Chapter XVI: Part V: Lessons as Instruments of Education (4)

=Arithmetic a Means of Training.=--Arithmetic is valuable as a means of training children in habits of strict accuracy, but the ingenuity which makes this exact science tend to foster slipshod habits of mind, a disregard of truth and common honesty, is worthy of admiration! The copying, prompting, telling, helping over difficulties, working with an eye to the answer which he knows, that are allowed in the arithmetic lesson, under an inferior teacher, are enough to vitiate any child; and quite as bad as these is the habit of allowing that a sum is _nearly_ right, two figures wrong, and so on, and letting the child work it over again. Pronounce a sum _wrong_, or _right_--it cannot be something between the two. That which is _wrong_ must remain _wrong_: the child must not be let run away with the notion that wrong can be mended into right. The future is before him: he may get the next sum right, and the wise teacher will make it her business to see that he _does_, and that he starts with new hope. But the wrong sum must just be let alone. Therefore his progress must be carefully graduated; but there is no subject in which the teacher has a more delightful consciousness of drawing out from day to day new power in the child. Do not offer him a crutch: it is in his own power he must go. Give him short sums, in words rather than in figures, and excite in him the enthusiasm which produces concentrated attention and rapid work. Let his arithmetic lesson be to the child a daily exercise in clear thinking and rapid, careful execution, and his mental growth will be as obvious as the sprouting of seedlings in the spring.

=The A B C Arithmetic.=--Instead of entering further into the subject of the teaching of elementary arithmetic, I should like to refer the reader to the _A B C Arithmetic_ by Messrs Sonnenschein & Nesbit.

The authors found their method upon the following passage from Mill’s _Logic_:--“The fundamental truths of the science of Number all rest on the evidence of sense; they are proved by showing to our eyes and our fingers that any given number of objects, ten balls for example, may by separation and re-arrangement exhibit to our senses all the different sets of numbers the sum of which is equal to ten. All the improved methods of teaching arithmetic to children proceed on a knowledge of this fact. All who wish to carry the child’s _mind_ along with them in learning arithmetic, all who wish to teach numbers and not mere ciphers, now teach it through the evidence of the senses in the manner we have described.”

Here we may, I think, trace the solitary source of weakness in a surpassingly excellent manual. It is quite true that the fundamental truths of the science of number all rest on the evidence of sense; but, having used eyes and fingers upon ten balls or twenty balls, upon ten nuts, or leaves, or sheep, or what not, the child has formed the association of a given number with objects, and is able to conceive of the association of various other numbers with objects. In fact, he begins to _think_ in numbers and not in objects, that is, he begins mathematics. Therefore I incline to think that an elaborate system of staves, cubes, etc., instead of tens, hundreds, thousands, errs by embarrassing the child’s mind with too much teaching, and by making the illustration occupy a more prominent place than the thing illustrated.

Dominoes, beans, graphic figures drawn on the blackboard, and the like, are, on the other hand, aids to the child when it is necessary for him to conceive of a great number with the material of a small one; but to see a symbol of the great numbers and to work with such a symbol are quite different matters.

With the above trifling exception, which does not interfere at all with the use of the books, nothing can be more delightful than the careful analysis of numbers and the beautiful graduation of the work, “only one difficulty at a time being presented to the mind.” The examples and the little problems could only have been invented by writers in sympathy with children. I advise the reader who is interested in the teaching of arithmetic to turn to Mr Sonnenschein’s paper on ‘The Teaching of Arithmetic in Elementary Schools,’ in one of the volumes published by the Board of Education.[25]

=Preparation for Mathematics.=--In the ‘forties’ and ‘fifties’ it was currently held that the continual sight of the outward and visible signs (geometrical forms and figures) should beget the inward and spiritual grace of mathematical genius, or, at any rate, of an inclination to mathematics. But the educationalists of those days forgot, when they gave children boxes of ‘form’ and stuck up cubes, hexagons, pentagons, and what not, in every available schoolroom space, the immense capacity for being bored which is common to us all, and is far more strongly developed in children than in grown-up people. The objects which bore us, or the persons who bore us, appear to wear a bald place in the mind, and thought turns from them with sick aversion. Dickens showed us the pathos of it in the schoolroom of the little Gradgrinds, which was bountifully supplied with objects of uncompromising outline. Ruskin, more genially, exposes the fallacy. No doubt geometric forms abound,--the skeletons of which living beauty, in contour and gesture, in hill and plant, is the covering; and the skeleton is beautiful and wonderful to the mind which has already entered within the portals of geometry. But children should not be presented with the skeleton, but with the living forms which clothe it. Besides, is it not an inverse method to familiarise the child’s eye with patterns made by his compasses, or stitched upon his card, in the hope that the form will beget the idea? For the novice, it is probably the rule that the idea must beget the form, and any suggestion of an idea from a form comes only to the initiated. I do not think that any direct preparation for mathematics is desirable. The child, who has been allowed to think and not compelled to cram, hails the new study with delight when the due time for it arrives. The reason why mathematics are a great study is because there exists in the normal mind an affinity and capacity for this study; and too great an elaboration, whether of teaching or of preparation, has, I think, a tendency to take the edge off this manner of intellectual interest.

XVI.--NATURAL PHILOSOPHY

=A Basis of Facts.=--Of the teaching of _Natural Philosophy_, I will only remind the reader of what was said in an earlier chapter--that there is no part of a child’s education more important than that he should lay, by his own observation, a wide basis of _facts_ towards scientific knowledge in the future. He must live hours daily in the open air, and, as far as possible, in the country; must look and touch and listen; must be quick to note, _consciously_, every peculiarity of habit or structure, in beast, bird, or insect; the manner of growth and fructification of every plant. He must be accustomed to ask _why_--Why does the wind blow? Why does the river flow? Why is a leaf-bud sticky? And do not hurry to answer his questions for him; let him think his difficulties out so far as his small experience will carry him. Above all, when you come to the rescue, let it not be in the ‘cut and dried’ formula of some miserable little text-book; let him have all the insight available, and you will find that on many scientific questions the child may be brought at once to the level of modern thought. Do not embarrass him with too much scientific nomenclature. If he discover for himself (helped, perhaps, by a leading question or two), by comparing an oyster and his cat, that some animals have backbones and some have not, it is less important that he should learn the terms vertebrate and invertebrate than that he should class the animals he meets with according to this difference.

=Eyes and No-eyes.=--The _method_ of this sort of instruction is shown in _Evenings at Home_, where ‘Eyes and No-eyes’ go for a walk. No-eyes comes home bored; he has seen nothing, been interested in nothing: while Eyes is all agog to discuss a hundred things that have interested him. As I have already tried to point out, to get this sort of instruction for himself is simply the _nature_ of a child: the business of the parent is to afford him abundant and varied opportunities, and to direct his observations, so that, knowing little of the principles of scientific classification, he is, unconsciously, furnishing himself with the materials for such classification. It is needless to repeat what has already been said on this subject; but, indeed, the future of the man or woman depends very largely on the store of real knowledge gathered, and the habits of intelligent observation acquired, by the child. “Think you,” says Mr Herbert Spencer, “that the rounded rock marked with parallel scratches calls up as much poetry in an ignorant mind as in the mind of the geologist, who knows that over this rock a glacier slid a million of years ago? The truth is, that those who have never entered on scientific pursuits are blind to most of the poetry by which they are surrounded. Whoever has not in youth collected plants and insects, knows not half the halo of interest which lanes and hedgerows can assume.”

=Principles.=--In this connection I should like to recommend _The Sciences_, by Mr Holden. America comes to the fore with a schoolbook after my own heart. _The Sciences_ is a forbidding title, but since the era of Joyce’s _Scientific Dialogues_ I have met with nothing on the same lines which makes so fit an approach to the sensible and intelligent mind of a child. This is what we may call a ‘first-hand’ book. The knowledge has of course all been acquired; but then it has been assimilated, and Mr Holden writes freely out of his own knowledge both of his subject-matter and of his readers. The book has been thrown into the form of conversations between children--simple conversations without padding. About three hundred topics are treated of: Sand-dunes, Back-ice, Herculaneum, Dredging, Hurricanes, Echoes, the Prism, the Diving-bell, the Milky Way, and, shall I say, everything else? But the amazing skill of the author is shown in the fact that there is nothing scrappy and nothing hurried in the treatment of any topic, but each falls naturally and easily under the head of some principle which it elucidates. Many simple experiments are included, which the author insists shall be performed by the children themselves. I venture to quote from the singularly wise preface, a _vade mecum_ for teachers:--

“The object of the present volume is to present chapters to be read in school or at home that shall materially widen the outlook of American schoolchildren in the domain of science, and of the applications of science to the arts and to daily life. It is in no sense a text-book, although the fundamental principles underlying the sciences treated are here laid down. Its main object is to help the child to understand the material world about him.”

=To be Comprehended by Children.=--“All natural phenomena are orderly; they are governed by law; they are not magical. They are comprehended by someone; why not by the child himself? It is not possible to explain every detail of a locomotive to a young pupil, but it is perfectly practicable to explain its principles so that this machine, like others, becomes a mere special case of certain well-understood general laws. The general plan of the book is to awaken the imagination; to convey useful knowledge; to open the doors towards wisdom. Its special aim is to stimulate observation and to excite a living and lasting interest in the world that lies about us.

“The sciences of astronomy, physics, chemistry, meteorology, and physiography are treated as fully and as deeply as the conditions permit; and the lessons that they teach are enforced by examples taken from familiar and important things. In astronomy, for example, emphasis is laid upon phenomena that the child himself can observe, and he is instructed how to go about it. The rising and setting of the stars, the phases of the moon, the uses of the telescope, are explained in simple words. The mystery of these and other matters is not magical, as the child at first supposes. It is to deeper mysteries that his attention is here directed. Mere phenomena are treated as special cases of very general laws. The same process is followed in the exposition of the other sciences.

“Familiar phenomena, like those of steam, of shadows, of reflected light, of musical instruments, of echoes, etc., are referred to their fundamental causes. Whenever it is desirable, simple experiments are described and fully illustrated, and all such experiments can very well be repeated in the schoolroom.... The volume is the result of a sincere belief that much can be done to aid young children to comprehend the material world in which they live, and of a desire to have a part in a work so very well worth doing.”

I cannot help quoting also in this connection from an article[26] by the Rev. H. H. Moore dealing with a forgotten pioneer of a rational education and his experiment. This pioneer was the Rev. Richard Dawes, at one time Rector of Kings Somborne parish, Hampshire, who, in 1841, worked out the problem of rational education in an agricultural village, in which he found the population unusually ignorant and debased. The whole story is of great interest, but our concern is with the question of Natural Philosophy, the staple of the teaching given in this school.

=As taught in a Village School.=--Mr Dawes thus explained his object:--“I aimed at teaching what would be profitable and interesting to persons in the position in life which the children were likely to occupy. I aimed at their being taught what may be called the philosophy of common things--of everyday life. They were shown how much there is that is interesting, and which it is advantageous for them to know, in connection with the natural objects with which they are familiar; they had explained to them, and were made acquainted with, the principles of a variety of natural phenomena, as well as the principles and construction of various instruments of a useful kind. A practical turn was given to everything; the uses and fruits of the knowledge they were acquiring were never lost sight of.” A list of some of the subjects included in this kind of teaching will be the best commentary on Mr Dawes’ scheme:--

“Some of the properties of air, explaining how its pressure enables them to pump up water, to amuse themselves with squirts and popguns, to suck up water through a straw; explaining also the principles and construction of a barometer, the common pump, the diving-bell, a pair of bellows. That air expands by heat, shown by placing a half-blown bladder near the fire, when the wrinkles disappear. Why the chimney-smoke sometimes rises easily in the air, sometimes not. Why there is a draught up the chimney, and under the door, and towards the fire. Air as a vehicle of sound, and why the flash of a distant gun fired is seen before the report is heard; how to calculate the distance of a thunderstorm; the difference in the speeds at which different materials conduct sound. Water and its properties, its solid, fluid, and vaporous state; why water-pipes are burst by frost; why ice forms and floats on the surface of ponds, and not at the bottom; why the kettle-lid jumps up when the water is boiling on the fire; the uses to which the power of steam is applied; the gradual evolution of the steam-engine, shown by models and diagrams; how their clothes are dried, and why they feel cold sitting in damp clothes; why a damp bed is so dangerous; why one body floats in water, and another sinks; the different densities of sea and fresh water; why, on going into the school on a cold morning, they sometimes see a quantity of water on the glass, and why on the inside and not on the outside; why, on a frosty day, their breath is visible as vapour; the substances water holds in solution, and how their drinking water is affected by the kind of soil through which it has passed. Dew, its value, and the conditions necessary for its formation; placing equal portions of dry wool on gravel, glass, and the grass, and weighing them the next morning. Heat and its properties; how it is that the blacksmith can fit iron hoops so firmly on the wheels of carts and barrows; what precautions have to be taken in laying the iron rails of railways and in building iron bridges, etc.; what materials are good, and what bad, conductors of heat; why at the same temperature some feel colder to our touch than others; why a glass sometimes breaks when hot water is poured into it, and whether thick or thin glass would be more liable to crack; why water can be made to boil in a paper kettle or an eggshell without its being burned. The metals, their sources, properties, and uses; mode of separating from the ores. Light and its properties, illustrated by prisms, etc.; adaptation of the eye; causes of long- and short-sightedness. The mechanical principles of the tools more commonly used, the spade, the plough, the axe, the lever, etc.”

“It may surprise some who read carefully the above list that such subjects should have been taught to the children of a rural elementary school. But it is an undeniable fact that they were taught in Kings Somborne school, and so successfully that the children were both interested and benefited by the teaching. Mr Dawes, in answer to the objection that such subjects are above the comprehension of the young, said:--‘The distinguishing mark of Nature’s laws is their extreme simplicity. It may doubtless require intellect of a high order to make the discovery of these laws; yet, once evolved, they are within the capacity of a child,--in short, the principles of natural philosophy are the principles of common sense, and if taught in a simple and common-sense way, they will be speedily understood and eagerly attended to by children; and it will be found that with pupils of even from ten to twelve years of age much may be done towards forming habits of observation and inquiry.’ Such a fact, I think, suggests some valuable practical lessons for those who have the responsibility of deciding what subjects to include in an educational system for children.”

In reading of this remarkable experiment, we feel that we must at once secure a man, all-informed like the late Dean Dawes, to teach our own Jack and Elsie; but it is something to realise what these young persons should know, and Mr Holden has done a great deal for us. Some of the chapters in _The Sciences_ may be beyond children under nine, but they will be able to master a good deal. One thing is to be borne in mind: nothing should be done without its due experiment. By the way, our old friend, Joyce’s _Scientific Dialogues_, if it is still to be had, describes a vast number of easy and interesting experiments which children can work for themselves.

XVII.--GEOGRAPHY

=Geography= is, to my mind, a subject of high educational value; though not because it affords the means of scientific training. Geography does present its problems, and these of the most interesting, and does afford materials for classification; but it is physical geography only which falls within the definition of a science, and even that is rather a compendium of the results of several sciences than a science itself. But the peculiar value of geography lies in its fitness to nourish the mind with ideas, and to furnish the imagination with pictures. Herein lies the educational value of geography.

=As commonly Taught.=--Now, how is the subject commonly taught? The child learns the names of the capital cities of Europe, or of the rivers of England, or of the mountain-summits of Scotland, from some miserable text-book, with length in miles, and height in feet, and population, finding the names on his map or not, according as his teacher is more or less up to her work. Poor little fellow! the lesson is hard work to him; but as far as _education_ goes--that is, the developing of power, the furnishing of the mind--he would be better employed in watching the progress of a fly across the windowpane. But, you will say, geography has a further use than this strictly educative one; everybody wants the sort of information which the geography lesson should afford. That is true, and is to be borne in mind in the schoolroom; the child’s geography lesson should furnish just the sort of information which grown-up people care to possess. Now, do think how unreasonable we are in this matter; nothing will persuade us to read a book of travel unless it be interesting, graphic, with a spice of personal adventure. Even when we are going about with _Murray_ in hand, we skip the dry facts and figures, and read the suggestive pictorial scraps; these are the sorts of things we like to know, and remember with ease. But none of this pleasant padding for the poor child, if you please; do not let him have little pictorial sentences that he may dream over; facts and names and figures--these are the _pabulum_ for him!

=Geography should be Interesting.=--But, you say, this sort of knowledge, though it may be a labour to the child to acquire it, is useful in after life. Not a bit of it; and for this reason--it has never been really received by the brain at all; has never got further than the floating nebulæ of mere verbal memory of which I have already had occasion to speak. Most of us have gone through a good deal of drudgery in the way of ‘geography’ lessons, but how much do we remember? Just the pleasant bits we heard from travelled friends, about the Rhine, or Paris, or Venice, or bits from _The Voyages of Captain Cook_, or other pleasant tales of travel and adventure. We begin to see the lines we must go upon in teaching geography: for _educative_ purposes, the child must learn such geography, and in such a way, that his mind shall thereby be stored with ideas, his imagination with images; for _practical_ purposes he must learn such geography only as, the nature of his mind considered, he will able to remember; in other words, he must learn what _interests_ him. The educative and the practical run in one groove, and the geography lesson becomes the most charming occupation of the child’s day.

=How to begin.=--But, how to begin? In the first place, the child gets his rudimentary notions of geography as he gets his first notions of natural science, in those long hours out of doors of which we have already seen the importance. A pool fed by a mere cutting in the fields will explain the nature of a lake, will carry the child to the lovely lakes of the Alps, to Livingstone’s great African lake, in which he delighted to see his children ‘paidling’--“his own children ‘paidling’ in his own lake.” In this connection will come in a great deal of pleasant talk about places, ‘pictorial geography,’ until the child knows by name and nature the great rivers and mountains, deserts and plains, the cities and countries of the world. At the same time, he gets his first notions of a map from a rude sketch, a mere few lines and dots, done with pencil and paper, or, better still, with a stick in the sand or gravel. ‘This crooked line is the Rhine; but you must imagine the rafts, and the island with the Mouse Tower, and the Nuns’ Island, and the rest. Here are the hills, with their ruined castles--now on this side, now on that. This dot is Cologne,’ etc. Especially, let these talks cover all the home scenery and interests you are acquainted with, so that, by-and-by, when he looks at the map of England, he finds a score of familiar names which suggest landscapes to him--places where ‘mother has been,’--the woody, flowery islets of the Thames; the smooth Sussex downs, delightful to run and roll upon, with soft carpet of turf and nodding harebells; the York or Devon moors, with bilberries and heather:--and always give him a rough sketch-map of the route you took in a given journey.

=What next?=--Give him next intimate knowledge, with the fullest details, of any country or region of the world, any county or district of his own country. It is _not_ necessary that he should learn at this stage what is called the ‘geography’ of the countries of Europe, the continents of the world--mere strings of names for the most part; he may learn these, but it is tolerably certain that he will not remember them. But let him be _at home_ in any single region; let him see, with the mind’s eye, the people at their work and at their play, the flowers and fruits in their seasons, the beasts, each in its habitat; and let him see all _sympathetically_, that is, let him follow the adventures of a traveller; and he knows more, is better furnished with ideas, than if he had learnt all the names on all the maps. The ‘way’ of this kind of teaching is very simple and obvious; read to him, or read for him, that is, read bit by bit, and tell as you read, Hartwig’s _Tropical World_,[27] the same author’s Polar World,[27a] Livingstone’s missionary travels, Mrs Bishop’s _Unbeaten Tracks in Japan_[27a]--in fact, any interesting, well-written book of travel. It may be necessary to leave out a good deal, but every illustrative anecdote, every bit of description, is so much towards the child’s education. Here, as elsewhere, the question is, not how many things does he know, but how much does he know about each thing.

=Maps.=--_Maps_ must be carefully used in this kind of work,--a sketch-map following the traveller’s progress, to be compared finally with a complete map of the region; and the teacher will exact a description of such and such a town, and such and such a district, marked on the map, by way of testing and confirming the child’s exact knowledge. In this way, too, he gets intelligent notions of _physical_ geography; in the course of his readings he falls in with a description of a volcano, a glacier, a cañon, a hurricane; he hears all about, and asks and learns the how and the why, of such phenomena at the moment when his interest is excited. In other words, he learns as his elders elect to learn for themselves, though they rarely allow the children to tread in paths so pleasant.

=What General Knowledge a Child of Nine should have.=--Supposing that between the child’s sixth and his ninth year half a dozen well-chosen standard books of travel have been read with him in this way, he has gained distinct ideas of the contours, the productions, and the manners of the people, of every great region of the world; has laid up a store of reliable, valuable knowledge, that will last his lifetime; and besides, has done something to acquire a taste for books and the habit of reading. Such books as Lady Brassey’s _Voyage in the ‘Sunbeam’_ should be avoided, as covering too much ground, and likely to breed some confusion of ideas.

=Particular Knowledge.=--But we are considering lessons as ‘Instruments of Education’; and the sort of knowledge of the world I have indicated will be conveyed rather by readings in the ‘Children’s Hour’ and at other times than by way of lessons. I know of nothing so good as the old-fashioned _World at Home_ (for lessons) for children between six and seven. As they hear, they wonder, admire, imagine, and can even ‘play at’ a hundred situations. The first ideas of geography, the lessons on _place_, which should make a child observant of local geography, of the features of his own neighbourhood, its heights and hollows, and level lands, its streams and ponds, should be gained, as we have seen, out of doors, and should prepare him for a certain amount of generalisation--that is, he should be able to discover definitions of river, island, lake, and so on, and should make these for himself in a tray of sand, or draw them on the blackboard.

=Definitions.=--But definitions should come in the way of recording his experiences. Before he is taught what a river is, he must have watched a stream and observed that it flows; and so on with the rest.

Children easily simulate knowledge, and at this point the teacher will have to be careful that nothing which the child receives is mere verbiage, but that every generalisation is worked out somewhat in this way:--The child observes a fact, as, for example, a wide stretch of flat ground; the teacher amplifies. He reads in his book about Pampas, the flat countries of the north-west of Europe, the Holland of our own eastern coast, and, by degrees, he is prepared to receive the idea of a _plain_, and to show it on his tray of sand.

=Fundamental Ideas.=--By the time he is seven, or before, he finds himself in need of further knowledge. He has read of hot countries and cold countries, has observed the seasons and the rising and setting of the sun, has said to himself--

“Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!”--

knows something of ocean and sea, has watched the tide come in and go out, has seen many rough sketch-maps made and has made some for himself, and has, no doubt, noticed the criss-cross lines on a ‘proper’ map; that is to say, his mind is prepared for knowledge in various directions; there are a number of things concerned with geography which he really wants to know.

The shape and motions of the earth are fundamental ideas,[28] however difficult to grasp, but the difficulty is of a kind which increases with years. The principle in each case is simple enough, and a child does not concern himself, as do his elders, with the enormous magnitude of the scale upon which operations in space are carried on. It is probable that a child’s vivid imagination puts him on a level with the mathematician in dealing with the planetary system, with the behaviour and character of Earth, with the causes of the seasons, and much besides.

=Meaning of a Map.=--Then, again, geography should be learned chiefly from maps. Pictorial readings and talks introduce him to the subject, but so soon as his geography lessons become definite they are to be learned, in the first place, from the map. This is an important principle to bear in mind. The child who gets no ideas from considering the map, say of Italy or of Russia, has no knowledge of geography, however many _facts_ about places he may be able to produce. Therefore he should begin this study by learning the meaning of a map and how to use it. He must learn to draw a plan of his schoolroom, etc., according to scale, go on to the plan of a field, consider how to make the plan of his town, and be carried gradually from the idea of a plan to that of a map; always beginning with the notion of an explorer who finds the land and measures it, and by means of sun and stars, is able to record just where it is on the earth’s surface, east or west, north or south.

Now he will arrive at the meaning of the lines of latitude and longitude. He will learn how sea and land are shown on a map, how rivers and mountains are represented; and having learned his points of direction and the use of his compass, and knowing that maps are always made as if the beholder were looking to the north, he will be able to tell a good deal about situation, direction, and the like, in very early days. The fundamental ideas of geography and the meaning of a map are subjects well fitted to form an attractive introduction to the study. Some of them should awaken the delightful interest which attaches in a child’s mind to that which is wonderful, incomprehensible, while the map lessons should lead to mechanical efforts equally delightful. It is only when presented to the child for the first time in the form of stale knowledge and foregone conclusions that the facts taught in such lessons appear dry and repulsive to him. An effort should be made to treat the subject with the sort of sympathetic interest and freshness which attracts children to a new study.

XVIII.--HISTORY

=A Storehouse of Ideas.=--Much that has been said about the teaching of geography applies equally to that of history. Here, too, is a subject which should be to the child an inexhaustible storehouse of ideas, should enrich the chambers of his House Beautiful with a thousand tableaux, pathetic and heroic, and should form in him, insensibly, principles whereby he will hereafter judge of the behaviour of nations, and will rule his own conduct as one of a nation. This is what the study of history should do for the child; but what is he to get out of the miserable little chronicle of feuds, battles, and death which is presented to him by way of ‘a reign’--all the more repellent because it bristles with dates? As for the dates, they never come right; the tens and units he can get, but the centuries _will_ go astray; and how is he to put the right events in the right reign, when, to him, one king differs from another only in number, one period from another only in date? But he blunders through with it; reads in his pleasant, chatty little history book all the reigns of all the kings, from William the Conqueror to William IV., and back to the dim days of British rule. And with what result? This: that, possibly, no way of warping the judgment of the child, of filling him with crude notions, narrow prejudices, is more successful than that of carrying him through some such course of English history; and all the more so if his little text-book be moral or religious in tone, and undertake to point the moral as well as to record the fact. Moral teaching falls, no doubt, within the province of history; but the one small volume which the child uses affords no scope for the fair and reasonable discussion upon which moral decisions should be based, nor is the child old enough to be put into the judicial attitude which such a decision supposes.

=‘Outlines’ Mischievous.=--The fatal mistake is in the notion that he must learn ‘outlines,’ or a baby edition of the _whole_ history of England, or of Rome, just as he must cover the geography of _all_ the world. Let him, on the contrary, linger pleasantly over the history of a single man, a short period, until he thinks the thoughts of that man, is at home in the ways of that period. Though he is reading and thinking of the lifetime of a single man, he is really getting intimately acquainted with the history of a whole nation for a whole age. Let him spend a year of happy intimacy with Alfred, ‘the truth-teller,’ with the Conqueror, with Richard and Saladin, or with Henry V.--Shakespeare’s Henry V.--and his victorious army. Let him know the great people and the common people, the ways of the court and of the crowd. Let him know what other nations were doing while we at home were doing thus and thus. If he come to think that the people of another age were truer, larger-hearted, simpler-minded than ourselves, that the people of some other land were, at one time, at any rate, better than we, why, so much the better for him.

=So are most History Books written for Children.=--For the matter for this intelligent teaching of history, eschew, in the first place, nearly all history books written expressly for children; and in the next place, all compendiums, outlines, abstracts whatsoever. For the abstracts, considering what part the study of history is fitted to play in the education of the child, there is not a word to be said in their favour; and as for what are called children’s books, the children of educated parents are able to understand history written with literary power, and are not attracted by the twaddle of reading-made-easy little history books. Given, judicious skipping, and a good deal of the free paraphrasing mothers are so ready at, and the children may be taken through the first few volumes of a well-written, illustrated, popular history of England, say as far as the Tudors. In the course of such reading a good deal of questioning into them, and questioning out of them, will be necessary, both to secure their attention and to fix the facts. This is the least that should be done; but better than this would be fuller information, more graphic details about two or three early epochs.

=Early History of a Nation best fitted for Children.=--The early history of a nation is far better fitted than its later records for the study of children, because the story moves on a few broad, simple lines; while statesmanship, so far as it exists, is no more than the efforts of a resourceful mind to cope with circumstances. Mr Freeman has provided interesting early English history for children; but is it not on the whole better to take them straight to the fountainhead, where possible? In these early years, while there are no examinations ahead, and the children may yet go leisurely, let them get the _spirit_ of history into them by reading, at least, one old _Chronicle_ written by a man who saw and knew something of what he wrote about, and did not get it at secondhand. These old books are easier and pleasanter reading than most modern works on history, because the writers know little of the ‘dignity of history’; they purl along pleasantly as a forest brook, tell you ‘all about it,’ stir your heart with the story of a great event, amuse you with pageants and shows, make you intimate with the great people, and friendly with the lowly. They are just the right thing for the children whose eager souls want to get at the living people behind the words of the history book, caring nothing at all about progress, or statutes, or about anything but the persons, for whose action history is, to the child’s mind, no more than a convenient stage. A child who has been carried through a single old chronicler in this way has a better foundation for an historical training than if he knew all the dates and names and facts that ever were crammed for examination.

=Some old Chronicles.=--First in order of time, and full of the most captivating reading, is the _Ecclesiastical History of England_[29] of the Venerable Bede, who, writing of himself so early as the seventh century, says, “It was always sweet to me to learn, to teach, and to write.” “He has left us,” says Professor Morley, “a history of the early years of England, succinct, yet often warm with life; business-like, and yet childlike in its tone; at once practical and spiritual, simply just, and the work of a true scholar, breathing love to God and man. We owe to Bede alone the knowledge of much that is most interesting in our early history.” William of Malmesbury (twelfth century) says of Bede, “That almost all knowledge of past events was buried in the same grave with him”; and he is no bad judge, for in his _Chronicles of the Kings of England_ he himself is considered to have carried to perfection the art of chronicle-making. He is especially vivid and graphic about contemporary events--the story of the dreary civil war of Stephen and Matilda. Meantime, there is Asser, who writes the life of Alfred, whose friend and fellow-worker he is. “It seems to me right,” he says, “to explain a little more fully what I have heard from my lord Alfred.” He tells us how, “When I had come into his presence at the royal villa, called Leonaford, I was honourably received by him, and remained that time with him at his court about eight months, during which I read to him whatever books he liked, and such as he had at hand; for this is his most usual custom, both night and day, amid his many other occupations of mind and body, either himself to read books, or to listen whilst others read them.” When he was not present to see for himself, as at the battle of Ashdown, Asser takes pains to get the testimony of eye-witnesses. “But Alfred, as we have been told by those who were present and would not tell an untruth, marched up promptly with his men to give them battle; for King Ethelred remained a long time in his tent in prayer.” Then there are _Chronicles of the Crusades_, contemporary narratives of the crusades of Richard Cœur de Lion, by Richard of Devizes, and Geoffrey de Vinsany, and of the crusade of St Louis, by Lord John de Joinville.

It is needless to extend the list; one such old chronicle in a year, or the suitable bits of one such chronicle, and the child’s imagination is aglow, his mind is teeming with ideas; he has had speech of those who have themselves seen and heard: and the matter-of-fact way in which the old monks tell their tales is exactly what children prefer. Afterwards, you may put any dull outlines into their hands, and they will make _history_ for themselves.

=Age of Myths.=--But every nation has its heroic age before authentic history begins: there were giants in the land in those days, and the child wants to know about them. He has every right to revel in such classic myths as we possess as a nation; and to land him in a company of painted savages, by way of giving him his first introduction to his people, is a little hard; it is to make his vision of the past harsh and bald as a Chinese painting. But what is to be done? If we ever had an Homeric age, have we not, being a practical people, lost all record thereof? Here is another debt that we owe to those old monkish chroniclers: the echoes of some dim, rich past had come down to, at any rate, the twelfth century: they fell upon the ear of a Welsh priest, one Geoffrey of Monmouth; and while William of Malmesbury was writing his admirable _History of the Kings of England_, what does Geoffrey do but weave the traditions of the people into an orderly _History of the British Kings_, reaching back all the way to King Brut, the grandson of Æneas. How he came to know about kings that no other historian had heard of, is a matter he is a little roguish about; he got it all, he says, out of “that book in the British language which Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, brought out of Brittany.” Be that as it may, here we read of Gorboduc, King Lear, Merlin, Uther Pendragon, and, best of all, of King Arthur, the writer making ‘the little finger of his Arthur stouter than the back of Alexander the Great.’ Here is, indeed, a treasure-trove which the children should be made free of ten years before they come to read the _Idylls of the King_. Some caution must, however, be exercised in reading Geoffrey of Monmouth. His tales of marvel are delightful; but when he quits the marvellous and romances freely about historical facts and personages, he becomes a bewildering guide. Many of these ‘chronicles,’ written in Latin by the monks, are to be had in readable English; the only caution to be observed is, that the mother should run her eye over the pages before she reads them aloud.[30]

Froissart, again, most delightful of chroniclers, himself ‘tame’ about the court of Queen Philippa, when he chose to be in England--from whom else should the child get the story of the French wars? And so of as much else as there is time for; the principle being, that, wherever practicable, the child should get his first notions of a given period, not from the modern historian, the commentator and reviewer, but from the original sources of history, the writings of contemporaries. The mother must, however, exercise discrimination in her choice of early ‘Chronicles,’ as all are not equally reliable.

=Plutarch’s ‘Lives.’=--In the same way, readings from Plutarch’s _Lives_ will afford the best preparation for the study of Grecian or of Roman history. Alexander the Great is something more than a name to the child who reads this sort of thing:--

“When the horse Bucephalus was offered in sale to Philip,
at the price of thirteen talents (= £2518, 15s.), the king,
with the prince and many others, went into the field to see
some trial made of him. The horse appeared very vicious
and unmanageable, and was so far from suffering himself to
be mounted, that he would not bear to be spoken to, but
turned fiercely upon all the grooms. Philip was displeased
at their bringing him so wild and ungovernable a horse, and
bade them take him away. But Alexander, who had observed
him well, said, ‘What a horse are they losing for want of
skill and spirit to manage him!’

“Philip at first took no notice of this; but upon the
prince’s often repeating the same expression, and showing
great uneasiness, he said, ‘Young man, you find fault with
your elders as if you knew more than they, or could manage
the horse better.’

“‘And I certainly could,’ answered the prince.

“‘If you should not be able to ride him, what forfeiture
will you submit to for your rashness?’

“‘I will pay the price of the horse.’

“Upon this all the company laughed; but the king and
prince agreeing as to the forfeiture, Alexander ran to
the horse, and laying hold on the bridle, turned him to
the sun, for he had observed, it seems, that the shadow
which fell before the horse, and continually moved as he
moved, greatly disturbed him. While his fierceness and fury
lasted, he kept speaking to him softly and stroking him;
after which he gently let fall his mantle, leaped lightly
upon his back, and got his seat very safe. Then, without
pulling the reins too hard, or using either whip or spur,
he set him agoing. As soon as he perceived his uneasiness
abated, and that he wanted only to run, he put him in a
full gallop, and pushed him on both with the voice and spur.

“Philip and all his court were in great distress for him
at first, and a profound silence took place; but when the
prince had turned him and brought him safe back, they all
received him with loud exclamations, except his father, who
wept for joy, and kissing him, said, ‘Seek another kingdom,
my son, that may be worthy of thy abilities, for Macedonia
is too small for thee.’”

Here, again, in North’s inimitable translation, we get the sort of vivid graphic presentation which makes ‘History’ as _real_ to the child as are the adventures of Robinson Crusoe.

To sum up, to know as much as they may about even _one_ short period, is far better for the children than to know the ‘outlines’ of all history. And in the second place, children are quite able to take in intelligent ideas in intelligent language, and should by no means be excluded from the best that is written on the period they are about.

=History Books.=--It is not at all easy to choose the right history books for children. Mere summaries of facts must, as we have seen, be eschewed; and we must be equally careful to avoid generalisations. The natural function of the mind, in the early years of life, is to gather the material of knowledge with a view to that very labour of generalisation which is proper to the adult mind; a labour which we should all carry on to some extent for ourselves. As it is, our minds are so poorly furnished that we accept the conclusions presented to us without demur; but we can, at any rate, avoid giving children cut-and-dried opinions upon the course of history while they are yet young. What they want is graphic details concerning events and persons upon which imagination goes to work; and opinions tend to form themselves by slow degrees as knowledge grows.

Mr York Powell has, perhaps more than others, hit upon the right teaching for the young children I have in view. In the preface to his _Old Stories from British History_,[31] he says:--“The writer has chosen such stories as he thought would amuse and please his readers, and give them at the same time some knowledge of the lives and thoughts of their forefathers. To this end he has not written solely of great folk--kings and queens and generals--but also of plain people and children, ay, and birds and beasts too”; and we get the tale of King Lear and of Cuculain, and of King Canute and the poet Otter, of Havelock and Ubba, and many more, all brave and glorious stories; indeed, Mr. York Powell gives us a perfect treasure-trove in his two little volumes of _Old Stories_ and _Sketches from British History_,[31a] which are the better for our purpose, because children can read them for themselves so soon as they are able to read at all. These tales, written in good and simple English, and with a certain charm of style, lend themselves admirably to narration. Indeed, it is most interesting to hear children of seven or eight go through a long story without missing a detail, putting every event in its right order. These narrations are never a slavish reproduction of the original. A child’s individuality plays about what he enjoys, and the story comes from his lips, not precisely as the author tells it, but with a certain spirit and colouring which express the narrator. By the way, it is very important that children should be allowed to narrate in their own way, and should not be pulled up or helped with words and expressions from the text. A narration should be original as it comes from a child--that is, his own mind should have acted upon the matter it has received. Narrations which are mere feats of memory are quite valueless. I have already spoken of the sorts of old chronicles upon which children should be nourished; but these are often too diffuse to offer good matter for narration, and it is well to have quite fitting short tales for this purpose.

I should like to mention two other little volumes in which children delight, which feed patriotic sentiment and lay a broad basis for historical knowledge. I mean Mrs Frewen Lord’s _Tales from St Paul’s_[32] and _Tales from Westminster Abbey_.[32a] It is a beautiful and delightful thing to take children informed by these tales to the Abbey or St Paul’s, and let them identify for themselves the spots consecrated to their heroes. They know so much and are so full of vivid interest that their elders stand by instructed and inspired. There are, no doubt, multitudes of historical tales and sketches for children, and some of them, like Miss Brooke Hunt’s _Prisoners of the Tower_,[33] are very good; but let the mother beware: there is nothing which calls for more delicate tact and understanding sympathy with the children than this apparently simple matter of choosing their lesson-books, and especially, perhaps, their lesson-books in history.