Homer and Socrates and Demosthenes come first: then Latin literature adds the final flavour. Finally, it was Quintilian’s injunction that the orator must begin his education with Homer.[1273] Jung thinks that Latin and Greek were probably taught together; but he bases his argument on the slender proof that Crispus and Urbicus are called ‘Grammatici Latini et Graeci’.[1274]
This strong tradition was adopted in Gaul, largely, no doubt, on the authority of Quintilian. Paulinus, who went through the regular school-course at Bordeaux, started with ‘dogmata Socratus (Σωκράτους) et bellica plasmata Homeri’.[1275] In Ausonius’s scheme of studies for his grandson, Homer and Menander came first.[1276] And Jerome advises this order for the education of Laeta’s little daughter: ‘ediscat Graecorum versuum (of the Bible) numerum: sequatur statim Latina eruditio.’[1277] ‘L’Hellénisme’, says Jullian[1278] of the Bordeaux schools, ‘est la sauvegarde des esprits et le salut des âmes. C’est l’idéal de l’École,’ and again, ‘les œuvres d’Homère étaient les premières livres qu’on mettait aux mains d’un enfant, qu’il fût Grec ou Romain.’
This is the point, ‘Greek or Roman’. Educational experience has shown that a school-system must be elastic and accommodate itself to the psychology and the needs of the child. Wherever there have been bilingual countries the problem has arisen. What is educationally the soundest principle of manipulating the language question? At first it was thought that the language of the higher culture should be enforced on all. It would save time and expense and trouble; moreover (so men argued), it would be in the interest of the child whose mother-tongue was thus disregarded, for he would have so much more time to learn the language of the ‘superior culture’. Your own language, they told the other party, you know already and your children need not spend time on it at school. Better, therefore, to have a uniform language throughout.
Now such a course (looking at it from the educational point of view) has been proved over and over again to be utterly unsound. The verdict of history has been to uphold, even at the cost of money and time and trouble, the principle of mother-tongue instruction. You must, as Augustine implied, start with what is natural to the child. If you begin with what is strange and has no connexion with his thoughts and speech, you are merely delaying his progress. You will, no doubt, develop his memory, but his thought will remain untouched. Inspectors in the schools of South Africa have reported repeatedly the case of Dutch children who have been started on English, that they read and spell perfectly, but are quite unable to explain the meaning of an English sentence. The consequence is that they take twice as long to pass the elementary standards as they normally would. The same has been found in Quebec and in India and Burma. Teachers and missionaries everywhere have discovered that the mother-tongue principle is the only fruitful one. They have found that where it is applied progress follows in an unexpected way. Once the child has learned to use, to analyse, to understand his own language, once his thought has been set going, he will learn the second language more quickly than the child who started with the second language. He is therefore ahead in three respects: his thought has been stimulated, he has learned his own language, he has learned another language, whereas the other has not been induced to think, knows his own language superficially and the second language imperfectly. This can be substantiated by many cases from the experience of teachers in bilingual countries.
May we not, then, find the ultimate cause of the failure of Greek in the schools of our period, in this mistaken policy of starting with the second language? At a time when Latin was becoming more and more the household tongue of Gaul, and Greek proportionately strange, the effect of beginning with the latter could not but lead to sterile results. There seems to have been an idea, which we find also in Jung,[1279] that they should clear the second language out of the way first, ‘quo postea linguam suam plenius ac melius ... ediscerent’. They seem to have thought that whatever you learn last has the strongest influence, and therefore, if you must learn Greek, do so first, lest it mar your Latin. How far this peculiarly Roman and unpsychological attitude failed is a question which needs no further comment.
4. Art
In a survey of Gallic education art must be mentioned, but the space given to it must of necessity be very limited. Only in its possible effect on education can it be briefly touched on, and even then not as a school-subject, but rather as an influence behind official teaching.
The Gauls were by nature fond of art. That eager curiosity and excitability which Caesar noticed[1280] in them were the basis of an artistic temperament. Ausonius, in his epigrams, refers frequently to works of art,[1281] and his enthusiasm over the sculptured calf of Myron is remarkable.[1282] He maintains the advanced doctrine that art is greater than nature. Of Myron’s heifer he says:
Fingere nam similem vivae, quam vivere, plus est;
nec sunt facta dei mira, sed artificis.[1283]