§ 32. During the last thirty years I have spent the greatest part of my working hours in a variety of school-rooms; and if my school experience has shown me that our advance is slow, my study of the Reformers convinces me that it is sure.
“Ring out the old, ring in the new!”
It has been well said that to study science is to study the thoughts of God; and thus it is that all true educational Reformers declare the thoughts of God to us. “A divine message, of eternal regulation of the Universe, there verily is in regard to every conceivable procedure and affair of man;” and it behoves us to ascertain what that message is in regard to the immensely important procedure and affair of bringing up children. After innumerable mistakes we seem by degrees to be getting some notion of it; and such insight as we have we owe to those who have contributed to the science of education. Among these there are probably no greater names than the names of Pestalozzi and Froebel.
Froebel’s Education of Man, trans. by W. N. Hailmann, is a vol. of Appleton’s Series, ed. by Dr. W. T. Harris. The Autobiography trans., by Michaelis and Moore, is published by Sonnenschein. The Mutter-u-K.-lieder have been trans. by Miss Lord (London, Rice). Reminiscences of Froebel by the Baroness Marenholtz-Bülow, is trans. by Mr. Horace Mann. The Child and Child Nature is trans. from the Baroness by Miss A. M. Christie. The Froebel lit. is now immense. I will simply mention some of those who have expounded Froebel in English: Miss Shirreff, Miss E. A. Manning, Miss Lyschinska, Miss Heerwart, Mdme. De Portugall, Miss Peabody, H. G Bowen, F. W. Parker, W. N. Hailmann, Joseph Payne, W. T. Harris, are the names that first suggest themselves. Henry Barnard’s Kindergarten and Child Culture is a valuable collection of papers.
XVIII.
JACOTOT, A METHODIZER.
1770-1840.
§ 1. We are now by degrees becoming convinced that teachers, like everyone else who undertakes skilled labour, should be trained before they seek an engagement. This has led to a great increase in the number of Normal Schools. In some of these schools it has already been discovered that while the study of principles requires much time and the application of much intellectual force, the study of methods is a far simpler matter and can be knocked off in a short time and with no intellectual force at all. Methods are special ways of doing things, and when it has been settled what is to be done and why, a knowledge of the methods available adds greatly to a teacher’s power; but the what and the why demand our attention before the how, and the study of methods disconnected from principles leads straight to the prison-house of all the teachers’ higher faculties—routine.
§ 2. I have called Jacotot a methodizer because he invented a special method and wished everything to be taught by it. But in advocating this method he appeals to principles; and his principles are so important that at least one man great in educational science, Joseph Payne, always spoke of him as his master.