parents unite in honest detestation of these practices! Children are not fools, and they are not to be governed like fools. Parents who adhere to the firm principle of truth, may be certain of the respect and confidence of their children. Children who never see the example of falsehood, will grow up with a simplicity of character, with an habitual love of truth, that must surprise preceptors who have seen the propensity to deceit which early appears in children who have had the misfortune to live with servants, or with persons who have the habits of meanness and cunning. We have advised, that children, before their habits are formed, should never be exposed to temptations to deceive; that no questions should be asked them which hazard their young integrity; that as they grow older, they should gradually be trusted; and that they should be placed in situations where they may feel the advantages both of speaking truth, and of obtaining a character for integrity. The perception of the utility of this virtue to the individual, and to society, will confirm the habitual reverence in which our pupils have been taught to hold it. As young people become reasonable, the nature of their habits and of their education should be explained to them, and their virtues, from being virtues of custom, should be rendered virtues of choice and reason. It is easier to confirm good habits by the conviction of the understanding, than to induce habits in consequence of that conviction. This principle we have pursued in the chapter on Rewards and Punishments; we have not considered punishment as vengeance or retaliation, but as pain inflicted with the reasonable hope of procuring some future advantage to the delinquent, or to society. The smallest possible quantity of pain that can effect this purpose, we suppose, must, with all just and humane persons, be the measure of punishment. This notion of punishment, both for the sake of the preceptor and the pupil, should be clearly explained as early as it can be made intelligible. As to rewards, we do not wish that they should be bribes; they should stimulate, without weakening the mind. The consequences which naturally follow every species of good conduct, are the proper and best rewards that we can devise; children whose understandings are cultivated, and whose tempers are not spoiled, will be easily made happy without the petty bribes which are administered daily to ill educated, ignorant, over stimulated, and, consequently, wretched and ill humoured children. Far from making childhood a state of continual penance, restraint, and misery, we wish that it should be made a state of uniform happiness; that parents and preceptors should treat their pupils with as much equality and kindness as the improving reason of children justifies. The views of children should be extended to their future advantage,[111] and they should consider childhood as a part of their existence, not as a certain number of years which must be passed over before they can enjoy any of the pleasures of life, before they can enjoy any of the privileges of grown up people. Preceptors should not accustom their pupils to what they call indulgence, but should give them the utmost degree of present pleasure which is consistent with their future advantage. Would it not be folly and cruelty to give present pleasure at the expense of a much larger portion of future pain? When children acquire experience and reason, they rejudge the conduct of those who have educated them; and their confidence and their gratitude will be in exact proportion to the wisdom and justice with which they have been governed.

It was necessary to explain at large these ideas of rewards and punishments, that we might clearly see our way in the progress of education. After having determined, that our object is to obtain for our pupils the greatest possible portion of felicity; after having observed, that no happiness can be enjoyed in society without the social virtues, without the useful and the agreeable qualities; our view naturally turns to the means of forming these virtues, of ensuring these essential qualities. On our sympathy with our fellow creatures depend many of our social virtues; from our ambition to excel our competitors, arise many of our most useful and agreeable actions. We have considered these principles of action as they depend on each other, and as they are afterwards separated. Sympathy and sensibility, uninformed by reason, cannot be proper guides to action. We have endeavoured to show how sympathy may be improved into virtue. Children should not see the deformed expression of the malevolent passions in the countenance of those who live with them: before the habits are formed, before sympathy has any rule to guide itself, it is necessarily determined by example. Benevolence and affectionate kindness from parents to children, first inspire the pleasing emotions of love and gratitude. Sympathy is not able to contend with passion or appetite: we should therefore avoid placing children in painful competition with one another. We love those from whom we receive pleasure. To make children fond of each other, we must make them the cause of pleasure to each other; we must place them in situations where no passion or appetite crosses their natural sympathy. We have spoken of the difference between transient, convivial sympathy, and that higher species of sympathy which, connected with esteem, constitutes friendship. We have exhorted parents not to exhaust imprudently the sensibility of their children; not to lavish caresses upon their infancy, and cruelly to withdraw their kindness when their children have learned to expect the daily stimulus of affection. The idea of exercising sensibility we have endeavoured to explain, and to show, that if we require premature gratitude and generosity from young people, we shall only teach them affectation and hypocrisy. We have slightly touched on the dangers of excessive female sensibility, and have suggested, that useful, active employments, and the cultivation of the reasoning faculty, render sympathy and sensibility more respectable, and not less graceful.

In treating of vanity, pride, and ambition, we have been more indulgent to vanity than our proud readers will approve. We hope, however, not to be misunderstood; we hope that we shall not appear to be admirers of that mean and ridiculous foible, which is anxiously concealed by all who have any desire to obtain esteem. We cannot, however, avoid thinking it is a contradiction to inspire young people with a wish to excel, and at the same time to insist upon their repressing all expressions of satisfaction if they succeed. The desire to obtain the good opinion of others, is a strong motive to exertion: this desire cannot be discriminative in children before they have any knowledge of the comparative value of different qualities, and before they can estimate the consequent value of the applause of different individuals. We have endeavoured to show how, from appealing at first to the opinions of others, children may be led to form judgments of their own actions, and to appeal to their own minds for approbation. The sense of duty and independent self-complacency may gradually be substituted in the place of weak, ignorant vanity. There is not much danger that young people, whose understandings are improved, and who mix gradually with society, should not be able to repress those offensive expressions of vanity or pride, which are disagreeable to the feelings of the "impartial spectators." We should rather let the vanity of children find its own level, than attempt any artificial adjustments; they will learn propriety of manners from observation and experience; we should have patience with their early uncivilized presumption, lest we, by premature restraints, check the energy of the mind, and induce the cold, feeble vice of hypocrisy. In their own family, among the friends whom they ought to love and esteem, let children, with simple, unreserved vivacity, express the good opinion they have of themselves. It is infinitely better that they should be allowed this necessary expansion of self-complacency in the company of their superiors, than that it should be repressed by the cold hand of authority, and afterwards be displayed in the company of inferiors and sycophants. We have endeavoured to distinguish between the proper and improper use of praise as a motive in education: we have considered it as a stimulus which, like all other excitements, is serviceable or pernicious, according to the degree in which it is used, and the circumstances in which it is applied.

Whilst we have thus been examining the general means of educating the heart and the understanding, we have avoided entering minutely into the technical methods of obtaining certain parts of knowledge. It was essential, in the first place, to show, how the desire of knowledge was to be excited; what acquirements are most desirable, and how they are to be most easily obtained, are the next considerations. In the chapter on Books—Classical Literature and Grammar—Arithmetic and Geometry—Geography and Astronomy—Mechanics and Chemistry—we have attempted to show, how a taste for literature may early be infused into the minds of children, and how the rudiments of science, and some general principles of knowledge, may be acquired, without disgusting the pupil, or fatiguing him by unceasing application. We have, in speaking of the choice of books for children, suggested the general principles, by which a selection may be safely made; and by minute, but we hope not invidious, criticism, we have illustrated our principles so as to make them practically useful.