Chapter IV: Part 4

§ 13. 2. The second and more urgent cause is the rapid development of our system of examinations. Everybody’s educational status is now settled by the examiner, a potentate whose influence has brought back in a very malignant form all the evils of which Montaigne complains. Do what we will, the faculty chiefly exercised in preparing for ordinary examinations is the “carrying memory.” So the acquisition of knowledge—mere memory or examination knowledge—has again come to be regarded as the one thing needful in education, and there is great danger of everything else being neglected for it. Of the fourfold results of education—virtue, wisdom, good manners, learning—the last alone can be fairly tested in examinations; and as the schoolmaster’s very bread depends nowadays first on his getting through examinations himself and then on getting his pupils through, he would be more than human, if with Locke he thought of learning “last and least.” A great change has come over our public schools. The amount of work required from the boys is far greater than it used to be and masters again measure their success by the amount of knowledge the average boy takes away with him. It seems to me high time that another Montaigne arose to protest that a man’s intellectual life does not consist in the number of things he remembers, and that his true life is not his intellectual life only, but embraces his power of will and action and his love of what is noble and right. “Wisdom cried of old, I am the mother of fair Love and Fear and Knowledge and holy Hope” (_Ecclesiasticus_). In these days of science and examinations does there not seem some danger lest knowledge should prove the sole survivor? May not Knowledge, like another Cain, raise its hand against its brethren “fair Love and Fear and holy Hope?” This is perhaps the great danger of our time, a danger especially felt in education. Every school parades its scholarships at the public schools or at the universities, or its passes in the Oxford and Cambridge Locals, or its percentage at the last Inspection, and asks to be judged by these. And yet these are not the one thing or indeed the chief thing needful: and it will be the ruin of true education if, as Mark Pattison said, the master’s attention is concentrated on the least important part of his duty.[42]

VII.

ASCHAM.

(1515-1568.)

§ 1. Masters and scholars who sigh over what seem to them the intricacies and obscurities of modern grammars may find some consolation in thinking that, after all, matters might have been worse, and that our fate is enviable indeed compared with that of the students of Latin 400 years ago. Did the reader ever open the _Doctrinale_ of Alexander de Villa Dei, which was the grammar in general use from the middle of the thirteenth to the end of the fifteenth century? (_v._ Appendix, p. 532). If so, he is aware how great a step towards simplicity was made by our grammatical reformers, Lily, Colet, and Erasmus. Indeed, those whom we now regard as the forgers of our chains were, in their own opinion and that of their contemporaries, the champions of freedom (Appendix, p. 533).

§ 2. I have given elsewhere (Appendix, p. 533) a remarkable passage from Colet, in which he recommends the leaving of rules, and the study of examples in good Latin authors. Wolsey also, in his directions to the masters of Ipswich School (dated 1528), proposes that the boys should be exercised in the eight parts of speech in the first form, and should begin to speak Latin and translate from English into Latin in the second. If the masters think fit, they may also let the pupils read Lily’s _Carmen Monitorium_, or Cato’s _Distichs_. From the third upwards a regular course of classical authors was to be read, and Lily’s rules were to be introduced by degrees. “Although I confess such things are necessary,” writes Wolsey, “yet, as far as possible, we could wish them so appointed as not to occupy the more valuable part of the day.” Only in the sixth form, the highest but two, Lily’s syntax was to be begun. In these schools the boys’ time was wholly taken up with Latin, and the speaking of Latin was enforced even in play hours, so we see that anomalies in the accidence as taught in the _As in præsenti_ were not given till the boys had been some time using the language; and the syntax was kept till they had a good practical knowledge of the usages to which the rules referred.[43]

§ 3. But although there was a great stir in education throughout this century, and several English books were published about it, we come to 1570 before we find anything that has lived till now. We then have Roger Ascham’s _Scholemaster_, a posthumous work brought out by Ascham’s widow, and republished in 1571 and 1589. The book was then lost sight of, but reappeared, with James Upton as editor, in 1711,[44] and has been regarded as an educational classic ever since. Dr. Johnson says “it contains perhaps the best advice that was ever given for the study of languages,” and Professor J. E. B. Mayor, who on this point is a higher authority than Dr. Johnson, declares that “this book sets forth the only sound method of acquiring a dead language.”

§ 4. With all their contempt for theory, English schoolmasters might have been expected to take an interest in one part of the history of education, viz., the history of methods. There is a true saying attributed by Marcel to Talleyrand, “_Les Méthodes sont les maîtres des maîtres_—Method is the master’s master.” The history of education shows us that every subject of instruction has been taught in various ways, and further, that the contest of methods has not uniformly ended in the survival of the fittest. Methods then might often teach the teachers, if the teachers cared to be taught; but till within the last half century or so an unintelligent traditional routine has sufficed for them. There has no doubt been a great change since men now old were at school, but in those days the main strength of the teaching was given to Latin, and the masters knew of no better method of starting boys in this language than making them learn by heart Lily’s, or as it was then called, the Eton Latin Grammar. If reason had had anything to do with teaching, this book would have been demolished by Richard Johnson’s _Grammatical Commentaries_ published in 1706; but worthless as Johnson proved it to be, the Grammar was for another 150 years treated by English schoolmasters as the only introduction to the Latin tongue. The books that have recently been published show a tendency to revert to methods set forth in Elizabeth’s reign in Ascham’s _Scholemaster_ (1570) and William Kempe’s _Education of Children_ (1588), but the innovators have not as a rule been drawn to these methods by historical inquiry.

§ 5. There seem to be only three English writers on education who have caught the ear of other nations, and these are Ascham, Locke, and Herbert Spencer. Of a contemporary we do well to speak with the same reserve as of “present company,” but of the other two we may say that the choice has been somewhat capricious. Locke’s _Thoughts_ perhaps deserves the reputation and influence it has always had, but in it he hardly does himself justice as a philosopher of the mind; and much of the advice which has been considered his exclusively, is to be found in his English predecessors whose very names are unknown except to the educational antiquarian. Ascham wrote a few pages on method which entitle him to mention in an account of methods of language-learning. He also wrote a great many pages about things in general which would have shared the fate of many more valuable but long forgotten books had he not had one peculiarity in which the other writers were wanting, that indescribable something which Matthew Arnold calls “charm.”

§ 6. Ascham has been very fortunate in his editors, Professor Arber and Professor Mayor, and the last editions[45] give everyone an opportunity of reading the _Scholemaster_. I shall therefore speak of nothing but the method.

§ 7. Latin is to be taught as follows:—First, let the child learn the eight parts of speech, and then the right joining together of substantives with adjectives, the noun with the verb, the relative with the antecedent. After the concords are learned, let the master take Sturm’s selection of Cicero’s Epistles, and read them after this manner: “first, let him teach the child, cheerfully and plainly, the cause and matter of the letter; then, let him construe it into English so oft as the child may easily carry away the understanding of it; lastly, parse it over perfectly. This done, then let the child by and by both construe and parse it over again; so that it may appear that the child doubteth in nothing that his master has taught him before. After this, the child must take a paper book, and, sitting in some place where no man shall prompt him, by himself let him translate into English his former lesson. Then showing it to his master, let the master take from him his Latin book, and pausing an hour at the least, then let the child translate his own English into Latin again in another paper book. When the child bringeth it turned into Latin, the master must compare it with Tully’s book, and lay them both together, and where the child doth well, praise him,” where amiss point out why Tully’s use is better. Thus the child will easily acquire a knowledge of grammar, “and also the ground of almost all the rules that are so busily taught by the master, and so hardly learned by the scholar in all common schools.... We do not contemn rules, but we gladly teach rules; and teach them more plainly, sensibly, and orderly, than they be commonly taught in common schools. For when the master shall compare Tully’s book with the scholar’s translation, let the master at the first lead and teach the scholar to join the rules of his grammar book with the examples of his present lesson, until the scholar by himself be able to fetch out of his grammar every rule for every example; and let the grammar book be ever in the scholars hand, and also used by him as a dictionary for every present use. This is a lively and perfect way of teaching of rules; where the common way used in common schools to read the grammar alone by itself is tedious for the master, hard for the scholar, cold and uncomfortable for them both.” And elsewhere Ascham says: “Yea, I do wish that all rules for young scholars were shorter than they be. For, without doubt, _grammatica_ itself is sooner and surer learned by examples of good authors than by the naked rules of grammarians.”

§ 8. “As you perceive your scholar to go better on away, first, with understanding his lesson more quickly, with parsing more readily, with translating more speedily and perfectly than he was wont; after, give him longer lessons to translate, and, withal, begin to teach him, both in nouns and verbs, what is _proprium_ and what is _translatum_, what _synonymum_, what _diversum_, which be _contraria_, and which be most notable _phrases_, in all his lectures, as—

Proprium Rex sepultus est magnifice.

Translatum Cum illo principe, sepulta est et gloria et salus
reipublicæ.

Synonyma Ensis, gladius: laudare, prædicare.

Diversa Diligere, amare: calere, exardescere: inimicus,
hostis.

Contraria Acerbum et luctuosum bellum, dulcis et læta pax.

Phrases Dare verba, adjicere obedientiam.”

Every lesson is to be thus carefully analysed, and entered under these headings in a third MS. book.

§ 9. Here Ascham leaves his method, and returns to it only at the beginning of Book II. He there supposes the first stage to be finished and “your scholar to have come indeed, first to a ready perfectness in translating, then to a ripe and skilful choice in marking out his six points.” He now recommends a course of Cicero, Terence, Cæsar, and Livy which is to be read “a good deal at every lecture.” And the master is to give passages “put into plain natural English.” These the scholar shall “not know where to find” till he shall have tried his hand at putting them into Latin; then the master shall “bring forth the place in Tully.”

§ 10. In the Second Book of the _Scholemaster_, Ascham discusses the various branches of the study then common, viz.: 1. Translatio linguarum; 2. Paraphrasis; 3. Metaphrasis; 4. Epitome; 5. Imitatio; 6. Declamatio. He does not lay much stress on any of these, except _translatio_ and _imitatio_. Of the last he says: “All languages, both learned and mother-tongue, be gotten, and gotten only, by imitation. For, as ye use to hear, so ye use to speak; if ye hear no other, ye speak not yourself; and whom ye only hear, of them ye only learn.” But translation was his great instrument for all kinds of learning. “The translation,” he says, “is the most common and most commendable of all other exercises for youth; most common, for all your constructions in grammar schools be nothing else but translations, but because they be not _double_ translations (as I do require) they bring forth but simple and single commodity: and because also they lack the daily use of writing, which is the only thing that breedeth deep root, both in the wit for good understanding and in the memory for sure keeping of all that is learned; most commendable also, and that by the judgment of all authors which entreat of these exercises.”

§ 11. After quoting Pliny,[46] he says: “You perceive how Pliny teacheth that by this exercise of double translating is learned easily, sensibly, by little and little, not only all the hard congruities of grammar, the choice of ablest words, the right pronouncing of words and sentences, comeliness of figures, and forms fit for every matter and proper for every tongue: but, that which is greater also, in marking daily and following diligently thus the footsteps of the best authors, like invention of arguments, like order in disposition, like utterance in elocution, is easily gathered up; and hereby your scholar shall be brought not only to like eloquence, but also to all true understanding and rightful judgment, both for writing and speaking.”

Again he says: “For speedy attaining, I durst venture a good wager if a scholar in whom is aptness, love, diligence, and constancy, would but translate after this sort some little book in Tully (as _De Senectute_, with two Epistles, the first ‘Ad Quintum Fratrem,’ the other ‘Ad Lentulum’), that scholar, I say, should come to a better knowledge in the Latin tongue than the most part do that spend from five to six years in tossing all the rules of grammar in common schools.” After quoting the instance of Dion Prussæus, who came to great learning and utterance by reading and following only two books, the _Phædo_, and _Demosthenes de Falsa Legatione_, he goes on: “And a better and nearer example herein may be our most noble Queen Elizabeth, who never took yet Greek nor Latin grammar in her hand after the first declining of a noun and a verb; but only by this double translating of Demosthenes and Isocrates daily, without missing, every forenoon, and likewise some part of Tully every afternoon, for the space of a year or two, hath attained to such a perfect understanding in both the tongues, and to such a ready utterance of the Latin, and that with such a judgment, as there be few now in both Universities or elsewhere in England that be in both tongues comparable with Her Majesty.” Ascham’s authority is indeed not conclusive on this point, as he, in praising the Queen’s attainments, was vaunting his own success as a teacher, and, moreover, if he flattered her he could plead prevailing custom. But we have, I believe, abundant evidence that Elizabeth was an accomplished scholar.

§ 12. Before I leave Ascham I must make one more quotation, to which I shall more than once have occasion to refer. Speaking of the plan of double translation, he says: “Ere the scholar have construed, parsed, twice translated over by good advisement, marked out his six points by skilful judgment, he shall have necessary occasion to read over every lecture a _dozen times at the least_; which because he shall do always in order, he shall do it always with pleasure. And pleasure allureth love: love hath lust to labour; labour always obtaineth his purpose.”

§ 13. A good deal has been said, and perhaps something learnt, about the teaching of Latin since the days of Ascham. As far as I know the method which Ascham denounced, and which most English schoolmasters stuck to for more than two centuries longer, has now been abandoned. No one thinks of making the beginner learn by heart all the Latin Grammar before he is introduced to the Latin language. To understand the machinery of which an account is given in the grammar, the learner must see it at work, and must even endeavour in a small way to work it himself. So it seems pretty well agreed that the information given in the grammar must be joined with some construing and some exercises from the very first. But here the agreement ends. Our teachers, consciously or in ignorance, follow one or more of a number of methodizers who have examined the problem of language-learning, such men as Ascham, Ratke, Comenius, Jacotot, Hamilton, Robertson, and Prendergast. These naturally divide themselves into two parties, which I have ventured to call “Rapid Impressionists,” and “Complete Retainers.” The first of these plunge the beginner into the language, and trust to the great mass of vague impressions clearing and defining themselves as he goes along. The second insist on his learning at the first a very small portion of the language, and mastering and retaining everything he learns. It will be seen that in the first stage of the course Ascham is a “Complete Retainer.” He does not talk, like Prendergast, of “mastery,” nor, like Jacotot, does he require the learner to begin every lesson at the beginning of the book: but he makes the pupil go over each lesson “a dozen times at the least,” before he may advance beyond it. As for his practice of double translation, for the advanced pupil it is excellent, but if it is required from the beginner, it leads to unintelligent memorizing. I think I shall be able to show later on that other methodizers have advanced beyond Ascham. (_Infra_, 246 _n._)

VIII.

MULCASTER.

(1531(?)-1611.)

§ 1. The history of English thought on education has yet to be written. In the literature of education the Germans have been the pioneers, and have consequently settled the routes; and when a track has once been established few travellers will face the risk and trouble of leaving it. So up to the present time, writers on the history of European education after the Renascence have occupied themselves chiefly with men who lived in Germany, or wrote in German. But the French are at length exploring the country for themselves; and in time, no doubt, the English-speaking races will show an interest in the thoughts and doings of their common ancestors.

We know what toils and dangers men will encounter in getting to the source of great rivers; and although, as Mr. Widgery truly says, “the study of origins is not everybody’s business,”[47] we yet may hope that students will be found ready to give time and trouble to an investigation of great interest and perhaps some utility—the origin of the school course which now affects the millions who have English for their mother-tongue.

§ 2. In the fifteen hundreds there were published several works on education, three of which, Elyot’s _Governour_, Ascham’s _Scholemaster_, and Mulcaster’s _Positions_, have been recently reprinted.[48] Others, such as Edward Coote’s _English Schoolmaster_, and Mulcaster’s _Elementarie_, are pretty sure to follow, without serious loss, let us hope, to their editors, though neither Coote nor Mulcaster are likely to become as well-known writers as Roger Ascham.

§ 3. Henry Barnard, whose knowledge of our educational literature no less than his labours in it, makes him the greatest living authority, says that Mulcaster’s _Positions_ is “one of the earliest, and still one of the best treatises in the English language.” (_English Pedagogy_, 2nd series, p. 177.) Mulcaster was one of the most famous of English schoolmasters, and by his writings he proved that he was far in advance of the schoolmasters of his own time, and of the times which succeeded. But he paid the penalty of thinking of himself more highly than he should have thought; and whether or no the conjecture is right that Shakespeare had him in his mind when writing _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, there is an affectation in Mulcaster’s style which is very irritating, for it has caused even the master of Edmund Spenser to be forgotten. In a curious and interesting allegory on the progress of language (in the _Elementarie_, pp. 66, ff.), Mulcaster says that Art selects the best age of a language to draw rules from, such as the age of Demosthenes in Greece and of Tully in Rome; and he goes on: “Such a period in the English tongue I take to be in our days for both the pen and the speech.” And he suggests that the English language, having reached its zenith, is seen to advantage, not in the writings of Shakespeare or Spenser, but in those of Richard Mulcaster. After enumerating the excellencies of the language, he adds: “I need no example in any of these, whereof my own penning is a general pattern.” Here we feel tempted to exclaim with Armado in _Love’s Labour’s Lost_ (Act 5, sc. 2): “I protest the schoolmaster is exceeding fantastical: too too vain, too too vain.” He speaks elsewhere of his “so careful, I will not say so curious writing” (_Elementarie_, p. 253), and says very truly: “Even some of reasonable study can hardly understand the couching of my sentence, and the depth of my conceit” (_ib._, 235). And this was the death-warrant of his literary renown.

§ 4. But there is good reason why Mulcaster should not be forgotten. When we read his books we find that wisdom which we are importing in the nineteenth century was in a great measure offered us by an English schoolmaster in the sixteenth. The latest advances in pedagogy have established (1) that the end and aim of education is to develop the faculties of the mind and body; (2) that all teaching processes should be carefully adapted to the mental constitution of the learner; (3) that the first stage in learning is of immense importance and requires a very high degree of skill in the teacher; (4) that the brain of children, especially of clever children, should not be subjected to “pressure”; (5) that childhood should not be spent in learning foreign languages, but that its language should be the mother-tongue, and its exercises should include handwork, especially drawing; (6) that girls’ education should be cared for no less than boys’; (7) that the only hope of improving our schools lies in providing training for our teachers. These are all regarded as planks in the platform of “the new education,” and these were all advocated by Mulcaster.

§ 5. Before I point this out in detail I may remark how greatly education has suffered from being confounded with learning. There are interesting passages both in Ascham and Mulcaster which prove that the class-ideal of the “scholar and gentleman” was of later growth. In the fifteen hundreds learning was thought suitable, not for the rich, but for the clever. Still, learning, and therefore education, was not for the many, but the few. Mulcaster considers at some length how the number of the educated is to be kept down (_Positions_, chapp. 36, 37, 39), though even here he is in the van, and would have everyone taught to read and write (_Positions_, chapp. 5, 36). But the true problem of education was not faced till it was discovered that every human being was to be considered in it. This was, I think, first seen by Comenius.

With this abatement we find Mulcaster’s sixteenth-century notions not much behind our nineteenth.

§ 6. (1 & 2) “Why is it not good,” he asks, “to have every part of the body and every power of the soul to be fined to his best?” (_PP._, p. 34[49]). Elsewhere he says: “The end of education and train is to help Nature to her perfection, which is, when all her abilities be perfected in their habit, whereunto right elements be right great helps. Consideration and judgment must wisely mark whereunto Nature is either evidently given or secretly affectionate and must frame an education consonant thereto.” (_El._, p. 28).

Michelet has with justice claimed for Montaigne that he drew the teacher’s attention from the thing to be learnt to the _learner_: “_Non l’objet, le savoir, mais le sujet, c’est l’homme._” (_Nos Fils_, p. 170.) Mulcaster has a claim to share this honour with his great contemporary. He really laid the foundation of a science of education. Discussing our natural abilities, he says: “We have a perceiving by outward sense to feel, to hear, to see, to smell, to taste all sensible things; which qualities of the outward, being received in by the _common sense_ and examined by _fantsie_, are delivered to _remembrance_, and afterward prove our great and only grounds unto further knowledge.”[50] (_El._, p. 32.) Here we see Mulcaster endeavouring to base education, or as he so well calls it, “train,” on what we receive from Nature. Elsewhere he speaks of the three things which we “find peering out of the little young souls,” viz: “wit to take, memory to keep, and discretion to discern.” (_PP._, p. 27.)

§ 7. (3) I have pointed out that the false ideal of the Renascence led schoolmasters to neglect children. Mulcaster remarks that the ancients considered the training of children should date from the birth; but he himself begins with the school age. Here he has the boldness to propose that those who teach the beginners should have the smallest number of pupils, and should receive the highest pay. “The first groundwork would be laid by the best workman,” says Mulcaster (_PP._, 130), here expressing a truth which, like many truths that are not quite convenient, is seldom denied but almost systematically ignored.[51]

§ 8. (4) In the _Nineteenth Century_ Magazine for November, 1888, appeared a vigorous protest with nearly 400 signatures, many of which carried great weight with them, against our _sacrifice of education to examination_. Our present system, whether good or bad, is the result of accident. Winchester and Eton had large endowments, and naturally endeavoured by means of these endowments to get hold of clever boys. At first no doubt they succeeded fairly well; but other schools felt bound to compete for juvenile brains, and as the number of prizes increased, many of our preparatory schools became mere racing stables for children destined at 12 or 14 to run for “scholarship stakes.” Thus, in the scramble for the money all thought of education has been lost sight of; injury has been done in many cases to those who have succeeded, still greater injury to those who have failed or who have from the first been considered “out of the running.” These very serious evils would have been avoided had we taken counsel with Mulcaster: “Pity it were for so petty a gain to forego a greater; to win an hour in the morning and lose the whole day after; as those people most commonly do which start out of their beds too early before they be well awaked or know what it is o’clock; and be drowsy when they are up for want of their sleep.” (_PP._, p. 19; see also _El._, xi., pp. 52 ff.)

§ 9. (5) It would have been a vast gain to all Europe if Mulcaster had been followed instead of Sturm. He was one of the earliest advocates of the use of English instead of Latin (see Appendix, p. 534), and good reading and writing in English were to be secured before Latin was begun. His elementary course included these five things: English reading, English writing, drawing, singing, playing a musical instrument. If the first course were made to occupy the school-time up to the age of 12, Mulcaster held that more would be done between 12 and 16 than between 7 and 17 in the ordinary way. There would be the further gain that the children would not be set against learning. “Because of the too timely onset too little is done in too long a time, and the school is made a torture, which as it brings forth delight in the end when learning is held fast, so should it pass on very pleasantly by the way, while it is in learning.”[52] (_PP._, 33.)

§ 10. (6) Among the many changes brought about in the nineteenth century we find little that can compare in importance with the advance in the education of women. In the last century, whenever a woman exercised her mental powers she had to do it by stealth,[53] and her position was degraded indeed when compared not only with her descendants of the nineteenth century, but also with her ancestors of the sixteenth. This I know has been disputed by some authorities, _e.g._, by the late Professor Brewer: but to others, _e.g._, to a man who, as regards honesty and wisdom, has had few equals and no superiors in investigating the course of education, I mean the late Joseph Payne, this educational superiority of the women of Elizabeth’s time has seemed to be entirely beyond question. On this point Mulcaster’s evidence is very valuable, and, to me at least, conclusive. He not only “admits young maidens to learn,” but says that “custom stands for him,” and that “the custom of my country ... hath made the maidens’ train her own approved travail.” (_PP._, p. 167.)

§ 11. (7) Of all the educational reforms of the nineteenth century by far the most fruitful and most expansive is, in my opinion, the training of teachers. In this, as in most educational matters, the English, though advancing, are in the rear. Far more is made of “training” on the Continent and in the United States than in England. And yet we made a good start. Our early writers on education saw that the teacher has immense influence, and that to turn this influence to good account he must have made a study of his profession and have learnt “the best that has been thought and done” in it. Every occupation in life has a traditional capital of knowledge and experience, and those who intend to follow the business, whatever it may be, are required to go through some kind of training or apprenticeship before they earn wages. To this rule there is but one exception. In English elementary schools children are paid to “teach” children, and in the higher schools the beginner is allowed to blunder at the expense of his first pupils into whatever skill he may in the end manage to pick up. But our English practice received no encouragement from the early English writers, Mulcaster, Brinsley,[54] and Hoole.

As far as I am aware the first suggestion of a training college for teachers came from Mulcaster. He schemed seven special colleges at the University; and of these one is for teachers. Some of his suggestions, _e.g._, about “University Readers” have lately been adopted, though without acknowledgment; and as the University of Cambridge has since 1879 acknowledged the existence of teachers, and appointed a “Teachers’ Training Syndicate,” we may perhaps in a few centuries more carry out his scheme, and have training colleges at Oxford and Cambridge.[55] Some of the reasons he gives us have not gone out of date with his English. They are as follows:—

“And why should not these men (the teachers) have both this sufficiency in learning, and such room to rest in, thence to be chosen and set forth for the common service? Be either children or schools so small a portion of our multitude? or is the framing of young minds, and the training of their bodies so mean a point of cunning? Be schoolmasters in this Realm such a paucity, as they are not even in good sadness to be soundly thought on? If the chancel have a minister, the belfry hath a master: and where youth is, as it is eachwhere, there must be trainers, or there will be worse. He that will not allow of this careful provision for such a seminary of masters, is most unworthy either to have had a good master himself, or hereafter to have a good one for his. Why should not teachers be well provided for, to continue their whole life in the school, as _Divines_, _Lawyers_, _Physicians_ do in their several professions? Thereby judgment, cunning, and discretion will grow in them: and masters would prove old men, and such as _Xenophon_ setteth over children in the schooling of _Cyrus_. Whereas now, the school being used but for a shift, afterward to pass thence to the other professions, though it send out very sufficient men to them, itself remaineth too too naked, considering the necessity of the thing. I conclude, therefore, that this trade requireth a particular college, for these four causes. 1. First, for the subject being the mean to make or mar the whole fry of our State. 2. Secondly, for the number, whether of them that are to learn, or of them that are to teach. 3. Thirdly, for the necessity of the profession, which may not be spared. 4. Fourthly, for the matter of their study, which is comparable to the greatest professions, for language, for judgment, for skill how to train, for variety in all points of learning, wherein the framing of the mind, and the exercising of the body craveth exquisite consideration, beside the staidness of the person.” (_PP._, 9 pp. 248, 9.)

§ 12. Though once a celebrated man, and moreover the master of Edmund Spenser, Mulcaster has been long forgotten; but when the history of education in England comes to be written, the historian will show that few schoolmasters in the fifteen hundreds or since were so enlightened as the first headmaster of Merchant Taylors’.[56]

IX.

RATICHIUS.

(1571-1635.)

§ 1. The history of Education in the fifteen hundreds tells chiefly of two very different classes of men. First we have the practical men, who set themselves to supply the general demand for instruction in the classical languages. This class includes most of the successful schoolmasters, such as Sturm, Trotzendorf, Neander, and the Jesuits. The other class were thinkers, who never attempted to teach, but merely gave form to truths which would in the end affect teaching. These were especially Rabelais and Montaigne.

§ 2. With the sixteen hundreds we come to men who have earned for themselves a name unpleasant in our ears, although it might fittingly be applied to all the greatest benefactors of the human race. I mean the name of _Innovators_. These men were not successful; at least they seemed unsuccessful to their contemporaries, who contrasted the promised results with the actual. But their efforts were by no means thrown away: and posterity at least, has acknowledged its obligations to them. One sees now that they could hardly have expected justice in their own time. It is safe to adopt the customary plan; it is safe to speculate how that plan may and should be altered; but it is dangerous to attempt to translate new thought into new action, and boldly to advance without a track, trusting to principles which may, like the compass, show you the right direction, but, like the compass, will give you no hint of the obstacles that lie before you.

The chief demands made by the Innovators have been: 1st, that the study of _things_ should precede, or be united with, the study of _words_ (_v._ Appendix, p. 538); 2nd, that knowledge should be communicated, where possible, by appeals to the senses; 3rd, that all linguistic study should begin with that of the mother-tongue; 4th, that Latin and Greek should be taught to such boys only as would be likely to complete a learned education; 5th, that physical education should be attended to in all classes of society for the sake of health, not simply with a view to gentlemanly accomplishments; 6th, that a new method of teaching should be adopted, framed “according to Nature.”

Their notions of method have, of course, been very various; but their systems mostly agree in these particulars:—

1. They proceed from the concrete to the abstract, giving some knowledge of the thing itself before the rules which refer to it. 2. They employ the student in analysing matter put before him, rather than in working synthetically according to precept. 3. They require the student to _teach himself_ and investigate for himself under the superintendence and guidance of the master, rather than be taught by the master and receive anything on the master’s authority. 4. They rely on the interest excited in the pupil by the acquisition of knowledge, and renounce coercion. 5. Only that which is understood may be committed to memory (_v. supra, p. 74, n._)

§ 3. The first of the Innovators was Wolfgang Ratichius, who, oddly enough, is known to posterity by a name he and his contemporaries never heard of. His father’s name was Radtké or Ratké, and the son having received a University education, translated this into Ratichius. With our usual impatience of redundant syllables, we have attempted to reduce the word to its original dimensions, and in the process have hit upon _Ratich_, which is a new name altogether.

Ratke (to adopt the true form of the original) was connected, as Basedow was a hundred and fifty years later, with Holstein and Hamburg. He was born at Wilster in Holstein in 1571, and studied at Hamburg and at the University of Rostock. He afterwards travelled to Amsterdam and to England, and it was perhaps owing to his residence in this country that he was acquainted with the new philosophy of Bacon. We next hear of him at the Electoral Diet, held as usual in Frankfurt-on-Main, in 1612. He was then over forty years old, and he had elaborated a new scheme for teaching. Like all inventors, he was fully impressed with the importance of his discovery, and he sent to the assembled Princes an address, in which he undertook some startling performances. He was able, he said: (1) to teach young or old Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, or other languages, in a very short time and without any difficulty; (2) to establish schools in which all arts should be taught and extended; (3) to introduce and peaceably establish throughout the German Empire a uniform speech, a uniform government, and (still more wonderful) a uniform religion.

§ 4. Naturally enough the address arrested the attention of the Princes. The Landgraf Lewis of Darmstadt thought the matter worthy of examination, and he deputed two learned men, Jung and Helwig, to confer with Ratke. Their report was entirely favourable, and they did all they could to get for Ratke the means of carrying his scheme into execution. “We are,” writes Helwig, “in bondage to Latin. The Greeks and Saracens would never have done so much for posterity if they had spent their youth in acquiring a foreign tongue. We must study our own language, and then sciences. Ratichius has discovered the art of teaching according to Nature. By his method, languages will be quickly learned, so that we shall have time for science; and science will be learned even better still, as the natural system suits best with science, which is the study of Nature.” Moved by this report the Town Council of Augsburg agreed to give Ratke the necessary power over their schools, and accompanied by Helwig, he accordingly went to Augsburg and set to work. But the good folks of Augsburg were like children, who expect a plant as soon as they have sown the seed. They were speedily dissatisfied, and Ratke and Helwig left Augsburg, the latter much discouraged but still faithful to his friend. Ratke went to Frankfurt again, and a Commission was appointed to consider his proposals, but by its advice Ratke was “allowed to try elsewhere.”

§ 5. He would never have had a fair chance had he not had a firm friend in the Duchess Dorothy of Weimar. Then, as now, we find women taking the lead in everything which promises to improve education, and this good Duchess sent for Ratke and tested his method by herself taking lessons of him in Hebrew. With this adult pupil his plans seem to have answered well, and she always continued his admirer and advocate. By her advice her brother, Prince Lewis of Anhalt-Koethen, decided that the great discovery should not be lost for want of a fair trial; so he called Ratke to Koethen and complied with all his demands. A band of teachers sworn to secrecy were first of all instructed in the art by Ratke himself. Next, schools with very costly appliances were provided, and lastly some 500 little Koetheners—boys and girls—were collected and handed over to Ratke to work his wonders with.

§ 6. It never seems to have occurred either to Ratke or his friends or the Prince that all the principles and methods that ever were or ever will be established could not enable a man without experience to organize a school of 500 children. A man who had never been in the water might just as well plunge into the sea at once and trust to his knowledge of the laws of fluid pressure to save him from drowning. There are endless details to be settled which would bewilder any one without experience. Some years ago school-buildings were provided for one of our county schools, and the council consulted a master of great experience who strongly urged them not to start as they had intended with 300 boys. “_I_ would not undertake such a thing,” said he. When pressed for his reason, he said quietly, “I would not be responsible for the _boots_.” I have no doubt Ratke had to come down from his principles and his new method to deal with numberless little questions of caps, bonnets, late children, broken windows, and the like; and he was without the tact and the experience which enable many ordinary men and women, who know nothing of principles, to settle such matters satisfactorily.

§ 7. Years afterwards there was another thinker much more profound and influential than Ratke, who was quite as incompetent to organize. I mean Pestalozzi. But Pestalozzi had one great advantage over Ratke. He attached all his assistants to him by inspiring them with love and reverence of himself. This made up for many deficiencies. But Ratke was not like the fatherly, self-sacrificing Pestalozzi. He leads us to suspect him of being an impostor by making a mystery of his invention, and he never could keep the peace with his assistants.

§ 8. So, as might have been expected, the grand experiment failed. The Prince, exasperated at being placed in a somewhat ridiculous position, and possibly at the serious loss of money into the bargain, revenged himself on Ratke by throwing him into prison, nor would he release him till he had made him sign a paper in which he admitted that he had undertaken more than he was able to fulfil.

§ 9. This was no doubt the case; and yet Ratke had done more for the Prince than the Prince for Ratke. In Koethen had been opened the first German school in which the children were taught to make a study of the German language.

Ratke never recovered from his failure at Koethen, and nothing memorable is recorded of him afterwards. He died in 1635.

§ 10. Much was written by Ratke; much has been written about him; and those who wish to know more than the few particulars I have given may find all they want in Raumer or Barnard. The Innovator failed in gaining the applause of his contemporaries, and he does not seem to stand high in the respect of posterity; but he was a pioneer in the art of didactics, and the rules which Raumer has gathered from the _Methodus Institutionis nova ... Ratichii et Ratichianorum_, published by Rhenius at Leipzig in 1626, raise some of the most interesting points to which a teachers attention can be directed. I will therefore state them, and say briefly what I think of them.

§ 11. I. _In everything we should follow the order of Nature. There is a certain natural sequence along which the human intelligence moves in acquiring knowledge. This sequence must be studied, and instruction must be based on the knowledge of it._

Here, as in all teaching of the Reformers, we find “Nature” used as if the word stood for some definite idea. From the time of the Stoics we have been exhorted to “follow Nature.” In more modern times the demand was well formulated by Picus of Mirandola: “Take no heed what thing many men do, but what thing the _very law of Nature_, what thing _very reason_, what thing _our Lord Himself_ showeth thee to be done.” (Trans. by Sir Thomas More, quoted in Seebohm, _Oxford Reformers_.)

Pope, always happy in expression but not always clear in thought, talks of—

“Unerring Nature, still divinely bright,
One clear, unchanged, and universal light.”

(_Essay on C._, i, 70.)

But as Dr. W. T. Harris has well pointed out (_St. Louis, Mo., School Report, ’78, ’79_, p. 217), with this word “Nature” writers on education do a great deal of juggling. Some times they use it for the external world, including in it man’s _unconscious_ growth, sometimes they make it stand for the ideal. What sense does Ratke attach to it? One might have some difficulty in determining. Perhaps the best meaning we can nowadays find for his rule is: _study Psychology_.

§ 12. II. _One thing at a time._ Master one subject before you take up another. For each language master a single book. Go over it again and again till you have completely made it your own.

In its crude form this rule could not be carried out. If the attempt were made the results would be no better than from the six months’ course of Terence under Ratke. It is “against all Nature” to go on hammering away at one thing day after day without any change; and there is a point beyond which any attempt at thoroughness must end in simple stagnation. The rule then would have two fatal drawbacks: 1st, it would lead to monotony; 2nd, it would require a completeness of learning which to the young would be impossible. But in these days no one follows Ratke. On the other hand, concentration in study is often neglected, and our time-tables afford specimens of the most ingenious mosaic work, in which everything has a place, but in so small a quantity that the learners never find out what each thing really is. School subjects are like the clubs of the eastern tale, which did not give out their medicinal properties till the patient got warm in the use of them.

When a good hold on a subject has once been secured, short study, with considerable intervals between, may suffice to keep up and even increase the knowledge already obtained; but in matters of any difficulty, _e.g._, in a new language, no start is ever made without allotting to it much more than two or three hours a week. It is perhaps a mistake to suppose that if a good deal of the language may be learnt by giving it ten hours a week, twice that amount might be acquired in twenty hours. It is a much greater mistake if we think that one-fifth of the amount might be acquired in two hours.

§ 13. III. _The same thing should be repeated over and over again._

This is like the Jesuits’ _Repetitio Mater Studiorum_; and the same notion was well developed 200 years later by Jacotot.

By Ratke’s application of this rule some odd results were produced. The little Koetheners were drilled for German in a book of the Bible (Genesis was selected), and then for Latin in a play of Terence.

Unlike many “theoretical notions” this precept of Ratke’s comes more and more into favour as the schoolmaster increases in age and experience. But we must be careful to take our pupils with us; and this repeating the same thing over and over may seem to them what marking time would seem to soldiers who wanted to march. Even more than the last rule this is open to the objections that monotony is deadening, and perfect attainment of anything but words impossible. In keeping to a subject then we must not rely on simple repetition. The rule now accepted is thus stated by Diesterweg:—“Every subject of instruction should be viewed from as many sides as possible, and as varied exercises as possible should be set on one and the same thing.” The art of the master is shown in disguising repetition and bringing known things into new connection, so that they may partially at least retain their freshness.

§ 14. IV. _First let the mother-tongue be studied, and teach everything through the mother-tongue, so that the learners attention may not be diverted to the language._

We saw that Sturm, the leading schoolmaster of Renascence, tried to suppress the mother-tongue and substitute Latin for it. Against this a vigorous protest was made in this country by Mulcaster. And our language was never conquered by a foreign language, as German was conquered first by Latin and then by French. But “the tongues” have always had the lion’s share of attention in the schoolroom, and though many have seen and Milton has said that “our understanding cannot in this body found itself but on sensible things,” this truth is only now making its way into the schoolroom. Hitherto the foundation has hardly been laid before “the schoolmaster has stept in and staid the building by confounding the language.”[57] Ratke’s protest against this will always be put to his credit in the history of education.

§ 15. V. _Everything without constraint._ “The young should not be beaten to make them learn or for not having learnt. It is compulsion and stripes that set young people against studying. Boys are often beaten for not having learnt, but they would have learnt had they been well taught. The human understanding is so formed that it has pleasure in receiving what it should retain: and this pleasure you destroy by your harshness. Where the master is skilful and judicious, the boys will take to him and to their lessons. Folly lurks indeed in the heart of the child and must be driven out with the rod; but not by the _teacher_.”

Here at least there is nothing original in Ratke’s precept. A goodly array of authorities have condemned learning “upon compulsion.” This array extends at least as far as from Plato to Bishop Dupanloup. “In the case of the mind, no study pursued under compulsion remains rooted in the memory,” says Plato.[58] “Everything depends,” says Dupanloup, “on what the teacher induces his pupils to do _freely_: for authority is not constraint—it ought to be inseparable from respect and devotion. I will respect human liberty in the smallest child.” As far as I have observed there is only one class of persons whom the authorities from Plato to Dupanloup have failed to convince, and that is the schoolmasters. This is the class to which I have belonged, and I should not be prepared to take Plato’s counsel: “Bring up your boys in their studies without constraint and in a playful manner.” (_Ib._) At the same time I see the importance of self-activity, and there is no such thing as self-activity upon compulsion. You can no more hurry thought with the cane than you can hurry a snail with a pin. So without interest there can be no proper learning. Interest must be aroused—even in Latin Grammar. But if they could choose their own occupation, the boys, however interested in their work, would probably find something else more interesting still. We cannot get on, and never shall, without the _must_.

§ 16. VI. _Nothing may be learnt by heart._

It has always been a common mistake in the schoolroom to confound the power of running along a sequence of sounds with a mastery of the thought with which those sounds should be connected. But, as I have remarked elsewhere (_supra_, p. 74, note), the two things, though different, are not opposed. Too much is likely to be made of learning by heart, for of the two things the pupils find it the easier, and the teacher the more easily tested. We may, however, guard against the abuse without giving up the use.

§ 17. VII.[59] _Uniformity in all things._

Both in the way of learning, and in the books, and the rules, a uniform method should be observed, says Ratke.