Misconceptions regarding Education.*

By J. M. M'CULLOCH, D.D., GREENOCK,

In spite of all that has of late years been said and written about Education, there still linger among all classes of the community many crude and fallacious notions on the subject. I propose to examine a few of these notions, and that with the design not only of exposing their unsoundness, but also of illustrating the educational truths which they disown or ignore. An exposure of error is scarcely worth attempting except as a help to the elucidation of truth. Nor would I throw my remarks into the shape of a review of current fallacies, did I not count on being able, by means of the contrast, to set in a clearer light the true idea and uses of Education.

"But what right have you to assume the office of mentor on this debateable subject ?" I pretend to no such right. I disclaim even the wish to speak with authority. Although the views which I shall have occasion to express are neither novel nor singular, but merely a reiteration of what many educationists have always maintained, yet I do not ask or expect you to rate them at more than they are intrinsically worth, or to accept them any farther than they commend themselves to your dispassionate sense of truth. All I ask or expect is an indulgent hearing for them, persuaded that the mere discussion will be of service, however diverse the conclusions at which we may respectively arrive.

I.-I object to the notion that Education is a discipline exclusively for the young.

The Dictionaries, indeed, define education to mean "the formation of manners in youth." But why should the conventional import of the word be allowed to rule our ideas of the thing? Education, considered not as a word but as a thing, is-culture; culture co-extensive with our nature; culture physical, intellectual, moral, and religious. Is such culture a thing which concerns the young alone? Youth, it is true, is the season of life formally set apart for the process, and most properly so; for in youth we possess in much larger measure than in riper years, the capacity of appropriating and assimilating those raw materials out of which we weave our knowledge, and opinions, and habitudes. But because youth is the best season for culture, is it therefore the only season? Do none but the young need further improvement? Are none but the young susceptible of further improvement? The aptitude for culture does certainly diminish with growing years; but there is no period on this side mental dotage at which a man's mental progress need come to an absolute stand still. And happily there are countless examples on record of men who have gone on adding to their intellectual treasures, and bettering their moral habits, even to extreme old age.

But in truth we cannot restrict our education to the season of youth, if we would. We may leave off all intentional culture; but that will not sist and terminate our education. There are other educators besides the schoolmaster-countless others; and these do not ask our leave, or wait our consent, before putting us to their school. Every object that exercises either the senses or the soul is an educator: External nature, passing events, our worldly callings, our duties and temptations, our joys and sorrows, the books we read, the discourses we hear, the society in which we move, the civil and religious institutions under which we live-all act upon us, and *This Lecture was delivered before the Glasgow Young Men's Christian Association, in the City Hall, January 30, 1854.

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co-operate to fashion our sentiments and characters. Never, while we live, can we escape out of the hands of manifold educators. Death alone can open the school-door, and set us at large.

Though beside my immediate purpose, it may not here be superfluous to remind you of the necessity of self-culture as a counterpoise to this pressure from without, and a corrective of it. Happily our nature is not a mere passivity, incapable of resisting outward forces. We have power to admit or exclude extraneous influences by an act of will. And hence, in order to make the outward world our minister instead of our master, we have but to acquire that volitional energy, that force and rectitude of will which self-culture, when wisely and strenuously prosecuted, is sure to impart. Neglect self-culture, and you become as a dismasted, rudderless ship, driven to and fro at the mercy of the winds and waves. But with self-culture on board, your ship has both sails and helm, and the winds and waves become your servants.

II.—I object to the notion that school tuition is the chief part of juvenile education.

To one class of pupils, indeed, school tuition is everything. In the case of the physically defective and the mentally imbecile, it is a discipline of truly formative power. The signal success of the schoolmaster in educating deaf mutes is universally acknowledged. And probably a yet prouder triumph awaits him when he shall direct his efforts to the elevation of the imbecile and epileptic. Recent experiments show that even in the case of idiots the capacity of culture is not dead, but only sleeps. Pupils who entered the Bicêtre asylum at Paris, without so much as the ability to perform voluntary movements, have been taught to read and sing, to go through gymnastic exercises with precision, and even to take part, with perfect decorum and seeming interest, in the performance of divine service. But in the case of children whose mental faculties are not obstructed by imperfect organisation, school tuition is but one of many educational agencies, and by no means either the first or the most effective. Does a healthy boy receive no tuition except at school? Does his inner life lie wintrybarren till the schoolmaster comes, like the farmer in spring, to break it up and cast in the seed? And after he has gone to school, is he always under the master's eye and control-always fenced off, as in a glass frame, from extraneous influences? Why, the boy is in the hands of busy educators from the moment of his birth, and far on in his moral education before he begins his alphabet. Imagine not that the class-room is your child's only, or even his principal school. The nursery, the parlour, the kitchen, the play-ground, are each a school to him. The servants to whom you give him in charge educate him; the grandmother and aunts to whom you send him during his holidays, educate him; the example of his playmates, the example of every person he knows-and, more than all, your own example, educate him; nay, his mere bodily growth promotes the development of his mental and moral nature. It is a grievous error to ignore, or even to underrate the power of out-of-school tuition. All culture is effected by dint of iteration. And need it be said which of the two does more sedulously ply the wearing drop of iteration-the one appointed preceptor in school, or the thousand unappointed preceptors out of school?

Yet school tuition, though the lesser force, need not be overborne by out-of-school tuition, if the parent is true to his function. What self-culture can do in the case of adults, the same may parental nurture do in the case of the young. A parent's is the most extensive authority out of heaven, and his influence is even greater than his authority. Let fathers

and mothers but use as they ought their commanding powers; let them but surround their children with an atmosphere of piety and virtue, and they are all but certain to make the various educational forces work together harmoniously and beneficially. It lies within their reach, if they are but faithful to their trust, not only to counteract hostile educational influences, but to control these influences for good-not only to strengthen the hands of the schoolmaster, but to enrich their children with a higher culture than any that purchased tuition can impart.

And here I will take leave to suggest, that as home is the proper place for the culture of the moral feelings and religious instincts, so parents mistake their duty when, without urgent necessity, they send young children to be educated at boarding-schools and among strangers. Boarding-schools, it is true, profess to combine domestic nurture with school instruction; but parents would do well to mistrust such professions. A family and a school do not admit of being blended; for in the one the governing principle is affection, in the other justice. "The schoolmaster," says Herbert, "delivers us to laws;" and what else, indeed, but a system of strict law can have place in a household where the inmates amount to forty or fifty, and possess no common solvent of blood or affinity to fuse them into a loving brotherhood? In such an establishment, a boy's physical comfort may be sufficiently cared for; but there can be no home charities to shed genial glow and sunshine upon his young heart. His very diversions, by being impose and regulated, lose their charm, and cease to promote the free growth of his emotional nature. The sparkling diamond becomes dull charcoal. And still worse must it fare with him religiously. How indeed should a tutor, charged with the oversight of from ten to twenty boys, be able to supply to each of them the place of a father and mother's pious nurture? In the mere want of a suitable retirement for secret prayer, there is an insuperable bar to youthful piety. Solitary prayer may be offered by a person of ripe understanding in even a common dormitory. But such an exercise is quite beyond a school-boy, lodged with other school-boys in the same chamber. It will not be performed by him voluntarily; nor will any degree of superintendence ensure its regular, far less its cheerful performance. As you value, then, the moral and religious wellbeing of your children, send them not to a boarding-school; at least send them not till they have been prepared, by previous domestic nurture, for the trial. A youth of somewhat mature years and confirmed principles may withstand the temptations of a great school-nay, may derive from the collisions and competitions of its little world a training and preparation for the yet rougher collisions and keener competitions of the great world into which he must subsequently pass. But to place a youth of tender age at such an establishment, is to transfer the delicate seedling of the green-house to the bleak exposure of the mountain top.

III. Of a like narrow and mistaken character is the notion, that the acquisition of knowledge is the main purpose and benefit of school instruction.

Ask parents how they think their children should be occupied at school, and seven out of every ten will answer:-"In acquiring useful knowledge." "Waste not our children's time," they will say, "upon grammar rules; teach them things, not words; teach them geography, history, and the useful sciences. Or; if they must study the languages, let these be postponed to the last."

Specious as this view of the matter seems, it is open to two fatal objections. For one thing, it ignores the method of nature. Does nature say, "Teach

things, and not words?" Why, the very first task to which nature sets her pupils, is the learning of a language; and one of her earliest gifts to them, is the faculty of remembering and applying words. So strong is this faculty in youth, that scarce any child, however slender his capacities, ever fails to acquire his vernacular tongue; and so peculiar, moreover, is it to youth, that few adults retain it in anything like vigour. It is only by ceaseless industry and slow laborious progress, that a grown man can master the language which a child learns without knowing how, and a boy without any sense of toil. To postpone the study of words to that of things, is just to reverse the method which nature prompts and has provided for.

But this utilitarian view is exposed to a yet more fatal objection. It mistakes the true end and use of school instruction. Why is a boy sent to school? Is it to have his mind stored with information? Is it not rather to have his mind awakened, developed, strengthened? A boy is benefited not so much by what he learns, as by the process of learning. The great thing for him is, not to be furnished with various knowledge, but to be formed to habits of accurate thought and patient application. It matters little how slender the information he gains at school, if he but gains a quickened and invigorated mind; whereas, if all he carries away with him is a memory crowded with facts, he is, to borrow Montaigne's figure, only a jackass laden with books.

"But may not elementary science be so taught as to effect the needed mental culture?" It cannot in the case of school boys. In science the utmost that a mere boy can be taught is the facts-the bare facts; an acquisition not at all fitted to call into play the free agency of thought. Nay, it may be doubted whether a school-boy can be taught even the facts of science -taught them, I mean, so as to make them real knowledge to him. Some of the facts of geography may not be beyond his reach; but what of the facts of chemistry, of geology, of human physiology, and the other kindred sciences; which utilitarian educationalists would substitute for the study of language? He may learn some of the hard names which these sciences rejoice in, but nothing more. The things which those hard names represent, are beyond his ken. All he can really master, is a set of strange, harsh, crabbed words, which wake up no echo in his understanding, and must soon vanish from his recollection.

Let parents then, distrust every plan of instruction which professes, as its primary object, to make their children proficients in useful knowledge. Its large promises may be catching, and the showy surface-knowledge which the pupils sometimes display, may impose on the unwary. "The rocket tends ad captandum vulgus more than all the milder radiance of the star." But the whole is sheer empiricism. You cannot cultivate a boy's mind by merely cramming it with knowledge; and, least of all, by cramming it in haste. The method of fast-feeding may answer in the case of a prize sheep, or a stalled ox; but the juvenile mind may not be thus fed and fattened. The mental food must be such as can be digested, and there must also be time for assimilation. In fact, to hasten education, is to defeat its object. Nothing truly valuable can be attained without labour-and, least of all, mental culture. Nay, to rid learning of its difficulties, would be to rid it of its charms. "Labor ipse voluptas.

IV. Another erroneous notion, near akin to the last, but worthy of separate examination, relates to the study of the classics. The pre-eminent importance so long attached to a classical education, is now-a-days scouted as an old-fashioned prejudice, and the opinion is widely held, that Latin and Greek should give place to branches of study more accordant with the prac

tical character of the age. "Why require my boy," says the parent, "to consume five years of his youth in the acquisition of dead languages? Of what possible use can these be to him in after life? If he were intended for one of the learned professions, such studies might not be out of place. But with the prospect of going into business, what occasion has he for Latin and Greek? Besides, the chance is, he will not remember one word of them ten years hence."

But is it the fact that classical studies are useless to all but aspirants to the learned professions? Is it the fact that they yield no adequate return for the time and labour they demand? I affirm the opposite to be the fact. I affirm that they are, of all youthful studies, the most productive, the most remuneratory.

Are classical studies unproductive, even as regards immediate acquirement? So far from it, that it may well be a question whether the classical scholar is not taught a greater amount of useful knowledge, than even the student of science. Consider how much beyond mere Latin and Greek your son acquires while studying these languages. He learns Grammar,—a science, as really such, as any of those to which you appropriate the name, and far more useful than most of those. He learns the radical import of the chief derivative terms in his vernacular tongue, and of nearly the whole nomenclature of the sciences,- -an attainment of unquestionable value, and not to to be perfectly acquired otherwise. He learns the art of constructing sentences and writing grammatically,— -no superfluous accomplishment surely, whatever may be his ultimate destination in life. He learns too, to translate from a dead into a living language, the best introduction, as all competent judges agree, to the practice of English composition. Nor does this exhaust his gains. The classic authors introduce the student into a new realm of things and of thought. As he studies them, he becomes acquainted with the history of the most renowned nations of antiquitywith the character and achievements of many of the most eminent men that ever lived—with the thoughts of the greatest thinkers, and the acts of the greatest doers-with the rise, and progress, and effects of institutions and polities which moulded the ancient world, and which still contine to exert no inconsiderable influence upon the modern. Nay, unless he is either an incorrigible idler, or an absolute dolt, he may be expected to make richer conquests still; he may be expected, while drinking at the ancient fount, to acquire that thirst and taste for literature which is the surest pledge of future mental progress. And thus his classical studies, instead of proving a mere dead trunk destined to rot down in his mind, may become the living root of a noble tree of knowledge, ever bearing new flowers and fruits.

But it is not alone on the ground of the collateral advantages of which they may be productive, that I affirm classical studies to be well worth all the time and labour they cost. I affirm them to be richly remuneratory as a mere employment and discipline for the youthful mind.

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Be it, that your son shall learn nothing at the grammar-school but Latin and Greek, and learn even these only to forget them; be it, that he shall never look into a classical author after his school-boy days are over, that he may safely go and sell his Homer and Virgil for an old song, at the first book-stand he comes to;-what then? Does it follow that he loses his time in giving five years to the study of the classics? I maintain that, even on this extreme supposition, the boy is a gainer, not a loser.

It must be obvious to every thoughtful parent, that the studies most valuable for a youth are those which most conduce to exercise and brace his mental powers-which most conduce to develop and form that general men