The Infant System / For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, from One to Seven years of Age

by Samuel Wilderspin

After the severe bereavement mentioned above, I still persevered in my favourite study, and learned more from my own children than I did before, having to act in the double capacity of father and mother. I am well aware of the loss my children sustained by the above calamity. In the matter of training, nothing can replace a good mother,—and such indeed she eminently was! I felt the heavy stroke more severely, and my children did also; but I consoled myself with the reflection, that my loss was her gain, and that she had lived to witness fruits of her unparalleled labours, to the thorough abandonment of self, and the glory of her Maker. "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of these little ones, ye have done it unto me." Night and day, when I had time to think, such promises as these cheered and sustained me in doing what I could for my own motherless children, and more and more cemented my affections on the children of others, and, finally, enabled me to mature my plans, and gave me strength and courage to carry them out, first in the villages and places near London, and, ultimately, single-handed and alone, through more than a quarter of a century, in many of the chief cities, towns, and villages of the United Kingdom. Simply to state this fact is all that is requisite here to answer my present purpose, and to enlarge more upon it is needless, as a full detail of the whole career is given in my "Early Discipline Illustrated; or, the Infant System Progressing and Successful," third edition, published in 1840, and to which much more would require adding to bring it down to the present time, if a further edition should be called for.

That prejudice should assail me, and objections be started as I came more out into the world, was to be expected. I knew my own intentions, but the world did not, and I came in for a full share of obloquy and persecution. This did me much good, and was a preparatory discipline, to make me careless of the opinion of mankind in the matter, so long as I felt that I was in the right, and had the approval of my own conscience. The more I was opposed, the more were my energies lighted up and strengthened; opposition always sharpened my faculties, instead of overcoming and depressing me. The whole gradually prospered from the first, under every disadvantage and notwithstanding the strenuous efforts of the short-sighted and bigoted. These things laid my first patrons prostrate, and the Society of great names which followed, was soon dissolved. Every effort was made by the enemies of true training and education, to crush the thing in the bud, and not only the thing, but also the man who developed it and worked it out. Thank God, these inimical aims did not succeed. Though worldly patrons failed, I had one Patron who never deserted me, but Who upheld and encouraged me from first to last, until the end was gained. Not, however, all that was aimed at, but much of it, and the rest will follow or I am greatly mistaken. I have in various places seen things that I earnestly contended for, but which were rejected at the time, at length established and their value seen. Look at the schools in existence now, bad as some of them are, and compare them with those which existed a third of a century ago, and it will be found that they have progressed, and it may safely be anticipated that they will still further progress, for there is much need of it. The system pourtrayed in this book is intended to act on all the faculties of a child, especially the highest, and to strengthen them at the time the mere animal part of his nature is weak. The existing schools were not found fit to take our children when they left us. The dull, monotonous, sleepy, heavy system pursued, was quite unadapted to advance such pupils. At this point of the history much damage was done to our plans. The essence or kernel was omitted and the mere shell retained, to make infant schools harmonise with the existing ones, instead of the contrary. There were and are however two great exceptions to this rule. The Model Schools at Dublin under the Government Board of Education, and the Glasgow Training Schools for Scotland. At Dublin all is progression. The infant department is the best in Europe,—I believe the best in the world. The other departments are equally good in most things, and are well managed, as far as regards a good secular education being given, and better I think than any similar institution in England. At Glasgow the same master whom I taught still exists. I have not seen the schools for many years, but I hear from those who have been trained there, that nothing can work better. The Glasgow Committee, with Mr. Stow at their head, deserve the thanks of the whole community for having applied the principles on which the Infant School System is based, to juveniles, and carried out and proved the practicability of it for the public good. I told them this in lectures at Glasgow long ago, and exhibited before them children to prove the truths I promulgated, both there and in other parts of Scotland, to convince a doubting and cautious public that my views were practicable. I may add, in passing, that I found the Scotch took nothing on trust. They would listen to my lectures, but it always ended in my being obliged to prove it with children. To David Stow much credit is due, for having written useful books and performed useful works. I am not the man to deprive him of this his just due, but I have such faith in the honour of his countrymen in general, that I believe the time is not far distant when some one of them will give to me that credit which is fairly and justly due to me with respect to the educational movements in Scotland. No class of men are better able to appreciate and understand the principles on which a system of true education should be based than Scotchmen, and hence, though cautious in taking up new things, or new views of things, they can do justice to, and appreciate, that which is worthy of their attention.

At the time I have been speaking of there were no lessons published suitable for us. I searched the print shops in the metropolis, and with the aid of drawings from friends, supplied this deficiency. Next I had suitable lessons printed to accompany them, and also spelling lessons of such words as could be acted and explained. Then followed suitable reading lessons, prints of objects, and the simple forms of geometry. When a demand was created for all these, the publishing trade took them up, and thus the numerous excellent plates and lessons now published for the purposes of teaching, had their first origin.

I ant thoroughly convinced that the first seven years of a child's life is the golden period, and if I can induce mankind generally to think with me, and to act on the principles humbly laid open in the succeeding chapters of this book, I may feel some consolation that I have not lived in vain. Sure I am that if the world will only give man a fair chance, and train him from the beginning with care, with prudence, with caution, with circumspection, with freedom, and above all with love, he will bear such fruit, under the blessing of God, as will make even this world as a paradise. From childhood up to age has this truth been perfecting and strengthening in me, and I have no more doubt that it is a truth, than I have of my own existence. Who can look upon a child without admiring it, without loving it? With my feelings it is impossible! When I compare the Revealed Will of God,—the Scriptures, with His other Great Book, the book of nature, which I read so early in life, and read with delight to this present hour, I see the one illustrates the other. I see that the best ground produces the rankest weeds—but not if cultivated. What does not care do for all things in nature, why not then for man? Let him run wild through neglect, and undoubtedly he produces weeds; but this, to my mind, is an argument in his favour, and shews the ground is capable of producing rich fruits. When we study the true nature of his mind, with the same assiduity as we now do study the nature of his body, then will mankind see it in this light, begin at the right end, and cultivate from the first the beautiful faculties of his own species. I say beautiful! and are not the budding faculties of childhood both beautiful and lovely? "Feed my lambs," saith the Lord Jesus. But, reader, are they all duly fed in this rich, wealthy, and christian country? How many, on the contrary, are fed with evil influences, street associations, and are thus poisoned at every pore, until their being is thoroughly contaminated through neglect, public and private, and, when not orphans, even parental neglect also; and then after having increased our county rates, enlarged our prisons, and built union workhouses (with respect to morals and training for the young, I say pest-houses) we add ragged schools. We allow them to become contaminated, and when that is accomplished, we go to work to undo what has been done. If this does not succeed we punish by law the poor neglected beings for taking the poisons we really offered them! Oh, rare consistency in this boasted age of light, and science, and learning! Let us, therefore, first seek an education worthy of the name, and then find the best means of carrying it out. What exists at present is fundamentally defective, especially by beginning too late, and as regards the plans and principles laid down for infants in many cases, much has been merely travestied, and many of the most essential parts entirely set aside or overlooked.

The amount of solid information that may be given to an infant by a wise and judicious mother, during the first two years only, would appear to many persons astonishing. I have as clear a recollection of what my mother taught me at two years old, as I have of that which she taught me at the age of six. The facts crowd upon me so fast that I scarcely know where to stop. Those lessons were the germs of the inventions and babyisms—the hand-clapping, arm-twisting, and the like—with which the infants are so delighted in their schools, and which, at the time they were developed, about a third of a century since, were scouted, and the inventor looked upon as a good natured simpleton, or a well-meaning fool. I have a rather vivid recollection of this fact, but in the end, as we proceeded, many who came to sneer, went away with very different feelings. The plans were for infants, for infants they answered well, but I wish I could say that no excresences had grown upon them.

Now the ends to be answered in Infant Education, as intended by me, are as follows. First, to feed the child's faculties with suitable food; Second,—to simplify and explain everything, so as to adapt it properly to those faculties; Third, not to overdo anything, either by giving too much instruction, or instruction beyond their years, and thus over-excite the brain, and injure the faculties; and, Fourth, ever to blend both exercise and amusement with instruction at due intervals, which is readily effected by a moderate amount of singing, alternating with the usual motions and evolutions in the schoolroom, and the unfettered freedom of the play-ground. If these rules be attended to, the following results are certain,—a higher state of physical, mental, and moral health. Physical health is essential to mental vigour if it is to come to manhood. If the physical, mental, moral, and spiritual constitution be properly acted upon, fed, and trained, it adds to the happiness of the child; but if this is not done, it becomes miserable, and as a consequence restless, troublesome, and mischievous. Such facts were made very evident to me by the infants under my care in the earlier part of my career, and also have been fully confirmed throughout it, and they have forced me as it were to that more lively, interesting, and amusing mode of instruction, which I have through life endeavoured to propagate. I found children to be highly delighted with pictures and object-lessons; hence their value and high importance is so strongly insisted on in all my books, and the best methods of using them distinctly laid down. The trouble of rightly using such lessons has caused them to be almost entirely laid aside in very many existing infant schools, and in too many instances the mere learning and repeating of sounds by rote, or what may very properly be called the "parrot system," has been introduced in their place. But I yet hope that the good sense of the public will in the end remedy such defects. In such cases the memory is the only faculty exercised, and that at the expense of those that are higher. Where this is persisted in, the infant system is rendered nugatory, and my labours are in vain. It therefore cannot be too strongly insisted on, and too frequently repeated, that one of its most fundamental principles, as regards the unfolding, properly and easily, of the intellectual faculties, is to communicate notions and ideas rather than words and sounds, or at least to let them be done together.

As before stated, the gallery had its origin in my desire to teach the children simultaneously. It enables a teacher more readily to secure their full attention in all oral lessons, and establishes a sympathy between them. More real facts may be taught children simultaneously by the master, than can be taught by all the monitors in a school. The little infants should always sit at the bottom, and by no means be confined to another room. They can see and hear all that is going on, and understand it far more than you would suppose, though they cannot yet tell all they learn and know; but when the power of speech comes, they will surprise you with what they have learned. It is therefore a great error to separate children and cut them off from the advantage of all object-lessons, and gallery-teaching, because they are the youngest. They learn more through sympathy and communion with their five or six year elders, than the most clever adult can teach them. An infant-school, is, in many respects, a community in a state of nature. What one does, the other almost involuntarily learns. The merest infants are not an exception to this rule, and therefore the separation in many infant-schools of the children, invariably into two classes, sometimes in two rooms, is a great mistake, and can only arise from ignorance of the laws under which the young mind unfolds itself, and a misunderstanding of the first principles of infant-teaching.

Perhaps one reason that infant-school teaching has not been kept up to its proper point and true standing, is, the desire to make a striking shew before the visitors in a school. I fear the grounds for this opinion are not slight. Perhaps nothing has lead more to the multiplication of singing, even to the injury of the children. The ease with which they learn a metrical piece by rote, and the readiness with which they acquire a tune to it, is surprising, and as the exhibition of such attainments forms a striking sinew, in many cases little else is taught them. But to a sensible and thinking mind, one single piece understood, that is, one where clear ideas are annexed to the words in the minds of the children, is worth a hundred where this is not the case. Intellectual improvement, and moral training, are not thus easily exhibited, especially, the latter; but on dilligent attention to these, the real and permanent utility of the schools depends.

Many things have been taught most unsuitable for young children, and that simplicity which is so absolutely requisite, both as regards matter and language, seriously departed from. Let but the great principle of teaching through the senses be borne distinctly in mind, and of giving ideas in preference to sounds, and it will have a strong tendency to put an end to the evil complained of. How much may be taught by the simplest object, such as a stone? Form—weight—hardness, colour, sound, and numerous other qualities and properties, all of which must be clearly understood, because they are demonstrated by the sight and other senses. Once give to the mind a store of clear ideas in regular and natural order, and a series of words that are distinct and definite in meaning, and you have laid a firm foundation whereon to exercise the higher faculties of reflection and reasoning. Still more is it of paramount importance to educate and bring out the moral faculties, to cultivate the sense of right and wrong, to enlighten and strengthen the young conscience, to teach the love of good, and the hatred of evil, and to strive to bring the whole being under the new commandment of Christ, "that ye love one another." The golden rule, "to do unto others as ye would that they should do unto you," is one of the most powerful precepts that can be applied to awaken just moral feelings; and innumerable instances must occur, in the varied events which happen in a school, to bring it home powerfully to the heart, and illustrate it appropriately.

Perhaps in nothing has that simplicity of teaching so requisite for the young, and so earnestly contended for by me throughout, been so much disregarded, neglected, and preverted as in the matter of religion. I taught from the first, by means of pictures properly selected, scriptural truths and facts, histories and parables; and also suitable texts, and simple hymns and prayers were added. This surely was enough for infants. I thought so then, and I think so still, for an overdoing always ends in an undoing, and the mind of a child should never be crammed with that which it cannot understand, to the neglect of that which it may. I have opened schools for many sects and parties, and have been sorry to find them so prone to bind the "grevious burdens" of their own peculiar dogmas on the feeble minds of little children, to the neglect of the "weightier matters of the law, justice, mercy, and the love of God." I hope a time will come when the distinct precepts of Christ, in this respect, will be more faithfully regarded. The religion for infants should be a simple trust in "the love and kindness of God our Saviour," a desire of grace and strength from Him, and an aim to live thereby in love and duty to their parents and teachers, and in kindness and affection with their brothers, sisters, and schoolfellows. Such things as these, their young minds may apprehend, feel, and apply, and thus be strengthened and benefitted, but scholastic subtelties, and controverted dogmas, such as the grey-headed are perpetually disputing about, surely should never be taught to infants by any one who has carefully considered the subject, and properly studied the nature of the infant mind.