Mr. de Fellenberg indeed observes, that the boys being most of them only just come to the age of productive labour, it is presumed the Establishment will not only support itself in future, but repay past expenses; particularly as certain outfits charged to the first years will not recur again.—He observes also, that several grown boys have been suffered to go away, and have been replaced by young children, to the great injury of the Establishment. It may be added, that the pupils have been indulged of late with better clothes than formerly, or than is strictly necessary, as well as a better table; and that, from attention to their feelings, the cast-off clothes of the school of the rich are not turned to their use, but given away to the poor of the neighbourhood, that they may not appear in the light of dependants on any but their adoptive father and their own labour. It is undoubtedly a very striking circumstance, that only one, out of the whole number of boys admitted into this school since the beginning, has been dismissed as irrecoverably vicious; all the others have got rid of their former habits;—and, when final sentence was passed upon the unfortunate boy, the others begged leave to contribute each one batz towards a present to him, that he might remember them with kindness.
The labours of the field, their various sports, their lessons, their choral songs, the necessary rest, fill the whole circle of the twenty-four hours; and judging from their open, cheerful, contented countenances, nothing seems wanting to their happiness.—But it is a great point gained, to have brought young men to the age of 18 or 20, uncontaminated by the general licentiousness which prevails in the country. When their time is out, and they mix with other people, they will no doubt marry; but the probability is, they will be more difficult in their choice than other men of the same rank, and will shrink from vulgarity and abject poverty. Long habits of self-restraint, too, will enable them to look out with comparative patience for a suitable establishment, before they burden themselves with a family. In short, if the only check of the mild kind to an excessive increase of population is self-restraint, from motives of prudence and morality, where may we look for it with better hopes than among the pupils of Mr. de Fellenberg?
We shall now proceed, however, to lay before our readers a more detailed account of the internal management of the school of industry. The lessons are given mostly viva voce, and various questions continually interposed, respecting measures of capacity, length and weight, and their fractional parts; the cubic contents of a piece of timber, or a stack of hay; the time necessary to perform any particular task, under such or such circumstances; the effects of gravitation; the laws of mechanics; rules of grammar and different parts of speech, &c. &c. The boys endeavour to find the solution of arithmetical and mathematical problems without writing, and at the same time to proceed with the mechanical processes in which they may happen to be engaged. Aware of the difficulties with which they are thus made to grapple, as it were, without assistance, they are the more sensible of the value of those scientific short cuts, which carry you in the dark indeed, but safely and speedily, to your journey's end, and the more delighted with their beauty as well as their use. They acquire the rationale of the thing, together with the practice; their understandings are exercised, and their attention kept awake. None of them are ever seen to look inattentive or tired, although just returned from their day's labour in the fields. Contrivance, and some degree of difficulty to overcome, is a necessary condition, it would seem, of our enjoyments.
The pupils are not always questioned, but, in their turn, propose questions to the masters, and difficulties to be solved, which they do sometimes with considerable ingenuity.—They draw outlines of maps, from memory, exhibiting the principal towns, rivers, and chains of mountains; they draw correctly from nature, and in perspective, all sorts of machines for agriculture; and are very fond of trying chymically the different sorts of soil, and have tables of them very well arranged.
Various gymnastic games are also practised occasionally; but mental exercises find their place better after hard labour: They do indeed in the fields full as well as on the benches of the school. For instance, when the boys are employed in digging trenches to irrigate a meadow, and while directing the water along artificial ridges, and round hills, so as to regulate the fall and distribute the moisture equally, they put each other in mind of what they have heard about the laws of hydraulics. When they clear a field of the stones turned up by the plough, and are directed to separate those which are calcareous, in order to be burned into lime, they know and practise the different tests by which their nature is ascertained, and can point out in the horizon, the particular mountains which have furnished these various fragments.
In order to encourage the attachment to property acquired by our own industry, the pupils are allowed certain emoluments, such as the proceeds of the seeds they collect, some part of their gleanings, and what they raise in a small garden of their own; all which accumulates, and forms a fund for the time of their going away. No ambitious views are fostered by this mode of training the poorest class, beyond that of being good husbandmen. The pupils of the school of industry are not raised above their station; but their station, dignified and improved, is raised to them. It has been remarked before, that men born in the poorest class of society, constituted as it is at present, especially those who subsist in part on public charity, find it almost as difficult to get out of their dependant situation as a Hindoo to leave his cast,—kept down as they are by a sort of inbred ignorance and improvidence, and, above all, by their multitude; which is one of the worst consequences of that improvidence. The higher and middling ranks scarcely keep up their numbers any where; while multiplication goes on, unrestrained by any consideration of prudence, precisely among those who are least able to support a family. The poor may, in the bitterness of want, exclaim against taxes and ill government, and certainly not always without reason;—but the worst government is their own of themselves.
Agricultural labour is not the only occupation which can be made the base of such an education. Manufactures, with all their disadvantages, might answer the purpose, provided the children were not collected together in vast numbers in the same rooms—provided they were under the care of intelligent and kind masters and overseers, and were allowed gardens of their own, and a certain number of hours each day to work in them, or take exercise in the open air—all which must abridge necessarily the time allotted to productive labour, or to learning. One of the great advantages of husbandry is, that it affords sufficient exercise, and leaves more time for mental improvement. Such of Vehrli's pupils as have a turn for any of the trades in demand at Hofwyl—wheelwright, carpenter, smith, &c. tailor or shoemaker—are allowed to apply to them. These boys will leave the Institution at the age of one-and-twenty, understanding agriculture better than any peasants ever did before, besides being practically acquainted with a trade, and with a share of learning quite unprecedented among the same class of people; and yet as hard-working and abstemious as any of them, and with the best moral habits and principles. It seems impossible to desire or imagine a better condition of the peasantry.
Public education, Mr. de Fellenberg observes, is too generally a uniform process, imposed indiscriminately, and by force, upon every variety of disposition, talents, and character. His object, on the other hand, is to suit the education to the pupil, and not the pupil to the education.—A good preceptor should be an experienced friend, who guides,—not a master who commands, and, above all, not an irascible master. Punishments and rewards he considers as equally objectionable: for fear makes slaves, and the love of distinction unfolds, in the end, most of the bad passions. Do as you would be done by is, he maintains, the only safe rule of conduct to inculcate; a lively feeling of right and wrong, goodwill and kindness to all men, the only sentiments fit to be encouraged. Emulation, perhaps, is too powerful and universal a stimulant to be altogether excluded; but it needs more frequently to be repressed than excited. Such a vigilant and cautious system of training would be best carried on certainly under the parental roof, in a well regulated and united family; and therefore he wishes a school to resemble as nearly as possible such a family, and to be as unlike as possible to a mere manufactory of learning.
The whole course of studies may be considered as divided into three periods, of three years each. In the first, they study Greek and the Grecian History, the knowledge of animals, plants, and minerals. In the second, Latin, Roman History, and the Geography of the Roman world. And in the third, Modern Languages and Literature, Modern History to the last century, and Geography—the Physical Sciences, and Chymistry. During the whole nine years, they apply to Mathematics, Drawing, Music, and Gymnastic Exercises.
The geometrical representation of near objects—the house, the garden, the course of the river, the surrounding country, the mountains beyond it, taken by approximation in the shape of a map—is the natural introduction to Geography. When the pupils feel a curiosity to know more of the world than they can see, maps are then laid before them, and the globe and its uses are explained. They are made to delineate correctly, from memory, the shape of continents and seas; and to place and name the principal chains of mountains, the course of rivers, the boundaries of states, their provinces and capitals;—and this leads to an inquiry into the particular history of each, and their natural productions.