Essays On Education And Kindred Subjects (Fiscle Part- 11) by Herbert Spencer (best mobile ebook reader TXT) 📖
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- Author: Herbert Spencer
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Suggested By The Boy's Instinctive Behaviour To Her. Manifestly, Too,
The Course She Is Adopting Is The One Best Calculated To Establish A
Habit Of Exhaustive Observation; Which Is The Professed Aim Of These
Lessons. To _Tell_ A Child This And To _Show_ It The Other, Is Not To
Teach It How To Observe, But To Make It A Mere Recipient Of Another's
Observations: A Proceeding Which Weakens Rather Than Strengthens Its
Powers Of Self-Instruction--Which Deprives It Of The Pleasures Resulting
From Successful Activity--Which Presents This All-Attractive Knowledge
Under The Aspect Of Formal Tuition--And Which Thus Generates That
Indifference And Even Disgust Not Unfrequently Felt Towards These
Object-Lessons. On The Other Hand, To Pursue The Course Above Described
Is Simply To Guide The Intellect To Its Appropriate Food; To Join With
The Intellectual Appetites Their Natural Adjuncts--_Amour Propre_ And
The Desire For Sympathy; To Induce By The Union Of All These An
Intensity Of Attention Which Insures Perceptions Both Vivid And
Complete; And To Habituate The Mind From The Beginning To That Practice
Of Self-Help Which It Must Ultimately Follow.
Object-Lessons Should Not Only Be Carried On After Quite A Different
Fashion From That Commonly Pursued, But Should Be Extended To A Range Of
Things Far Wider, And Continued To A Period Far Later, Than Now. They
Should Not Be Limited To The Contents Of The House; But Should Include
Those Of The Fields And The Hedges, The Quarry And The Sea-Shore. They
Should Not Cease With Early Childhood; But Should Be So Kept Up During
Youth, As Insensibly To Merge Into The Investigations Of The Naturalist
And The Man Of Science. Here Again We Have But To Follow Nature's
Leadings. Where Can Be Seen An Intenser Delight Than That Of Children
Picking Up New Flowers And Watching New Insects; Or Hoarding Pebbles And
Shells? And Who Is There But Perceives That By Sympathising With Them
They May Be Led On To Any Extent Of Inquiry Into The Qualities And
Structures Of These Things? Every Botanist Who Has Had Children With Him
In The Woods And Lanes Must Have Noticed How Eagerly They Joined In His
Pursuits, How Keenly They Searched Out Plants For Him, How Intently They
Watched While He Examined Them, How They Overwhelmed Him With Questions.
The Consistent Follower Of Bacon--The "Servant And Interpreter Of
Nature," Will See That We Ought Modestly To Adopt The Course Of Culture
Thus Indicated. Having Become Familiar With The Simpler Properties Of
Inorganic Objects, The Child Should By The Same Process Be Led On To An
Exhaustive Examination Of The Things It Picks Up In Its Daily Walks--The
Less Complex Facts They Present Being Alone Noticed At First: In Plants,
The Colours, Numbers, And Forms Of The Petals, And Shapes Of The Stalks
And Leaves; In Insects, The Numbers Of The Wings, Legs, And Antennæ, And
Their Colours. As These Become Fully Appreciated And Invariably
Observed, Further Facts May Be Successively Introduced: In The One Case,
The Numbers Of Stamens And Pistils, The Forms Of The Flowers, Whether
Radial Or Bilateral In Symmetry, The Arrangement And Character Of The
Leaves, Whether Opposite Or Alternate, Stalked Or Sessile, Smooth Or
Hairy, Serrated, Toothed, Or Crenate; In The Other, The Divisions Of The
Body, The Segments Of The Abdomen, The Markings Of The Wings, The Number
Of Joints In The Legs, And The Forms Of The Smaller Organs--The System
Pursued Throughout Being That Of Making It The Child's Ambition To Say
Respecting Everything It Finds All That Can Be Said. Then When A Fit Age
Has Been Reached, The Means Of Preserving These Plants, Which Have
Become So Interesting In Virtue Of The Knowledge Obtained Of Them, May
As A Great Favour Be Supplied; And Eventually, As A Still Greater
Favour, May Also Be Supplied The Apparatus Needful For Keeping The Larvæ
Of Our Common Butterflies And Moths Through Their Transformations--A
Practice Which, As We Can Personally Testify, Yields The Highest
Gratification; Is Continued With Ardour For Years; When Joined With The
Formation Of An Entomological Collection, Adds Immense Interest To
Saturday-Afternoon Rambles; And Forms An Admirable Introduction To The
Study Of Physiology.
We Are Quite Prepared To Hear From Many That All This Is Throwing Away
Time And Energy; And That Children Would Be Much Better Occupied In
Writing Their Copies Or Learning Their Pence-Tables, And So Fitting
Themselves For The Business Of Life. We Regret That Such Crude Ideas Of
What Constitutes Education, And Such A Narrow Conception Of Utility,
Should Still Be Prevalent. Saying Nothing On The Need For A Systematic
Culture Of The Perceptions And The Value Of The Practices Above
Inculcated As Subserving That Need, We Are Prepared To Defend Them Even
On The Score Of The Knowledge Gained. If Men Are To Be Mere Cits, Mere
Porers Over Ledgers, With No Ideas Beyond Their Trades--If It Is Well
That They Should Be As The Cockney Whose Conception Of Rural Pleasures
Extends No Further Than Sitting In A Tea-Garden Smoking Pipes And
Drinking Porter; Or As The Squire Who Thinks Of Woods As Places For
Shooting In, Of Uncultivated Plants As Nothing But Weeds, And Who
Classifies Animals Into Game, Vermin, And Stock--Then Indeed It Is
Needless To Learn Anything That Does Not Directly Help To Replenish The
Till And Fill The Larder. But If There Is A More Worthy Aim For Us Than
To Be Drudges--If There Are Other Uses In The Things Around Than Their
Power To Bring Money--If There Are Higher Faculties To Be Exercised Than
Acquisitive And Sensual Ones--If The Pleasures Which Poetry And Art And
Science And Philosophy Can Bring Are Of Any Moment; Then Is It Desirable
That The Instinctive Inclination Which Every Child Shows To Observe
Natural Beauties And Investigate Natural Phenomena, Should Be
Encouraged. But This Gross Utilitarianism Which Is Content To Come Into
The World And Quit It Again Without Knowing What Kind Of A World It Is
Or What It Contains, May Be Met On Its Own Ground. It Will By And By Be
Found That A Knowledge Of The Laws Of Life Is More Important Than Any
Other Knowledge Whatever--That The Laws Of Life Underlie Not Only All
Bodily And Mental Processes, But By Implication All The Transactions Of
The House And The Street, All Commerce, All Politics, All Morals--And
That Therefore Without A Comprehension Of Them, Neither Personal Nor
Social Conduct Can Be Rightly Regulated. It Will Eventually Be Seen Too,
That The Laws Of Life Are Essentially The Same Throughout The Whole
Organic Creation; And Further, That They Cannot Be Properly Understood
In Their Complex Manifestations Until They Have Been Studied In Their
Simpler Ones. And When This Is Seen, It Will Be Also Seen That In Aiding
The Child To Acquire The Out-Of-Door Information For Which It Shows So
Great An Avidity, And In Encouraging The Acquisition Of Such Information
Throughout Youth, We Are Simply Inducing It To Store Up The Raw Material
For Future Organisation--The Facts That Will One Day Bring Home To It
With Due Force, Those Great Generalisations Of Science By Which Actions
May Be Rightly Guided.
The Spreading Recognition Of Drawing As An Element Of Education Is One
Among Many Signs Of The More Rational Views On Mental Culture Now
Beginning To Prevail. Once More It May Be Remarked That Teachers Are At
Length Adopting The Course Which Nature Has Perpetually Been Pressing On
Part 1 Chapter 2 (Intellectual Education) Pg 32Their Notice. The Spontaneous Attempts Made By Children To Represent The
Men, Houses, Trees, And Animals Around Them--On A Slate If They Can Get
Nothing Better, Or With Lead-Pencil On Paper If They Can Beg Them--Are
Familiar To All. To Be Shown Through A Picture-Book Is One Of Their
Highest Gratifications; And As Usual, Their Strong Imitative Tendency
Presently Generates In Them The Ambition To Make Pictures Themselves
Also. This Effort To Depict The Striking Things They See Is A Further
Instinctive Exercise Of The Perceptions--A Means Whereby Still Greater
Accuracy And Completeness Of Observation Are Induced. And Alike By
Trying To Interest Us In Their Discoveries Of The Sensible Properties Of
Things, And By Their Endeavours To Draw, They Solicit From Us Just That
Kind Of Culture Which They Most Need.
Had Teachers Been Guided By Nature's Hints, Not Only In Making Drawing A
Part Of Education But In Choosing Modes Of Teaching It, They Would Have
Done Still Better Than They Have Done. What Is That The Child First
Tries To Represent? Things That Are Large, Things That Are Attractive In
Colour, Things Round Which Its Pleasurable Associations Most
Cluster--Human Beings From Whom It Has Received So Many Emotions; Cows
And Dogs Which Interest By The Many Phenomena They Present; Houses That
Are Hourly Visible And Strike By Their Size And Contrast Of Parts. And
Which Of The Processes Of Representation Gives It Most Delight?
Colouring. Paper And Pencil Are Good In Default Of Something Better; But
A Box Of Paints And A Brush--These Are The Treasures. The Drawing Of
Outlines Immediately Becomes Secondary To Colouring--Is Gone Through
Mainly With A View To The Colouring; And If Leave Can Be Got To Colour A
Book Of Prints, How Great Is The Favour! Now, Ridiculous As Such A
Position Will Seem To Drawing-Masters Who Postpone Colouring And Who
Teach Form By A Dreary Discipline Of Copying Lines, We Believe That The
Course Of Culture Thus Indicated Is The Right One. The Priority Of
Colour To Form, Which, As Already Pointed Out, Has A Psychological
Basis, Should Be Recognised From The Beginning; And From The Beginning
Also, The Things Imitated Should Be Real. That Greater Delight In Colour
Which Is Not Only Conspicuous In Children But Persists In Most Persons
Throughout Life, Should Be Continuously Employed As The Natural Stimulus
To The Mastery Of The Comparatively Difficult And Unattractive Form: The
Pleasure Of The Subsequent Tinting Should Be The Prospective Reward For
The Labour Of Delineation. And These Efforts To Represent Interesting
Actualities Should Be Encouraged; In The Conviction That As, By A
Widening Experience, Simpler And More Practicable Objects Become
Interesting, They Too Will Be Attempted; And That So A Gradual
Approximation Will Be Made Towards Imitations Having Some Resemblance To
The Realities. The Extreme Indefiniteness Which, In Conformity With The
Law Of Evolution, These First Attempts Exhibit, Is Anything But A Reason
For Ignoring Them. No Matter How Grotesque The Shapes Produced; No
Matter How Daubed And Glaring The Colours. The Question Is Not Whether
The Child Is Producing Good Drawings. The Question Is, Whether It Is
Developing Its Faculties. It Has First To Gain Some Command Over Its
Fingers, Some Crude Notions Of Likeness; And This Practice Is Better
Than Any Other For These Ends, Since It Is The Spontaneous And
Interesting One. During Early Childhood No Formal Drawing-Lessons Are
Possible. Shall We Therefore Repress, Or Neglect To Aid, These Efforts
At Self-Culture? Or Shall We Encourage And Guide Them As Normal
Exercises Of The Perceptions And The Powers Of Manipulation? If By
Furnishing Cheap Woodcuts To Be Painted, And Simple Contour-Maps To Have
Their Boundary Lines Tinted, We Can Not Only Pleasurably Draw Out The
Faculty Of Colour, But Can Incidentally Produce Some Familiarity With
The Outlines Of Things And Countries, And Some Ability To Move The Brush
Steadily; And If By The Supply Of Tempting Objects We Can Keep Up The
Instinctive Practice Of Making Representations, However Rough; It Must
Happen That When The Age For Lessons In Drawing Is Reached, There Will
Exist A Facility That Would Else Have Been Absent. Time Will Have Been
Gained; And Trouble, Both To Teacher And Pupil, Saved.
From What Has Been Said, It May Be Readily Inferred That We Condemn The
Practice Of Drawing From Copies; And Still More So That Formal
Discipline In Making Straight Lines And Curved Lines And Compound Lines,
With Which It Is The Fashion Of Some Teachers To Begin. We Regret That
The Society Of Arts Has Recently, In Its Series Of Manuals On
"Rudimentary Art Instruction," Given Its Countenance To An Elementary
Drawing-Book, Which Is The Most Vicious In Principle That We Have Seen.
We Refer To The _Outline From Outline, Or From The Flat_, By John Bell,
Sculptor. As Explained In The Prefatory Note, This
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