Chapter XVII: Part V: Lessons as Instruments of Education (5)

Many children of eight or nine will be quite ready to read with pleasure _A History of England_, by H. O. Arnold Forster, who has long since won his spurs in the field of educational literature. In this, as in matters of more immediate statecraft, Mr Arnold Forster has the gift to see a defect and a remedy, an omission and the means of supplying it. He saw that English children grew up without any knowledge of the conditions under which they live, and of the laws which govern them; but, since the appearance of _The Citizen Reader_ and _The Laws of Every-day Life_, we have changed all that. _The History of England_, or, as the children call it, _History_, ignoring the fact that there is any other history than that of England, has hitherto been presented to young people as “outlines of dates and facts, or as collections of romantic stories, with little coherence and less result on the fortunes of the country.” Mr Arnold Forster says in his preface that he “is reluctant to introduce his book by any such repellent title as ‘A Summary,’ or ‘An Outline of English History.’ Such titles seem on the face of them to imply that the element of interest and the romance inseparable from the life and doings of individuals are excluded, and that an amplified chronological table has been made to do duty for history. But to read English history and fail to realise that it is replete with interest, sparkling with episode, and full of dramatic incident, is to miss all the pleasure and most of the instruction which its study, if properly pursued, can give.” The author fulfils his implied promise, and his work is, I venture to say, as “replete with interest, sparkling with episode, and full of dramatic incident” as is possible, considering the limitations imposed upon him by the facts that he writes for uneducated readers, and gives us a survey of the whole of English History in a pleasant, copiously and wisely illustrated volume of some eight hundred pages. How telling and lucid this is, for example, and how we all wish we had come across such a paragraph in our early studies of architecture:--“On page 23 we have pictures of two windows. One of them is what is called a _Pointed_ window. All the arches in it go up to a point. It was built a long time before the Tudor period. The other was built in the time of Queen Elizabeth. In it the upright shaft, or _mullion_, of the window goes straight up to the top without forming an arch. This style of building a window is called the _Perpendicular Style_, because the mullions of the windows are ‘perpendicular.’ Some of the most famous buildings in England built in Tudor times, and in the perpendicular style, are the Chapel of King’s College, Cambridge, and Hatfield House, the residence of the Marquis of Salisbury, in Hertfordshire.” Mr Arnold Forster has done in this volume for children and the illiterate, what Professor Green did in his _Shorter History of England_ for somewhat more advanced students, awakening many to the fact that history is an entrancing subject of study. This is a real introduction to real history. The portraits are an especially valuable feature of the work.

=Dates.=--In order to give definiteness to what may soon become a pretty wide knowledge of history--mount a sheet of cartridge-paper and divide it into twenty columns, letting the first century of the Christian era come in the middle, and let each remaining column represent a century B.C. or A.D., as the case may be.

Then let the child himself write, or print, as he is able, the names of the people he comes upon in due order, in their proper century. We need not trouble ourselves at present with more exact dates, but this simple table of the centuries will suggest a graphic panorama to the child’s mind, and he will see events in their time-order.

=Illustrations by the Children.=--History readings afford admirable material for narration, and children enjoy narrating what they have read or heard. They love, too, to make illustrations. Children who had been reading _Julius Cæsar_ (and also, Plutarch’s _Life_), were asked to make a picture of their favourite scene, and the results showed the extraordinary power of visualising which the little people possess. Of course that which they visualise, or imagine clearly, they know; it is a life possession.

The drawings of the children in question are psychologically interesting as showing what various and sometimes obscure points appeal to the mind of a child; and also, that children have the same intellectual pleasure as persons of cultivated mind in working out new hints and suggestions. The drawings, be it said, leave much to be desired, but they have this in common with the art of primitive peoples: they tell the tale directly and vividly. A girl of nine and a half pictures Julius Cæsar conquering Britain. He rides in a chariot mounted on scythes, he is robed in blue, and bits of blue sky here and there give the complementary colour. In the distance, a soldier plants the ensign bearing the Roman eagle, black on a pink ground! In the foreground, is a hand-to-hand combat between Roman and Briton, each having a sword of enormous length. Other figures are variously employed.

Another, gives us Antony ‘making his speech after the death of Cæsar.’ This girl, who is older, gives us architecture; you look through an arch, which leads into a side street, and, in the foreground, Antony stands on a platform at the head of a flight of marble steps. Antony’s attitude expresses indignation and scorn. Below, is a crowd of Romans wearing the toga, whose attitudes show various shades of consternation and dismay. Behind, is Antony’s servant in uniform, holding his master’s horse; and on the platform, in the rear of Antony, lies Cæsar, with the royal purple thrown over him. The chief value of the drawing, as a drawing, is that it tells the tale.

Another girl draws Calpurnia begging Cæsar not to go to the Senate. Cæsar stands armed and perturbed, while Calpurnia holds his outstretched hand with both of hers as she kneels before him, her face raised in entreaty; her loose blue night-robe and long golden hair give colour to the picture. This artist is fourteen, and the drawing is better done.

Another artist presents Brutus and Portia in the orchard with a ‘south-wall’ of red brick, espaliers, and two dignified figures which hardly tell their tale.

Another child gives us the scene in the forum, Cæsar seated in royal purple, Brutus kneeling before him, and Casca standing behind his chair with outstretched hand holding a dagger, saying “Speak, hands, for me,” while Cæsar says, “Doth not Brutus bootless kneel?”

Again, we get Lucius playing to Brutus in the tent. Brutus, armed cap-à-pie, seated on a stool, is vainly trying to read, while Lucius, a pretty figure, seated before him, plays the harp. The two sentries, also fully armed, are stretched on the floor sound asleep.

Another, gives us Claudius dressed as a woman at the women’s festival--the ladies with remarkable eyes, and each carrying a flaming torch.

Another pictures, with great spirit, Cæsar reading his history to the conquered Gauls, who stand in rows on the hillside listening to the great man with exemplary patience.

In these original illustrations (several of them by older children than those we have in view here), we get an example of the various images that present themselves to the minds of children during the reading of a great work; and a single such glimpse into a child’s mind convinces us of the importance of sustaining that mind upon strong meat. Imagination does not stir at the suggestion of the feeble, much-diluted stuff that is too often put into children’s hands.

=‘Playing at’ History.=--Children have other ways of expressing the conceptions that fill them when they are duly fed. They play at their history lessons, dress up, make tableaux, act scenes; or they have a stage, and their dolls act, while they paint the scenery and speak the speeches. There is no end to the modes of expression children find when there is anything in them to express.

The mistake we make is to suppose that imagination is fed by nature, or that it works on the insipid diet of children’s story-books. Let a child have the meat he requires in his history readings, and in the literature which naturally gathers round this history, and imagination will bestir itself without any help of ours; the child will live out in detail a thousand scenes of which he only gets the merest hint.

XIX.--GRAMMAR

=Grammar a Difficult Study.=--Of _grammar_, Latin and English, I shall say very little here. In the first place, grammar, being a study of _words_ and not of _things_, is by no means attractive to the child, nor should he be hurried into it. English grammar, again, depending as it does on the position and logical connection of words, is peculiarly hard for him to grasp. In this respect the Latin grammar is easier; a change in the form, the _shape_ of the word, to denote case, is what a child can see with his bodily eye, and therefore is plainer to him than the abstract ideas of nominative and objective case as we have them in English. Therefore, if he learns no more at this early stage than the declensions and a verb or two, it is well he should learn thus much, if only to help him to see what English grammar would be at when it speaks of a change in case or mood, yet shows no change in the form of the word.

=Latin Grammar.=--Of the teaching of Latin grammar, I think I cannot do better than mention a book for beginners that really answers. Children of eight and nine take to this _First Latin Course_ (Scott and Jones)[34] very kindly, and it is a great thing to begin a study with pleasure. It is an open question, however, whether it is desirable to begin Latin at so early an age.

=English Grammar a Logical Study.=--Because English grammar is a logical study, and deals with _sentences_ and the positions that words occupy in them, rather than with _words_, and what they are in their own right, it is better that the child should begin with the _sentence_, and not with the parts of speech; that is, that he should learn a little of what is called _analysis_ of sentences before he learns to parse; should learn to divide simple sentences into the thing we speak of, and what we say about it--‘The cat--sits on the hearth’--before he is lost in the fog of person, mood, and part of speech.

“‘So then I took up the next book. It was about grammar. It said extraordinary things about nouns and verbs and particles and pronouns, and past participles and objective cases and subjunctive moods. ‘What are all these things?’ asked the King. ‘I don’t know, your Majesty,’ and the Queen did not know, but she said it would be very suitable for children to learn. It would keep them quiet.’”[35]

It is so important that children should not be puzzled as were this bewildered King and Queen, that I add a couple of introductory grammar lessons; as a single example is often more useful than many precepts.

LESSON I

Words put together so as to make sense form what is called a sentence.

‘Barley oats chair really good and cherry’ is not a sentence, because it makes no(n)sense.

‘Tom has said his lesson’ is a sentence.

It is a sentence because it tells us something about Tom.

Every sentence speaks of someone or of something, and tells us something about that of which it speaks.

So a sentence has two parts:

(1) The thing we speak of;
(2) What we say about it.

In our sentence, we speak of ‘Tom.’

We say about him that he ‘has learned his lesson.’

The thing we speak of is often called the SUBJECT, which just means that which we talk about.

People sometimes say ‘the _subject_ of conversation was so and so,’ which is another way of saying ‘the thing we were speaking about was so and so.’

_To be learnt_--

Words put together so as to make sense form a sentence.

A sentence has two parts: that which we speak of, and what we say about it.

That which we speak of is the SUBJECT.

_Exercises on Lesson I_

1. Put the first part to--

---- has a long mane.
---- is broken.
---- cannot do his sums.
---- played for an hour; etc., etc.

2. Put the second part to--

That poor boy ----.
My brother Tom ----.
The broken flowerpot ----.
Bread and jam ----.
Brown’s tool-basket ----; etc., etc.

3. Put six different subjects to each half sentence in 1.

4. Make six different sentences with each subject in 2.

5. Say which part of the sentence is wanting, and supply it in--

Has been mended
Tom’s knife
That little dog
Cut his finger
Ate too much fruit
My new book
The snowdrops in our garden, etc., etc.

_N.B._--Be careful to call the first part of each sentence the _subject_.

Draw a line under the subject of each sentence in all the exercises.

LESSON II

We may make a sentence with only two words--the name of the thing we speak of and what we say about it:--

John writes.
Birds sing.
Mary sews.

We speak about ‘John.’

We say about him that he ‘writes.’

We speak about ‘birds.’

We say about them that they ‘sing.’

These words, _writes_, _sing_, _sews_, all come out of the same group of words, and the words in that group are the chief words of all, for this reason--we cannot make sense, and therefore cannot make a sentence, without using at least one of them.

They are called VERBS, which means _words_, because they are the chief _words_ of all.

A verb always tells one of two things about the subject. Either it tells what the subject _is_, as--

I _am_ hungry.
The chair _is_ broken.
The birds _are_ merry;

or it tells what the subject does, as--

Alice _writes_.
The cat _mews_.
He _calls_.

_To be learnt_--

We cannot make a sentence without a verb.

_Verb_ means _word_.

Verbs are the chief words.

Verbs show that the subject is something--

He is sleepy;

or does something--

He runs.

_Exercises on Lesson II_

1. Put in a verb of being:--

Mary ---- sleepy.
Boys ---- rough.
Girls ---- ---- quiet.
He ---- first yesterday.
I ---- a little boy.
Tom and George ---- swinging before dinner.
We ---- ---- busy to-morrow.
He ---- ---- punished; etc., etc.

2. Make three sentences with each of the following verbs:--_Is_, _are_, _should be_, _was_, _am_, _were_, _shall be_, _will be_.

3. Make six sentences with verbs of being in each.

4. Put a verb of doing to--

Tigers ----.
The boy with the pony ----.
My cousins ----; etc., etc.

5. Make twenty sentences about--

That boy in kilts,

with verbs showing what he _does_.

6. Find the verbs, and say whether of _being_ or _doing_, in--

The bright sun rises over the hill.
We went away.
You are my cousin.
George goes to school.
He took his slate.
We are seven.

7. Count how many verbs you use in your talk for the next ten minutes.

8. Write every verb you can find in these exercises, and draw a line under it.

XX.--FRENCH

French should be acquired as English is, not as a grammar, but as a living speech. To train the ear to distinguish and the lips to produce the French vocables is a valuable part of the education of the senses, and one which can hardly be undertaken too soon. Again, all educated persons should be able to speak French. Sir Lyon Playfair, once speaking at a conference of French masters, lamented feelingly our degeneracy in this respect, and instanced the grammar school of Perth to show that in a Scotch school in the sixteenth century the boys were required to speak _Latin_ during school hours, and _French_ at all other times. There is hardly another civilised nation so dull in acquiring foreign tongues as we English of the present time; but, probably, the fault lies rather in the way we set about the study than in any natural incapacity for languages.

As regards French, for instance, our difficulties are twofold--the want of a vocabulary, and a certain awkwardness in producing unfamiliar sounds. It is evident that both these hindrances should be removed in early childhood. The child should never see French words in print until he has learned to say them with as much ease and readiness as if they were English. The desire to give printed combinations of letters the sounds they would bear in English words is the real cause of our national difficulty in pronouncing French. Again, the child’s vocabulary should increase steadily, say, at the rate of half a dozen words a day. Think of fifteen hundred words in a year! The child who has that number of words, and knows how to apply them, can speak French. Of course, his teacher will take care that, in giving words, she gives idioms also, and that as he learns new words, they are _put into sentences and kept in use from day to day_. A note-book in which she enters the child’s new words and sentences will easily enable the teacher to do this. The young child has no foolish shame about _saying_ French words--he pronounces them as simply as if they were English; but it is very important that he should acquire a pure accent from the first. It is not often advisable that young English children should be put into the hands of a French governess or nurse; but would it not be possible for half a dozen families, say, to engage a French lady, who would give half an hour daily to each family?

=M. Gouin’s Method.=--A serious effort is being made to approach the study of foreign languages rationally and scientifically. I have no hesitation in saying that M. Gouin’s work (_The Art of Teaching and Studying Languages_)[36] is the most important attempt that has yet been made to bring the study of languages within the sphere of practical education. Indeed, the great reform in our methods of teaching modern languages owe their origin to this remarkable work. The initial idea, that we must acquire a new language as a child acquires his mother tongue, is absolutely right, whether the attempt to follow this idea out by analysing a language into a certain number, say fifteen, exhaustive ‘series,’ be right or not. Again, it is incontestable that the ear, and not the eye, is the physical organ for apprehending a language, just as truly as it is by the mouth, and not the ear, we appropriate food. If M. Gouin’s book establish these two points only, it will be a valuable contribution to educational thought. Equally important is his third position, that the verb is the key to the sentence, and more, is the living bridge between thought and act. He maintains, too, that the child thinks in sentences, not in words; that his sentences have a logical sequence; that this sequence is one of time--the order of the operations in, for example, the growth of a plant, or the grinding of corn in a mill; that, as the child perceives the operations, he has an absolute need to express them; that his ear solicits, his memory cherishes, his tongue reproduces, the words which say the thing he thinks. No doubt M. Gouin’s method should be more successful than any other in steeping the student (child or man) in German or French thought. If you are all day long trying to work out a ‘series’ in French, say, you come to think in French, to ‘dream in French,’ to _speak_ French. Moreover, one has a delightful sense that at last the way is made clear to us to conduct all teaching in the language under study. You have the ‘Art Series’ and the ‘Bee Series’ and the ‘River’ and the ‘Character Series’ and the ‘Poet Series,’ and any series you like. You think the thing out in the order of time and natural sequence; you get the right _verbs_, nouns, and such epithets as are necessary, follow suit, and in amazingly few sentences, very short sentences too, connected by ‘and,’ you have said _all_ that is essential to the subject. The whole thing is a constant surprise, like the children’s game which unearths the most extraordinary and out-of-the-way thing you can think of by means of a dozen or so questions.

=The ‘Series.’=--Thus, a language learned by M. Gouin’s method is ‘a liberal education in itself.’ One learns how few and simple are, after all, the conceptions of which the human mind is cognisant, and how few and simple, putting mere verbiage aside, are the words necessary to express these.

You really learn to _think_ in the new language, because you have no more than vague impressions about these acts or facts in your mother tongue.

You order your thoughts in the new language, and, having done so, the words which express these are an inalienable possession.

Here is an example of an elementary ‘Series,’ showing how ‘the servant lights the fire’:

“The servant takes a box of matches, _takes_.
She opens the match-box, _opens_.
She takes out a match, _takes out_.
She shuts up the match-box, _shuts up_.
She strikes the match on the cover, _strikes_.
The match takes fire, _takes fire_.
The match smokes, _smokes_.
The match flames, _flames_.
The match burns, _burns_.
And spreads a smell of burning over the kitchen, _spreads_.
The servant bends down to the hearth, _bends down_.
Puts out her hand, _puts out_.
Puts the match under the shavings, _puts_.
Holds the match under the shavings, _holds_.
The shavings take fire, _take fire_.
The servant leaves go of the match, _leaves go_.
Stands up again, _stands up_.
Looks at her fire burning, _looks_.
And puts back the box of matches in its place, _puts back_.”

But any attempt to quote gives an uncertain and unsatisfactory idea of this important work.

=How does the Child learn?=--Whatever may be said of M. Gouin’s methods, the steps by which he arrives at them are undoubtedly scientific. He learns from a child:

“Unhappily the child has remained up to the present a
hackneyed riddle, which we have never taken sufficient
trouble to decipher or examine....”

“The little child, which at the age of two years utters
nothing but meaningless exclamations, at the age of three
finds itself in possession of a complete language. How does
it accomplish this? Does this miracle admit of explanation
or not? Is it a problem of which there is a possibility of
finding the unknown quantity?... The organ of language--ask
the little child--is not the eye: it is the ear. The eye
is made for colours, and not for sounds and words.... This
tension, continuous and contrary to nature, of the organ of
sight, the forced precipitancy of the visual act, produced
what it was bound to produce, a disease of the eyesight.”

This refers to M. Gouin’s herculean labours in the attempt to learn German. He knew everybody’s ‘Method,’ learned the whole dictionary through, and found at the end that he did not know _one word_ of German ‘as she is spoke.’

He returned to France, after a ten months’ absence, and found that his little nephew--whom he had left, a child of two and a half, not yet able to talk--had in the interval done what his uncle had signally failed to do. “‘What!’ I thought; ‘this child and I have been working for the same time, each at a language. He, playing round his mother, running after flowers, butterflies and birds, without weariness, without apparent effort, without even being conscious of his work, is able to say all he thinks, express all he sees, understand all he hears; and when he began his work, his intelligence was yet a futurity, a glimmer, a hope. And I, versed in the sciences, versed in philosophy, armed with a powerful will, gifted with a powerful memory ... have arrived at nothing, or at practically nothing!’”

“The linguistic science of the college has deceived me, has misguided me. The classical method, with its grammar, its dictionary, and its translations, is a delusion.” “To surprise Nature’s secret, I must watch this child.”

M. Gouin watches the child--the work in question is the result of his observations.

The method of teaching may be varied, partly because that recommended by M. Gouin requires a perfect command of the French tongue, and teachers who are diffident find a conversational method founded on book and picture[37] easier to work and perhaps as effectual--more so, some people think; but, be this as it may, it is to M. Gouin we owe the fundamental idea.

It is satisfactory to find principles, which we have urged continually, enunciated in this most thoughtful work. For example: “If one learns French without being able to read it--as the child does--there will be no longer much greater difficulty in pronouncing it than in pronouncing words in English. ‘How about the spelling?’ you will ask. The spelling? You would learn it as the young French children learn it, as you yourself have learnt the English spelling, ten times more difficult than the French; and this without letting the study of the spelling spoil your already acquired pronunciation. Besides, the spelling is a thing that can be reformed--the pronunciation hardly at all. We must choose between the two evils.” M. Gouin speaks of the possibility of a child’s picking up another tongue--even Chinese from a Chinese nurse; and his words remind me of an extraordinary instance of a child’s facility in picking up languages, which once came before me. Having occasion to speak in public of three little children, all aged three, belonging to different families, where one parent was English, the other German, I said that these three children of my acquaintance could each say everything they had to say, express the whole range of their ideas, with equal ease and fluency in the two languages. At the close of the meeting, a gentleman present came forward and endorsed my remarks. He said he had a son whose wife was a German lady, and who was now a missionary in Bagdad. They have a child of three, and their child speaks _three_ languages with perfect fluency--English, German, and Arabic! No doubt the child will forget two of the three, and this is no argument for teaching foreign tongues to babies, but surely it does prove that the acquisition of a foreign tongue need not present insuperable difficulties to any of us.

XXI.--PICTORIAL ART

=Study of Pictures.=--The art training of children should proceed on two lines. The six-year-old child should begin both to express himself and to appreciate, and his appreciation should be well in advance of his power to express what he sees or imagines. Therefore it is a lamentable thing when the appreciation of children is exercised only upon the coloured lithographs of their picture-books or of the ‘Christmas number.’ But the reader will say, ‘A young child cannot appreciate art; it is only the colour and sentiment of a picture that reach him. A vividly coloured presentation of Bobbie’s Birthday, or of Barbara’s Broken Doll, will find its way straight to his “business and bosom.”’ ‘Therefore,’ says the reader, ‘Nature indicates the sort of art proper for the children!’ But, as a matter of fact, the minds of children and of their elders alike accommodate themselves to what is put in their way; and if children appreciate the vulgar and sentimental in art, it is because that is the manner of art to which they become habituated. A little boy of about nine was (with many others) given reproductions of some half-dozen of the pictures of Jean François Millet to study during a school term. At the end, the children were asked to describe the one of these pictures which they liked best. Of course they did it, and did it well. This is what the little boy I mentioned makes of it:--“I liked the Sower best. The sower is sowing seeds; the picture is all dark except high up on the right-hand side where there is a man ploughing the field. While he is ploughing the field the sower sows. The sower has got a bag in his left hand and is sowing with his right hand. He has wooden clogs on. He is sowing at about six o’clock in the morning. You can see his head better than his legs and body, because it is against the light.”

A little girl of seven prefers the ‘Angelus,’ and says:--“The picture is about people in the fields, a man and a woman. By the woman is a basket with something in it; behind her is a wheelbarrow. They are praying; the man has his hat off in his hand. You can tell that it is evening, because the wheelbarrow and the basket are loaded.”

=Should be Regular.=--When children have begun regular lessons (that is, as soon as they are six), this sort of study of pictures should not be left to chance, but they should take one artist after another, term by term, and study quietly some half-dozen reproductions of his work in the course of a term.

The little memory outlines I have quoted show that something definite remains with a child after his studies; but this is the least of the gains. We cannot measure the influence that one or another artist has upon the child’s sense of beauty, upon his power of seeing, as in a picture, the common sights of life; he is enriched more than we know in having really looked at even a single picture. It is a mistake to think that colour is quite necessary to children in their art studies. They find colour in many places, and are content, for the time, with form and feeling in their pictures. By the way, for schoolroom decorations, I know of nothing better than the Fitzroy Pictures,[38] especially those of the Four Seasons, where you get beauty, both of line and colour, and poetic feeling. I should like, too, to quote Ruskin’s counsel that English children should be brought up on Jean Richter’s picture-books for children, the _Unser Vater, Sontag_,[38a] and the rest.

I subjoin notes of a lesson on a Picture-talk[39] given to children of eight and nine, to show how this sort of lesson may be given.

PICTURE-TALK

“_Objects_

“1. To continue the series of Landseer’s pictures the children are taking in school.

“2. To increase their interest in Landseer’s works.

“3. To show the importance of his acquaintance with animals.

“4. To help them to read a picture truly.

“5. To increase their powers of attention and observation.

“_Step I._--Ask the children if they remember what their last picture-talk was about, and what artist was famous for animal-painting. Tell them Landseer was acquainted with animals when he was quite young: he had dogs for pets, and because he loved them he studied them and their habits--so was able to paint them.

“_Step II._--Give them the picture ‘Alexander and Diogenes’ to look at, and ask them to find out all they can about it themselves, and to think what idea the artist had in his mind, and what idea or ideas he meant his picture to convey to us.

“_Step III._--After three or four minutes, take the picture away and see what the children have noticed. Then ask them what the different dogs suggest to them: the strength of the mastiff representing Alexander; the dignity and stateliness of the bloodhounds in his rear; the look of the wise counsellor on the face of the setter; the rather contemptuous look of the rough-haired terrier in the tub. Ask the children if they have noticed anything in the picture which shows the time of day: for example, the tools thrown down by the side of the workman’s basket suggesting the mid-day meal; and the bright sunshine on the dogs who cast a shadow on the tub shows it must be somewhere about noon.

“_Step IV._--Let them read the title, and tell any facts they know about Alexander and Diogenes; then tell them Alexander was a great conqueror who lived B.C. 356-323, famous for the battles he won against Persia, India, and along the coast of the Mediterranean. He was very proud, strong, and boastful. Diogenes was a cynic philosopher. Explain cynic, illustrating by the legend of Alexander and Diogenes; and from it find out which dog represents Alexander and which Diogenes.

“_Step V._--Let the children draw the chief lines of the picture, in five minutes, with pencil and paper.”

=Original Illustrations.=--I have spoken, from time to time, of original illustrations drawn by the children. It may be of use to subjoin notes of a lesson[40] showing the sort of occasional help a teacher may give in this kind of work; but in a general way it is best to leave children to themselves.

“_Objects_

“1. To help the children to make clear mental pictures from description, and to reproduce the same in painting.

“2. To increase their power of imagination.

“3. To help them in their ideas of form and colour.

“4. To increase their interest in the story of Beowulf by letting them illustrate a scene from the book they are reading.

“5. To bring out their idea of an unknown creature (Grendel).

“_Steps_

“_Step I._--To draw from the children what they know of the poem ‘Beowulf,’ and of the hero himself.

“_Step II._--To tell them any points they may miss in the story, as far as they have read (_i.e._ to the death of Grendel).

“_Step III._--To read the description of the dress at that time, and the account of Grendel’s death (including three possible pictures).

“_Step IV._--To draw from the children what mental pictures they have made--and to re-read the passage.

“_Step V._--To let them produce their mental picture with brush and paint.

“_Step VI._--To show them George Harrow’s ‘original illustration’ of Beowulf in _Heroes of Chivalry and Romance_.”

=Drawing Lessons.=--But ‘for their actual drawing lessons,’ says the reader, ‘I suppose you use “blobs”?’--‘blobs,’ _i.e._ splashes of paint made with the flat of the brush, which take an oval form. I think blobs have one use--they give a certain freedom in using colour. Otherwise ‘blobs’ seem to me a sort of apparatus of art which a child acquires with a good deal of labour, and with which, by proper combinations into flowers, and so on, he can produce effects beyond his legitimate power as an artist, while all the time he can do this without a particle of the feeling for the natural object which is the very soul of art. The power of effective creation by a sort of clever trick maims those delicate feelers of a child’s nature by which he apprehends art.

“Let the eye” (says Ruskin) “but rest on a rough piece of branch of curious form during a conversation with a friend, rest, however unconsciously, and though the conversation be forgotten, though every circumstance connected with it be as utterly lost to the memory as though it had not been, yet the eye will, through the whole life after, take a certain pleasure in such boughs which it had not before, a pleasure so slight, a trace of feeling so delicate, as to leave us utterly unconscious of its peculiar power, but undestroyable by any reasoning, a part thenceforward of our constitution.”

This is what we wish to do for children in teaching them to draw--to cause the eye to rest, not unconsciously, but consciously, on some object of beauty which will leave in their minds an image of delight for all their lives to come. Children of six and seven draw budding twigs of oak and ash, beech and larch, with such tender fidelity to colour, tone, and gesture, that the crude little drawings are in themselves things of beauty.

=Children have ‘Art’ in them.=--With art, as with so many other things in a child, we must believe that it is there, or we shall never find it. Once again, here is a delicate Ariel whom it is our part to deliver from his bonds. Therefore we set twig or growing flower before a child and let him deal with it as he chooses. He will find his own way to form and colour, and our help may very well be limited at first to such technical matters as the mixing of colours and the like. In order that we may not impede the child’s freedom or hinder the deliverance of the art that is in him, we must be careful not to offer any aids in the way of guiding lines, points, and such other crutches; and, also, he should work in the easiest medium, that is, with paint brush or with charcoal, and _not_ with a black-lead pencil. Boxes of cheap colours are to be avoided. Children are worthy of the best, and some half-dozen tubes of really good colours will last a long time, and will satisfy the eye of the little artists.

=Clay-modelling.=--While speaking of the art training of children, it may be as well to give a word to clay-modelling. Neat little birds’-nests, baskets of eggs, etc., are of no use in the way of art development, and soon cease to be amusing. The chief thing the teacher has to do is to show the child how to prepare his clay so as to expel air-bubbles, and to give him the idea of making a little platform for his work, so that it may from the first have an artistic effect. Then put before him an apple, a banana, a Brazil nut, or the like; let him, not take a lump of clay and squeeze it into shape, but build up the shape he desires morsel by morsel. His own artistic perception seizes on the dint in the apple, the crease in the child’s shoe, the little notes of expression in the objects which break uniformity and make for art.

=The Piano and Singing.=--I must close, with the disappointing sense that subjects of importance in the child’s education have been left out of count, and that no one matter has been adequately treated.

Certain subjects of peculiar educational value, music, for instance, I have said nothing about, partly for want of space, and partly because if the mother have not Sir Joshua Reynolds’s _‘that!_’ in her, hints from an outsider will not produce the art-feeling which is the condition of success in this sort of teaching. If possible, let the children learn from the first under _artists_, lovers of their work: it is a serious mistake to let the child lay the foundation of whatever he may do in the future under ill-qualified mechanical teachers, who kindle in him none of the enthusiasm which is the life of art. I should like, in connection with singing, to mention the admirable educational effects of the Tonic Sol-fa method.[41] Children learn by it in a magical way to produce sign for sound and sound for sign, that is, they can not only read music, but can write the notes for, or make the proper hand signs for, the notes of a passage sung to them. Ear and voice are simultaneously and equally cultivated.

Mrs Curwen’s _Child Pianist_[42] method is worked out, with minute care, upon the same lines; that is, the child’s knowledge of the theory of music and his ear training keep pace with his power of execution, and seem to do away with the deadly dreariness of ‘practising.’

=Handicrafts and Drills.=--It is not possible to do more than mention two more important subjects--the Handicrafts and Drills--which should form a regular part of a child’s daily life. For physical training nothing is so good as Ling’s Swedish Drill, and a few of the early exercises are within the reach of children under nine. Dancing, and the various musical drills, lend themselves to grace of movement, and give more pleasure, if less scientific training, to the little people.

The Handicrafts best fitted for children under nine seem to me to be chair-caning, carton-work, basket-work, Smyrna rugs, Japanese curtains, carving in cork, samplers on coarse canvas showing a variety of stitches, easy needlework, knitting (big needles and wool), etc. The points to be borne in mind in children’s handicrafts are: (_a_) that they should not be employed in making futilities such as pea and stick work, paper mats, and the like; (_b_) that they should be taught slowly and carefully what they are to do; (_c_) that slipshod work should not be allowed; (_d_) and that, therefore, the children’s work should be kept well within their compass.

May I hope, in concluding this short review of the subjects proper for a child’s intellectual education, that enough has been said to show the necessity of grave consideration on the mother’s part before she allows promiscuous little lesson-books to be put into the hands of her children, or trusts ill-qualified persons to strike out methods of teaching for themselves?

FOOTNOTES:

[9] See Appendix A.

[10] See Appendix A.

[11] See Appendix A.

[12] See Appendix A.

[13] Quoted by Mr Thistleton Mark.

[14] Southey’s _Life of Wesley_.

[15] It is so important that children should be taught to read in a rational way, that I introduce two papers (by the writer) which have appeared in the _Parents’ Review_, in the hope that they will make the suggested method fairly clear and familiar.

[16] Miss Miller, founder of a Training College at Oxford.

[17] Spirited nursery rhymes form the best material for such reading lessons. A “Delightful Reading Box” has been issued on a similar plan to the ‘Pussy’ Box, whose one fault is that the verses are a little dull. But this ‘Box’ should be of great use.

[18] It is desirable that ‘Tommy’ should not begin to ‘read’ until his intelligence is equal to the effort required by these lessons. Even then, it may be well to break up one into two, or half a dozen, as he is able to take it.

[19] Appendix A.

[20] See Appendix A.

[21] See Appendix A.

[22] See Appendix A.

[23] See Appendix A.

[24] See Appendix A.

[25] See Appendix A.

[26] _Parents’ Review_, April 1904.

[27] See Appendix A.

[28] See Appendix A.

[29] See Appendix A.

[30] Bohn’s Antiquarian Library (5s. a volume) includes Bede, William of Malmesbury, Dr Giles’s _Six Old English Chronicles_--Asser and Geoffrey of Monmouth being two of them--_Chronicles of the Crusaders_, etc.

[31] See Appendix A.

[32] See Appendix A.

[33] See Appendix A.

[34] See Appendix A.

[35] _Palace Tales_, H. Fielding.

[36] See Appendix A.

[37] See Appendix A.

[38] See Appendix A.

[39] By a student of the House of Education.

[40] By a student of the House of Education.

[41] See Appendix A.

[42] See Appendix A.