We, like Herbart, discard the ‘Faculties.’––Now this appears to be but a slight fundamental difference, but it is one upon the recognition of which education changes front. The whole system of beautifully organised lessons, whose object is to develop this or that faculty, is called in question; for the raison d’être of specialised intellectual gymnastics is gone when we no longer recognise particular ‘muscles’ of the mind to be developed. The aim of education must be something quite other, and, if the aim is other, the methods must be altered, for what is method but a way to an end? So far we are entirely with Herbart; we do not believe in the ‘faculties’; therefore we do not believe in the ‘development of the faculties therefore we do not regard lessons as instruments for this ‘development’: in fact, our whole method of procedure is altered.
The Development of the Faculties.––There is a certain pleasing neatness in this idea which is very attractive. We want to know, definitely, what we have to do. Why, develop the perceptive faculties here, with the conceptive there, the judgment in this lesson, the affections in the other, until you have covered the whole ground, giving each so-called faculty its due share of developmental exercise! But, say the followers of Herbart, we have changed all that. The mind, like Wordsworth’s cloud, moves altogether when it moves at all.
Comparison with P.N.E.U. Thought.––One of the most characteristic features of Herbart’s thinking, and that feature of it which constitutes a new school of educational thought, is, that he rejects the notion of separate mental faculties. The earlier reformers, notably Pestalozzi and Froebel, divide the faculties up with something of the precision of a phrenologist, and a chief business of education is, according to them, ‘to develop the faculties.’
Chapter 9 A Great Educationalist
(A Review)
We look to Germany for Educational Reform.––We in England require, every now and then, to pull ourselves together, and to ask what they are doing on the Continent in the way of education. We still hark back to the older German educational reformers. We may not know much of Comenius, Basedow, Ratich; we do know something of Pestalozzi and Froebel; but how much do we know of the thought of Johann Friedrich Herbart, the lineal successor of these, who has largely displaced his predecessors in the field of Pedagogics?
Herbartian Thought the most advanced on the Continent.––How entirely German educators work upon Herbart, and Herbart only, is proved by the existence of a Herbartian educational literature greatly more extensive than the whole of our English educational literature put together. A little volume on the Outlines of Pedagogics, (Sonnenschein & Co.;3s) by Professor W. Rein, of the University of Jena, is offered to us by the translators, C. C. and Ida J. Van Liew, as a brief introduction to the study of Herbart and his school, the author making due allowance for the advances that have been made in the decades that have elapsed since Herbart’s death.
As Herbart and his interpreters represent the most advanced school of educational thought on the Continent, it will, perhaps, be interesting to the reader to make a slight comparison between the educational philosophy I am trying to set forth, and the school of thought which exercises such immense influence in Germany.
CHAPTER IX - THE CULTURE OF CHARACTER
The Treatment of Defects
1. What is the ultimate object of education?
2. How are parents concerned with ‘the defects of their qualities’ in their children?
3. Give some cases of children thus ‘defective.’
4. Indicate the special treatment in each case.
5. Show that moral ailments need prompt attention.
6. Show that ‘one custom overcometh another’ is a gospel for parents.
7. In what way is there a material register of educational efforts ?
8. Prove that mother-love is not sufficient in itself for child-training.
Mother-love is not Sufficient for Child-training––Some parents may consider all this as heavy hearing; that even to ‘think on these things’ is enough to take the joy and spontaneousness out of their sweet relationship; and that, after all, parents’ love and the grace of God should be sufficient for the bringing-up of children. No one can feel on this subject more sincere humility than those who have not the honour to be parents; the insight and love with which parents––mothers most so––are blest is a divine gift which fills lookers-on with reverence, even in many a cottage home; but we have only to observe how many fond parents make foolish children to be assured that something more is wanted. There are appointed ways, not always the old paths, but new ones, opened up step by step as we go. The labour of the mother who sets herself to understand her work is not increased, but infinitely lightened; as for life being made heavy with the thought of these things, once make them our own, and we act upon them as naturally as upon such knowledge––scientific also––as, loose your hold of a cup, and it falls. A little painstaking thought and effort in the first place, and all comes easy.
A Material Register of Educational Efforts––Here, indeed, more than anywhere, ‘Except the Lord build the house, they labour but in vain that build it’; but surely intelligent co-operation in this divine work is our bounden duty and service. The training of the will, the instruction of the conscience, and, so far as it lies with us, the development of the divine life in the child, are carried on simultaneously with this training in the habits of a good life; and these last will carry the child safely over the season of infirm will, immature conscience, until he is able to take, under direction from above, the conduct of his life, the moulding of his character, into his own hands. It is a comfort to believe that there is even a material register of our educational labours being made in the very substance of the child’s brain; and, certainly, here we have a note of warning as to the danger of letting ill ways alone in the hope that all will come right by-and-by.
One Custom Overcomes Another––But one custom overcomes another. The watchful mother sets up new tracks in other directions; and she sees to it, that while she is leading new thoughts through the new way, the old, deeply worn ‘way of thinking’ is quite disused. Now, the cerebrum is in a state of rapid waste and rapid growth. The new growth takes shape from the new thought: the old is lost in the steady waste, and the child is reformed, physically as well as morally and mentally. That the nervous tissue of the cerebrum should be thus the instrument of the mind need not surprise us when we think how the muscles and joints of the tumbler, the vocal organs of the singer, the finger-ends of the watchmaker; the palate of the tea-taster, grow to the uses they are steadily put to; and, much more, both in the case of the brain and all other organs, grow to the uses they are earliest put to.
This meets in a wonderful way the case of the parent who sets himself to cure a moral failing. He sets up the course of new thoughts, and hinders those of the past, until the new thoughts shall have become automatic and run of their own accord. All the time a sort of disintegration is going on in the place that held the disused thoughts; and here is the parent’s advantage. If the boy return (as, from inherited tendency, he still may do) to his old habits of thought, behold, there is no more place for them in his physical being; to make a new place is a work of time, and in this work the parent can overtake and hinder him without much effort
Automatic Brain Action––Thought is, for the most part, automatic. We think, without intention or effort, as we have been accustomed to think, just as we walk or write without any conscious arrangement of muscles. Mozart could write an overture, laughing all the time at the little jokes his wife made to keep him awake; to be sure he had thought it out before, and there it was, ready to be written; but he did not consciously try for these musical thoughts, they simply came to him in proper succession. Coleridge thought ‘Kubla Khan’ in his sleep, and wrote it when he awoke; and, indeed, he might as well have been asleep all the time for all he had to do with the production of most of his thoughts.
’Over the buttons she falls asleep
And stitches them on in a dream,’
––is very possible and likely. For one thing which we consciously set ourselves to think about, a thousand words and acts come from us every day of their own accord; we don’t think of them at all. But all the same, only a poet or a musician could thus give forth poetry or music, and it is the words and acts which come from us without conscious thought which afford the true measure of what we are. Perhaps this is why such serious weight is attached to our every ‘idle word’––words spoken without intention or volition.
We are getting, by degrees, to Henry and his bad habits. Somehow or other, the nervous tissue of the cerebrum ‘grows to’ the thoughts that are allowed free course in the mind. How, science hardly ventures to guess as yet; but, for the sake of illustration, let us imagine that certain thoughts of the mind run to and fro in the nervous substance of the cerebrum until they have made a way there: busy traffic in same order of thoughts will always be kept up, there is the easy way for them to run in. Take a child with an inherited tendency to a resentful temper: he has begun to think resentful thoughts; finds them easy and gratifying; he goes on; evermore the ugly traffic becomes more easy and natural, and resentfulness is rapidly becoming himself, that trait in his character which people couple with his name.
Moral Ailments need Prompt Attention––Now here is a point all parents are not enough awake to––that serious mental and moral ailments require prompt purposeful, curative treatment, to which the parents must devote themselves for a short time, just as they would to a sick child. Neither punishing him nor letting him alone––the two lines of treatment most in favour––ever cured a child of any moral evil. If parents recognised the efficacy and the immediate effect of treatment, they would never allow the spread of ill weeds. For let this be borne in mind, whatever ugly quality disfigures the child, he is but as a garden overgrown with weeds: the more prolific the weeds, more fertile the soil; he has within him every possibility of beauty of life and character. Get rid of the weeds and foster the flowers. It is hardly too much to say that most of the failures in life or character made by man or woman are due to the happy-go-lucky philosophy of the parents. They say, ‘The child is so young; he does not know any better; but all that will come right as he grows up.’ Now, a fault of character left to itself can do no other than strengthen. An objection may be raised to this counsel of short and determined curative treatment. The good results do not last, it is said; a week or two of neglect, and you lose the ground gained: Henry is as likely as ever to grow up of the ‘tiger’ order, a Steerforth or a Grandcourt. But here science comes to help us to cheerful certainty.
There is no more interesting subject of inquiry open just now than that of the interaction between the thoughts of the mind and the configuration of the brain. The fair conclusion appears to be that each is greatly the cause of the other; that the character of the persistent thoughts actually shapes the cerebrum, while on the configuration of this organ depends in turn the manner of thoughts we think.