My first introduction to natural science was in listening to instruction of this kind given to children older than myself, under the sanction of a mother's authority. They were lessons in Astronomy and Chemistry, given before there were any elementary books upon such subjects; and they so kindled my imagination, when a very young child, and gave me such a realizing sense of the presence of God around me, whom I had already known as a Heavenly Father, who took care of me and of all men, by night as well as by day, that from that time I never lost the child's sense of nearness, or felt any of those fears of the supernatural which haunt the imagination of uninstructed childhood. And yet I was in the habit of listening to the stories of an old crone who believed in the witches of Salem, where she had always resided, as firmly as she believed in the God that made her. When I first heard the remark that the study of Nature tended to make men atheistic, I resented it with indignation, though but a child.
This, then, is the kind of teaching that I think adapted to childhood. It need not be exclusive, but let it predominate. Other faculties, beside the emotions of wonder and veneration, may be cultivated side by side with these. Memory, comparison, judgment, and calculation may be strengthened by a judicious and well-proportioned teaching of the elements of languages and numbers, thus insuring the tools for future acquisition. But this is not direct food for the soul. The young heart is full of love for its parents, of delight at the knowledge of new things, and these affections may be guided into adoration of Supreme Intelligence; this love of knowledge turned to its source, as easily and naturally as the stream flows from the mountain to the sea.
Side by side with this higher cultivation I would teach the eye, the hand, and the ear to practise, and to work readily. The pencil should ever be in the hand, the picture before the eye,—especially when the objects of Nature cannot be, and sweet sounds in the ear. The love of activity is sufficient aid without the debasing influence of emulation. Facts are divine teaching, and a clear perception of them the basis of all theories; therefore they should be clearly and sharply presented and discriminated. When children are led to see their own ignorance, let them understand that we, who appear to them the concentration of all wisdom, ("Pallas-Minervas," as one of my little readers of Homer called me one day), are also ignorant in presence of the universe, which is full of things to be known, and they will not be discouraged, but only more eager to learn what they can of these worlds of knowledge; and will think of those still to be conquered rather than of any little acquirements of their own, thus escaping the dangers both of despondency and vanity. Let children lead this happy life till they are eight or nine, and let it be so full and blessed by love, sympathy, and the play of the creative imagination, that it will lift them over the rough places for many more years, while they shall build stone walls and towers of facts, as starting-places for future flights. It is the observation of every experienced heart that the most hardened sinner may be more easily redeemed, if he can be reminded of an infancy of purity and golden sunshine. If true, it is an argument for prolonging that infancy as far as possible, that the recollection of it, if unfortunately dimmed, may the more surely revive in those deep moments of existence, when the soul is thrown back upon itself for support and consolation; whether they be moments of guilt or of sorrow, of disappointed ambition or disappointed hope, of wounded pride, or wounded faith.
I am aware that the public schools are the hope of our land and its glory, and schools are the best world for children to grow up in when properly regulated; but I wish they need not be so large, so that there need be but one sovereign in each. Still more desirable is it, however, that none but living souls should ever have the privilege of unlocking the treasures of knowledge and thought for children. It is not enough to have deep and varied acquirements, but there must be a native delight in communicating, and a sympathy—a living sympathy—with every human being. These alone will awaken the love of excellence and call forth the powers of the mind. No one should ever have the care of children who does not love them because they are children, or who can ever feel the undertaking an irksome task. I always regret to see the occupation entered upon as a last resort for a livelihood, or by those whose spirits can no longer respond to the touch of childhood. It must be a strong spirit that, in such instances, can rise again to meet the bounding hopes of fresh being. It is like going back to principles, when our experience fails to answer our just demands for highest happiness. In the faith of childhood, which knows no doubt, we can see that one experience is not the test of what our birthright is; and while we do not neglect the warnings we have had, we must never think that our single experience has exhausted the source whence truth flows.
I believe, too, that the germ of everything is in the human soul; and this faith seems to me essential to a teacher. Education is not the creation, but only the bringing forth of these germs, and that alone is a true education which brings them forth in fair proportions. To make children learn something tangible, if I may so speak, and to keep them quiet, are the usual aims of a teacher, and success in these is the usual test of his value; but they seem to me not to be his highest merit. I have often waited long, and I have learned to wait patiently, for anything like results. There is a certain harmonious play of the faculties, to the production of which I direct my efforts, and which I watch for with intense interest in my children, (for they seem to me mine,) and this can never be cultivated if one is bound by any formulas. I consider myself fortunate that my own mind has always enjoyed its birthright of freedom; that no iron habits have bound me to any mechanical system. My advantage is a negative one, perhaps, for I never had much training of an intellectual kind, my physical education being the chief object in my childhood. I was at least saved from such formality as enabled the teacher of a distinguished school to say in my presence, that "the less boys understood or were interested in their lessons, the better the discipline of study." This was surely making the process as mechanical a one as the motions of a trip-hammer. But there you have an immense advantage over me. You have been well trained, and yet measured by no Procrustean bed, for your most living teacher never wore any fetters herself, and could not impose any. Am I not right? Your summer retreat has been "twice blessed" in having such advantages of highest education, added to the influences of Nature, which you so dearly love. You are bound to open your eyes as beamingly as she does, upon all who come under their glance, to show your gratitude for such teachings. I well remember your frequent descriptions of those "large orbs" that presided over the most interesting part of your youthful training. I have seen those eloquent eyes myself, and can conceive their power when animated with the inspiring pleasure of pouring the treasures of thought into a receiving soil. And you are not the only one whom I have heard discourse of this source of inspiration. Your best study, too, was in the season when the reins are generally relaxed. The time when I received most benefit from study, solitary and unaided, and even stolen as it was, (for the family decree was that, I being an invalid, must not study,) was when I pursued my lessons in an orchard, and generally in a tree, or sitting in the baby's breakfast-chair, in the midst of a shallow, rushing river, under a sweeping willow. I was brought up so much out of doors, that walls were oppressive to me. Indeed, I look back upon it as the only time of my childhood when any variety of influences acted upon me at once; and one which I ought not to omit to mention, was a much admired friend, who knew how to point out to me, leaf and flower in hand, what riches of knowledge were stored up in Nature for her children. I do not know but what my love of these hidden treasures was stimulated by the fear of being deprived of them. Owing to this fear I probably arrived earlier in life at that point which I have always contended was the great point in education,—the time when one takes it into one's own hands. But I do not think that your "two outward advantages" of motherhood and education, constitute all your qualifications for the task you have undertaken. I know what soil was warmed into fruitfulness by the rays shed from the sun of genius. Now, you are bound to fulfil my hopes, and if my own path is not smoothed by your help, I shall call you to account for my disappointment. I will give you my small experience, and tell you how I found out methods, because they were not practised upon me; and I bid forth your power of deducing theories and improvements that will cheer us both onward. For want of more interested auditors, I often pour out my plans for educing order out of the little chaoses committed to my care, to ears that stretch to their utmost for politeness' sake, and for my sake, perhaps; but not for the thing I wish to impart.
LETTER II.
My dear Anna,—I will begin by telling you that I can do the thing better than I can describe it. You must let me tell you stories out of my school-room to illustrate the wisdom of my proceedings. I can hardly tell you my enjoyment of the fresh affections of children, of their love of knowledge (of new things, as it always is to them), of their ready apprehension of principles, of their quick response to truth, their activity and buoyancy, their individuality, their promise. Sometimes I look forward for them, and tremble at what awaits them, when I see tendencies to evil or weakness. I know that every ill in their various paths may be made stepping-stones to highest good; but the doubt whether they will be made so, the certainty of the long and sharp pains of conflict, the dying down of hope, (that happily, I know, can yet rise Phœnix-like from its own ashes,) these, and many perils by the way, that my brooding heart points out to me, often oppress me, and I could wish them spared. When it is remembered how man has marred the work of God, how different his part ought to be from what it is, and how long it must be before the individuals of the race can work themselves free from the crust of evil that has grown over the whole, I think I may be pardoned for these heart aches; but I know they are not my highest moments. It has been deeply said that pain is the secret of Nature. I have that within me which responds to it. I must feel it for others as well as for myself, and shall constantly do so when my faith is perfected. I am grateful that I exist, for I can look upon what we call this life as only the beginning of a long career, in which I shall ever look back and rejoice that I have been a human being, whatever may be the ills that I suffer from just now. The consciousness of the capacities of expanding intellect and of glorious affections, assure me that the destiny of the soul will compensate for the heritage of woe, which this life is to many of us. Thus I try to look beyond the conflicts I see in the future of these little beings who now dance joyfully around me.
You will wonder, perhaps, that one can conceive such a personal interest in the children of others; but it will come to you in time. You have truly said, that it needs all the tenderness of a mother, and her vital self-forgetting interest in the result, to enable her to find the true path of Nature from the beginning, and remove all obstacles to free unfolding. But many a mother sacrifices her elder children, as it were, to this discovery. As the germ of the maternal sentiment is in all women, relations may be established between teacher and child that may take the place of the natural one, so far as to answer all the purposes required. Such a relation is the only foundation upon which a true education can go on. It leaves no room for a division of interests between child and teacher, which division alone has the power forever to destroy all the best benefits of the communication of mind, and is generally, indeed, an effectual barrier against any communication at all. Such a relation as I would have does away with every feeling of reserve that might check the full and free expression of thought and feeling. A young child should turn to its teacher, as well as to its mother, with the undoubting confidence that there is a wealth of love equal to all occasions. When my little scholars call me "mother," which they often do from inadvertence, I feel most that I am in the true relation to them. I have in some instances been preferred before the mother, because I was the fountain of knowledge and even of tenderness to starved and neglected little souls. A very sensitive child of seven years old, who always said "can't," when any task, even the simplest, was set before her, but who was, nevertheless, so morbidly conscientious that she was miserable not to be able to accomplish anything that she thought her duty, took an opportunity one day, when she was alone with me, to make me the confidant of her domestic sorrows, asking me to promise I would not tell "mother." This was rather dangerous ground; but I knew something of the domestic life of the family, and that the tender mother of it was often exasperated almost to madness by the cruel tyranny and exactions of the father, and I promised. Then, with burning cheeks and trembling voice she told me that they did not love her at home; that her father despised her; that her mother urged her beyond her strength to meet his requirements; that her eldest sister treated her with harshness and ridicule because she was so "stupid," and that her younger sisters did not like to play with her because she was cross. I saw at a glance why she always said and felt "can't," and I stood awe-struck before the endowment of conscience in the child which had stood the test of such trials as these, and made duty the central point of her being, for that I had already known to be the case. I sympathized with her, as you may well imagine. I told her what I knew of the virtues of her mother, whom she tenderly loved, and whose love for herself she felt, but could not enjoy, because its natural expression was lost in the impatient endeavor to hold her up to her father's unreasonable requisitions. From that hour she was my child, and could work happily in my presence. I told her that I knew she always wished to do right, and that I should always be satisfied with whatever she could accomplish; that if I required too much of her, she only need to say so; that she must not try to do anything more than was pleasant and comfortable, for only thus could she preserve her powers of mind, which were good, and which would work well if they could work happily. Through my influence she passed much time away from her ungenial home, with friends in whose society she could be happy and unrestrained, and the burden was lightened so far that she was in the end able to justify herself, and take a happier place in the family circle; but she was irretrievably injured both mentally and morally, learning to become indifferent where she could not assert herself, and the battle of life will, I fear, ever be a hard one to her.
In such cases one feels the true spirit of adoption, and this should be the standard for the general relation. I do not feel satisfied till the most timid and reserved are confiding to me, smile when they meet my eye, and come to me in the hour of trouble; nor till the most perverse and reckless take my reproofs in sorrow and not in anger, and return to me for sympathy when they are good.
Nor am I willing to have anything to do with the education of a child whose parents I am unable to convince of my vital interest in its welfare, and into whose heart I cannot find an entering place, while at the same time I speak candidly of faults; for there is a sort of magnetism in the coöperation of mother and teacher; and its subtle influence, or the reverse, is distilled into every detail of the relation. Sometimes I find parents who do not know enough of their children to interfere at all, and then I am willing to do what I can to supply the deficiency. The school should only be the larger family for them, and the lessons learned should be the least good they receive from the daily routine. Still worse off are those who are educated at home by servants who rule in nurseries, and so long as they keep the children quiet are not questioned much as to the means by which they do it. Quite aggravated cases of oppression have come under my observation, which I have discovered by noticing the sway held over children by these hirelings, who bring them to and from school. I think I should never risk this evil in a family of my own.