My dear Anna,—Let me introduce you to my little family. It consists of twenty children, some of whom have been under my care for three years. These latter are eight in number, and from nine to twelve years of age; then I have six who are not seven years old, who know how to read pretty well, but who study no lessons more difficult than a simple bit of poetry, the names of a few places on the map, a list of words from the black-board of the parts of a flower, or an interlined Latin fable, which I give them thus early, because Latin is one of the elements of our language, and its forms are so definite that it gives definiteness to ideas. These children print, write, draw from outlined forms and blocks, as well as from their own fancies, and listen to all sorts of information which I give them orally, and which they recount to me again when questioned. I tell a great many stories over maps, which are, in my dominions, not only lines running hither and thither with a few names interspersed, but real mountains, rivers, lakes, and seas, which I clothe with verdure, and people with all kinds of animate forms, such as beasts, birds, fishes, and William Tells, or other interesting individuals and tribes. I have a book, called "Wonders of the World," which is my Aladdin's lamp, and when I take it down, little hands are clapped and bright eyes glisten.
But I must not forget to mention my other six, who are sweet little buds of promise as one can well imagine; who love to hear stories about all living things, from oysters up through the more intelligent shell-fish that have heads as well as a foot, to small pink pigs and their mothers, butterflies, birds, dogs, horses, cows, and fellow-children; and to learn that their stockings are made of wool that grew on the back of a lamb, their shoes of the skin of a calf, their ribbons from the cocoons of a moth, the table of a tree, &c., &c. These little people were committed to my keeping directly out of their mothers' or their nurses' arms. I am always diffident about taking the place of the former, but rejoice to rescue babes from the care of the latter.
The first thing to be taught these, is how to live happily with each other; the next, how to use language. It is not necessary to wait till they can read before we begin this last instruction. They love dearly to repeat the words of simple poetry or of poetic prose, (Mrs. Barbauld is my classic for babes,) and it is curious to see how synthetical are their first mental operations, and how difficult they find it to disentangle the words of a short sentence, which evidently has hitherto been but one word of many syllables. Names of things can be made to stand forth distinctly before other words, because the objects of the senses do; but when I first ask children of three or four years old to make sentences and put in the and and, their pleasure in recognizing the single word is even greater, and they will amuse themselves a great deal with the exercise, running to me to whisper, "just now I said the;" or, "Charley said and." If the printed word is pointed out at the same time, it is still more interesting, because then it becomes an object of the senses, a real thing, just as much as the book it is printed in. You know I take the royal road to the attainment of this art, and teach words first, not letters. I find this a much better as well as happier way, for a word is a whole host of thoughts to a young child, and three words in a row a whole gallery of pictures. Bird, nest, tree! If a child has ever played in a meadow, or even in a garden, or sat on a grassy bank under the window, or has seen pigeons fly down into a city street, what subject of endless conversation does this combination of things present! The book that contains such words, and perhaps a story, of which they form a part, is itself an illuminated volume, and is immediately invested with a charm it cannot lose, for what child (or man) was ever tired of the thought of a bird, or a tree, to say nothing of that more rare and mysterious object, a nest? The warbled song, the downy breast, the sheltering wing, the snug retreat, have such an analogy with the mother's carol or lullaby, the brooding bosom, and the beloved arms, a child's dearest home, that every sentiment is enlisted, and a thousand things, never to be forgotten, may be said. There is no need of pictures on such a page as this. I well remember the shining pages of my childhood's books,—a lustre never emitted by white paper alone. I doubt not the ancient fancy of illuminating the works of great minds with gilded and scarlet letters grew out of some such early association with printed, or rather written thoughts;—for printing was not known then.
I believe you do not approve of this method of teaching to read; but I cannot help thinking a variety of experience like mine would make you a convert to my mode. I claim to have discovered it, and the bright little six years old rogue, upon whom I tried my first experiment, learned to read in six weeks, and every word was an experience to him, for I made up the lessons as we went on from day to day right out of his little life. He would scream with delight to see what he called his words on the sheet upon which I daily printed a new lesson. I have no doubt every name of a thing looked to him like the thing itself, for his imagination was a very transmuting one. You would have been as amused at his antics over the word "and" as I was. I only introduced such oysters of words occasionally into my gallery of pictures, but he never forgot any such useful members of society, though I think he could not have made pictures of them. One great point is, that children are always happy to read in this way; and to work their little brains against their will, seems to me cruel. It is quite an effort for them to learn to observe closely enough to distinguish such small particulars even as words, with which they have such vivid associations, and altogether an unnatural one to learn arbitrary signs, to which nothing already known can be attached. Until I was convinced that this was the best method, I always found myself instinctively helping innocent children along, through their first steps in reading, by means which, at the time, I half thought were tricks, and unsafe indulgences. I feared that I was depriving them of some desirable and wholesome discipline, such as we often hear of in our extreme youth from nursery-maids, who tell stories of parents who whip their children every morning that they may be good all day. But I will never again force helpless little ones, of three or four years old, to learn the alphabet and the abs, until every letter is interesting to them from the position it holds in some symbolic word.
When letters are learned in the ordinary way, they are often associated with some image, as a stands for apple, b for boy, c for cat; and these associations may be so many hindrances (certainly in the case of the vowels) to the next step in the process, because they must all be unlearned before the letters can be applied to other words. In our language there are so many silent letters in words, so many sounds for each vowel, and the alphabetic sound of the consonants is so different from their sound in words, that I do not care how late the analysis is put off.
After a while, I string columns of little words together, in which the vowel has the same sound, as can, man, pan, tan, and let these be the first spelling-lessons; but I prefer, even to this mode, that of letting children write from dictation the words they are familiar with on a page. One dear little boy came to school three months before he wished to read, or to look at a book, except for the pictures. At last he came into the class without an invitation, and has learned very fast, and can read better than some children who have read longer. He is a perfect little dumpling, as gay and happy as a lark all day, and I would not for the world make it a task for him to use his brain, thus risking the diminution of his rotundity. He is as wise as a judge, though he has not lost his baby looks; and he might be made to reason subtly at an early age I doubt not; but I hope all such powers will be allowed to slumber peacefully as yet. He is in the mean time learning to read slowly; to print, to draw houses, to repeat poetry, to sing songs about birds, bees, and lambs, and to have as much fun between these exercises as I can furnish him with,—the latter in another apartment, of course. I have taken no pains to teach him his letters. I have a great repugnance to letters, with their many different sounds, so puzzling to the brain;—but one day, finding he knew some of them, I pointed to g, and asked him if he knew the name of it. He said "grass," which was the first word in which he had seen g. So w he first called "water," for the same reason. I gave him their sounds, but not their alphabetical names. I was obliged to give him two sounds for g, one hard, one soft, and he soon knew all the consonants by their powers. I hope he will not ask me anything about the vowels at present.[I]
I also cut out the words children first learn, as soon as they can put together a few in short sentences, and let them arrange them to correspond with the sentences in the book. I have devoted one copy of my Primer to this purpose, and keep the words thus separated, and pasted upon card-board, for such use.
I know all children learn to read, and some children learn rapidly, but I am always interested to know at what cost. It is a very important question, I assure you. One may not realize, at the time, the evils consequent upon the difficulties first encountered. The actual injury to the brain stands first among these. We grown people know the painful sensation consequent upon too long and too fixed attention to one subject, even in the arranging of piles of pamphlets which we are endeavoring to classify. The brain whirls and experiences chills, and the whole body feels it. So with children, when made to read too long, before the eye has learned to discriminate words easily. The child is told that it is naughty, if it does not continue as long as the teacher's or the mother's patience holds out (as soon as that is exhausted, the lesson is sure to be over). How false this is! A little child should never be required to do anything intellectual as a duty. It should not be required even to love as a duty, much less to think. Both should be made inevitable by the interest inspired; its mental efforts should only be sports. Its habits of self-control, its kindness, its affection, should be cultivated, and this rather by example than by precept. When mothers do not succeed in teaching their children to read, because they have not the resolution to force them to it, they often say to me, "Do teach the child to read, it will be a great resource;" I reply, if I think they will believe me, that their instincts have perhaps been wiser than their understanding; but if I see that they are unreasonable, I reply that I will try, reserving to myself the privilege of trying just as much as I please, and no more. I can generally make the effort to read a voluntary one, if I do not find any previous painful associations to do away. If I do, I wait patiently till I can replace them by others, and in the mean time make books vocal of such enchanting things that the desire will bubble up in the little mind, through all the rubbish that has gathered over it. The pleasure of reading together from a black-board, on which the letters should be printed with great exactness and perfection of form, in order to resemble those in the book, often gives this desire.
One little fellow, whose perceptive powers are sharper than those of my dumpling, reflects upon himself more, and although equally fat, appears, from a certain anxious expression on his face, to have had some trials. He says his sister sometimes "hurts his feelings." He thinks some words are beautiful and "full of pictures." He tells very small fibs, such as "Mother says I must read those words, and those." Do not suppose I let this fibbing pass. I make a great point of not believing it, and of comparing it with truth, and of proving to him that his mother knows nothing about it.
Another little darling, who cannot speak plain, says, "Oh, is 'at feathers? Why! is it feathers? Oh, now tell me where wings is! Oh! is 'at wings? Oh! I want to kiss oo."
I hear these little ones read four or five times a day. The lesson occupies about fifteen minutes each time. All "study" together, as they call it. I put my pointer on the book of each in turn, making it a habit that they shall not look off the book for the space of three minutes, perhaps, during which each reads. They keep within a few sentences of each other, near enough to think they read together, as I detain them long upon the repetition of all they know; but I see very clearly which will start off soon and outstrip the rest. I say nothing of which reads the best, but sometimes make such remarks as, "L—— will learn to read very fast, I think, he is so attentive." This makes L—— all the more attentive, and helps the others to make the effort; for with these four, to be able to read is the most charming of prospects. I am determined that no touch of weariness shall break the charm. In three months they will be able to read the two first stories in the Primer, which occupy about two pages. Their eyes will by that time become so accustomed to analyzing the looks of the words, that they will be able to print them without the book, and soon new words will be learned very rapidly. I stave off the spelling as long as possible, but you may be sure that these children will spell well by and by. I am convinced of this by experience, for the next class above these in age have begun within a few weeks to write stories of their own, composing instead of copying them from books, as they have done for two years, and I am myself quite astonished at their spelling. They have never spelled a word they did not understand, and their spelling in composition is better than that of some children still older who learned to spell elsewhere, and who hate spelling-books.
One of my exercises in thinking is to ask the children to tell me the names of all the actions they can think of; and to help them I say, for instance, "What can the bird do?" "What can the fly do?" "How many things can the fly do?" Another is to ask them what things are made of, and where they are found, "Are they vegetables, or are they from animals, or are they minerals?" They are vastly entertained by this, and one little fellow became so much excited, and wearied himself so much with his investigations at home, that his mother begged me to suspend the exercise for a time. Jemmy's head is a little too big for his body; and the look of research in his great eyes gives evidence of precocity, the thing of all others to be shunned. His mother has put thick boots upon him lately, and turned him out into the snow, and he looks like a butterfly in boots, with his ethereal head and spiritual orbs.
I have but one child under my care that I call a prodigy; and my influence has not yet been strong enough to check her ardor as it ought to be checked. She is sent to school because she is happier at school than in the nursery, to which rich people's children are so often banished. (I never intend to have a nursery in my house.) This child has been with me three years, and is but six now. She might be made one of those wonders of learning that occasionally astonish the world, if the plan of her education had not been to supply as little food as possible for her cravings. Fortunately she did not ask to read for a long time, but I have not a scholar so perseveringly industrious, so absorbed in whatever she is doing, so full of nervous energy. She is as conscientious as she is intellectual. I have never had to repeat a request to her, or to subject her to a rule. She always sees and does the fitting and the lovely thing. Before she learned to read she would sit for the hour together with a book in hand, (upside down, perhaps,) and improvisate stories wonderful to hear, in which the characters preserved their individuality, and the descriptions of nature were as vivid as those of a poet of many years. She was quite lost to outward things while improvisating thus. One day after school, the maid who came for her not having arrived, she threw herself on the floor, and began a story about a naughty child. I cannot now remember all the very words, for it was a year ago; but the qualities of the heroine were a combination of all the faults she knew anything about. "If people were ill, she always made a noise; she would shut the door hard if told that it would make people's heads ache. She hid other people's things, and would not tell where she had put them. She was very cross to her little brother, and often hurt the baby. She cut valuable things with the scissors, tore up her books, and left the pieces of paper on the parlor carpet. One day it rained very hard, and her mother told her not to go out, lest she should take cold. She was always disobedient, so she went up-stairs and put on a very nice dress and her best bonnet, with blue ribbons, and thin stockings and shoes, and nothing to keep herself warm, but went out in the rain, and paddled and paddled about, and wet her dress, and spoilt the blue ribbons on her bonnet; and when she came in she was very, very sick indeed, and had a dreadful fever, and people slammed the doors and made a great noise, and she had dreadful, oh, dreadful pains in her head and her side, and she could not eat or drink anything; and at last she died and did not go to heaven!" She stopped, completely out of breath. After a few moments' pause, I said, "Oh, I am sorry for the poor little girl that was punished so much. Was she so very naughty she could not go to heaven?"
She made no reply for some time, and then recommenced in a low, solemn voice: "When she was lying in her bed, she was very sorry she had not obeyed her mother, and a heavenly angel came down out of the heavenly sky and took her up into heaven." After a short pause she burst out again very energetically—"Then how she ramped! She trampled on the clouds, and put her foot in the sun, moon, and stars!" I made no further comment. I rarely interrupted her utterances, for they never were addressed to any one, and seldom indulged in, unless she thought herself alone. They were picturesque and symbolical, but never vague. The moral was always very apparent. But her imagination sometimes clothes objects with a light of its own. I was leading her up-stairs the other day, and as we stepped into the hall, we saw a large spider running before us. She dropped my hand and bounded forward, "Oh, you beautiful, smiling creature!" was her exclamation.
Would not a bird have been her passport into paradise at that moment?
Another of these children was walking in the mall with me one day, when the sun was shining with an afternoon light upon the bare trees, over rather a dreary landscape of snow and ice. "Oh, the trees look like golden twigs," said my little poetess, so full of joy that I could hardly hold her.
This, dear A——, is the
To return a moment to my little prodigy. When she did not for a long time ask to read, she wished to print, and it must have been this practice which gradually so accustomed her eye to the shapes of words, that when she suddenly conceived the desire to read, she remembered them with marvellous rapidity. Everything else was abandoned for the time, and in the course of two or three weeks she could read very well. I had often seen her take up the books which contained the stories she liked, and I supposed, at first, that she must have learned to read them herself in some unaccountable way. She had often repeated such stories from the book from beginning to end, word for word. But I found it was not the case,—that she had never actually read them before. However, I never could trace the steps. Spelling she does not find easy. Even now, several months after she has been able to read currently, if, when she comes to a new word, I propose to her to spell it, she will mention the letters (I never taught her their names, but she doubtless learned them while printing so industriously), and then say again, "What is it?" as if that had not helped her at all. But she never forgets a word after it is once told her. She joins in an exercise I frequently practise with older scholars, of spelling a few lines of the reading lesson, but she is not so ready as the others, although none read better, and few as well. She now composes stories on the slate instead of improvisating aloud so much; and I am surprised to find how many words she spells aright. But I try no experiments upon her, as my plan is to clip her wings. If she was enshrined in as rotund a body as some of the other children, I might venture a little, but she already looks too ethereal;—one sees at a glance that the sword of her fervent little spirit might easily be made to cut its sheath.
Children love to use their fingers, and I give them a slate when they come to school, and teach them to print, which accelerates the learning to read. I encourage them also to draw from beautiful outlines, from things they see in the room, and also from their own fancies. I draw upon the black-board before them, very slowly, giving directions for imitation. I never criticise their productions, whether successful or not. I often see a promise in the freedom of a stroke, or in the child's appreciation of his own drawing, which an unpractised eye could scarcely detect. If a little child brings me a slate with three marks drawn upon it which he calls a horse, or a dog, can I be so unsympathizing as to question it? Perhaps I add ears, legs or a tail, and my little disciple does not know the next moment whether he or I completed the picture, but the next specimen of his art will probably have at least one of these appendages.
I drew on the black-board to-day, a square house, with a door in the middle of the front, a window on each side the door, and one in each chamber over the parlors. Two chimneys surmounted the house, and the windows were divided each into six panes of glass. These things I mentioned as I drew them. It was not many minutes before I was called to look at two houses of four times the size of mine, with the additional embellishments of stairs to go up into the chambers, one of the windows open (which I thought decidedly the stroke of genius in this artist), smoke from the chimneys, steps to the doors (my house had been left hanging in mid air), pumps with individuals, I cannot call them men, suspended to their handles, and various other hieroglyphics which I could not stay to hear explained. These limners are four years old, their faith in themselves and others yet unshaken, and I should be the last one to suggest that stairs could not be seen through the walls of a house, or that men were not lines and dots, or birds as large as houses, for I have known children to cry at such criticisms, and to be quite checked in their artistic exploits by a laugh.
After such rude practice as this, the child, by imperceptible advances, begins at last to see things more as they are, and then a little criticism is safe, but it must still be guarded, sympathizing, and helpful. The next thing to be inculcated after this is that objects must not be drawn just as they are, but only as they appear. I made this remark to a child of seven to-day for the first time. He had learned too much to make similar mistakes to those of the little people lately mentioned, but in attempting to copy the drawing of a stool, he could not comprehend how the rungs that joined the legs of the stool could be drawn so as to look right, because one of them could not really be made to pass behind the leg. I pointed to a chair and told him to suppose he was drawing it upon the wall near which it stood, for his paper represented that wall, though for convenience sake it was laid flat upon the table. I asked him if he could see the whole of the legs farthest from him, and if the rungs of those legs did not pass behind the front legs. He saw it clearly. Then I told him we must draw things as they appeared, not as they really were. Nothing must be drawn which cannot be seen, although we know more is there than we can see without going behind it. He was delighted with this discovery. Now he understood about the rungs of the stool, and also why two legs appeared longer than the other two. The stool was finished intelligently, though not with elegance, and the paper was sprinkled with attempts at various chairs which he could see from his seat, some of which really looked as if one could sit down in them, and not as if they were flattened out and hanging against the wall. Some of the legs would have gone through the floor, to be sure, if they had been real chairs, in order to afford a comfortable and even seat, but I saw that the idea was seized, which was quite enough for my unexacting demands. A child much younger and less practised, drew the same stool right, without a word from me, and probably would be completely puzzled were I to give her the same explanation, for art speaks to her without articulate voice. I have one little girl with eyes which she seems scarcely yet to have used. I took a great deal of pains to teach her to draw a little upon the black-board last winter, but if I drew a perpendicular, she thought she imitated me by drawing a horizontal line. I endeavored to wake up the love and perception of form by hanging upon the board various exquisitely shaped vases and leaves, but neither these nor rectangular forms aroused her imitative powers. I never ceased to make these trials, for I remembered that a genius in that line once said to me, "the art of seeing must precede the art of drawing." During the long vacation she resided in the country, and nature must have opened her eyes, for since she came back to school (about two months ago), she has actually been able to imitate quite intelligibly some of those very forms, and prefers some of them to others. I assure you I enjoy her imperfect performances far more than I do the successful efforts of many others. A German friend gave me a book the other day which promises to pour a flood of light upon what I now look upon as my benighted efforts to simplify to children the art of drawing. It is the method of a man of genius, discovered after much groping. He, too, had wooden models made, and stood by them, and pointed out to his pupils which part to draw first, as I have done, but at last he has reduced the whole thing to a few lessons upon some rectilinear blocks, a niche, a cylinder, a grindstone, and a ball. I am revelling in the perfect adaptation I see in it to the end proposed, which is practical teaching of perspective without a word being said about vanishing points, aerial perspective, or any of those technicalities which weary my unmathematical brain, and which I have faithfully administered to myself from time to time.[J]
To vary the occupations of my cherubs, I let them write Foster's prepared copies with a pencil, which helps very much to regulate the motions of the hand, as there is a great interest felt in tracing each mark upon the blue line. They also look at pictures in books and on the wall, where I hang all the pretty things I can find, and tell me what is in them; and sometimes amuse themselves at a table of shells, where I hear them recounting in low voices the histories I have given them of these little tenants of the seas. When I kept caterpillars, or rather raised butterflies, they never were tired of watching the chrysalides, hoping to see the expected butterflies. After these came forth in their glory, we were all poisoned by handling the cocoons, and since that experience of itching hands, and arms, and swollen eyes, I have been afraid to venture upon that branch of natural history. Shells are the most convenient natural objects for children to handle. We talk over flowers often, and I teach the names of their different parts, and encourage the children to make collections of leaves, and learn the names of their shapes, preparatory to learning the art of analyzing them thoroughly. For this purpose I have drawn all the shapes I can find named in botanies, into a book, from which I teach them. Flowers are better for teaching beauty than botany, to little children, as they object particularly to tearing them to pieces.
I have not said one word about my little Robin, who stands most of the time at the window watching the horses in the stable opposite, the scene being often spiritualized by the descent of a flight of pigeons, which he generally apprises us of by a shout. Occasionally he turns round and sits down, and watches inside proceedings, and when an interesting story about living things is in progress, I sometimes find him in my lap, or behind me in the chair I am sitting in. His eyes are blue, and his long golden straight hair hangs down from his tall forehead like a cleft banner of light. Robin will not look inside of a book yet. He is like a caged bird in the city where he is imprisoned in winter. In summer he lives out of doors, and rides on horseback on his father's knee, and holds the reins in driving. His mother says horses are the predominating idea, and also sentiment of his life, at present, and this stable-peep into their city life is duly recounted every day at home. I often mourn over my lost residence by the Common, where the children who looked out of window could see trees and a lovely landscape, but you must not think I allow my scholars to be pent up five hours in the house. Twice a day, I array them all, summer and winter, and take them to our city paradise, which happily is very near. There we actually see a squirrel once in a while. One day we saw a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis, and always the sparkling water and waving trees. And we have clear space and fresh air for half an hour. If you will not tell, I will confess that I have sometimes coasted down the least public side of Fox-hill with a babe in my lap, and I find I have not forgotten how to slide,—an accomplishment in which I excelled in my youth. In wet weather, I put on some of the out-door garments, open a window, and have a merry dance or play. The material for the early cultivation I would give is all nature, and art taken picturesquely. The nomenclatures of science are not for children, but its beauties and wonders are, and may be culled for them by a skilful hand till they have had a peep at the wide range of the universe. I believe you think it best not to open these store-houses until the mind is capable of comprehending them more fully, but I cannot think so, dear Anna. Children's love of nature forbids me to think so. I once opened a little soul's eyes with a bunch of flowers. It was a child who had never been to school before, but who had not been cultivated at home, because her mother had suffered from being over-educated, and wished to try the experiment of nature, as she called it,—by which she meant, I perceived, total neglect. She had allowed her, therefore, to grow up in the nursery and in the care of servants, both of which I consider as far from nature's teachings as possible.
The child was afraid of me and of the children. She looked at us for about three weeks with a fixed gaze as if we were not living beings, but perhaps walking pictures, her features only occasionally relaxing, I should rather say puckering into a woful wail, which expressed utter desolation and want of comprehension of our natures. She was impervious to all my blandishments, which I lavished more bountifully than usual to meet the case. When spoken to, she answered in a monosyllable, or not at all. When she wanted anything, she spoke one word to convey the idea, as a savage would, (she was five years old), and these utterances were never voluntary. She liked to sit close by her brother, who was two years older than herself, and who treated her with great tenderness and gentleness, though every manifestation from her was of the roughest kind. I was sure, however, that I did not see the whole, for his manner of taking her hand and saying "little sister" was so peculiar, that I did not doubt she was genial to him when not in this purgatory of people.
One day I had a beautiful bunch of flowers from a greenhouse on my table. This child's grandfather owned a greenhouse, but perhaps she had never been allowed to handle the flowers, which were altogether too precious for children, and wild pinks and violets had not been accessible to her. I had been trying many days in vain to interest her about a bee of which I had a picture. I had told her the bee made honey out of flowers. On that day I drew the tumbler that contained these splendid denizens of the greenhouse to the edge of the table, and said,—
"Did you ever see a little bee making honey?"
"No."
"Did you ever go into the country in summer when the grass is all green?"
"No."—(I knew she had.)
"Did you ever see pretty flowers growing?"
"No."
"I will tell you how little bees make honey—did you ever eat any honey?"
"Yes."
"They have a long hair sticking out of their heads, and they put it in there, where that yellow dust is, and there they find a little sweet drop that tastes like sugar, and they carry it home, and put it into a little hole, and then they come and get more, and carry that home, and they put that yellow dust into a little pocket by the side of their little leg, and by and by they get enough to make a great deal of honey."
"Do the bees make it all themselves?" said she, with a brightening look (the first look of intelligence I had seen), and at the same time making a plunge at the flowers.
"Yes," I said, and taking them out of the glass I put them all into her hand, for I did not even know that she could speak plain. She seized them eagerly, and without taking her eyes from them went on volubly asking a great many questions. I described the hive and how they all lived together, and told her God must have taught them how to make honey, for they could not speak or understand anybody's words, and that if they wandered ever so far away from their hive, they always knew the way back again. She held the flowers all the rest of the morning. When school was done, I told her to put them into the glass, and she should have them again in the afternoon. As soon as she returned, she very unceremoniously took possession of them,—the first act of volition she had ever ventured upon in my presence,—and nestling close to me asked me the same questions she had asked before, over and over again, and repeating them, and hearing my answers again and again, whenever she could secure my attention. As long as the flowers lasted, she seized upon them every day, and after they were withered to all other eyes, they retained their charm in hers. I varied the lesson often, by telling her of the silkworm, of the butterflies, and of many varieties of the bee family, and from that time a communication was established between us. She was never afraid of me any more; liked to sit near me; and have my sympathy in all things, provided I did not express it too openly. It was curious to see such mauvaise honte in such a tiny thing, for she was always reserved, and often relapsed into long silences, and was wholly without enterprise in matters in which the other children were very active, such as drawing, making block-houses, and even playing. But I could catch her eye at any time by a story of any living thing, and she would sometimes surprise me by the intelligence of her questions. For a long time she could not learn to read, or rather would not. Every new attempt at anything was begun in tears and despair, not from weakness, but from pride apparently. Her mother had begun to think it time to attend to her poor hidden soul a little; and after a long summer vacation which she passed in the country, she came back to school with pleasure and with a new face, and though always backward in comparison with children who had had motherly intercourse, and been taught early to use their faculties, she went steadily on. There was no competition to discourage her, and she learned to read immediately when she once wished to. None but mothers can do justice to little children. She sometimes made me think of your remark that every child needs four mothers. But I think the two heaven-appointed parents will do, if they see their duties and fulfil them.
To disarm your opposition about sending such little tots to school, I assure you that many of my mothers tell me that the transition from nursery life to my little community has cured children of fretting and other faults, and that they repeat the occupations of the school-room in their home plays.—Read "Christian Nurture," by Dr. Bushnell.
Dear A.,—When I have a collection of children around me to whom I am to teach things and morals, I always begin by making a simple statement of the footing on which I wish we shall live together. Prevention is better than cure, and much is gained with children, as with grown men, by expecting from them the best and noblest action.
In a school or in a family, I do not like any government but self-government, yet I wish my scholars to know that I often help the growth of the latter by interposing my authority when that of the inner law fails. When I commenced my present school, I had such a conversation with the children on the first day they were assembled, before there had been time for any overt acts upon a lower principle than the one I wished to inculcate.
My school consists of children belonging to one class in a certain sense of the word, that is, to families of the highest general cultivation amongst us, and what is still more important, to families in which there is a general if not well digested belief in the divinity of human nature. Yet there is a great diversity in the influences upon them. Even among people of the most liberal views there still lurks a sediment of the feeling that there is a principle of evil as well as of good in the human soul, and so people expect their children to be naughty on that ground. Now I do not believe in this. I think all evil is imperfection. It is sometimes very bad imperfection, I allow, and I am sometimes tempted to say poetically, though never literally, that it looks like innate depravity. But I do really believe in individual perfectibility, and that "circumstance, that unspiritual god and miscreator," is our great enemy. Circumstance is a very important personage in my calendar, and a perfect Proteus in the shapes he takes, for he covers not only the common surroundings we call circumstances, but organization itself. Perfection must be in the reach of every one by God's original design, and it is only man's marring that hinders its progress, and that temporarily. I hope you have the same instinct about this that I have. I can remember, even when I was not ten years old, hearing some one very severely criticised, who I happened to know had had the worst of moral educations, and I resented the criticism, not because the subject of it was any friend of mine, for it was a person in whom I had no particular interest, but I remember the feeling was a sort of vindication of God's goodness, an assurance that he would not judge that unfortunate person harshly or unforgivingly, but that the misfortunes she had brought upon herself, would teach her what her life at home had failed to teach her. How often I have thought of that poor woman in my life!
To go back to my school. I knew many of the families, some intimately enough to know the very peculiarities of the children, others only enough to be able to anticipate the little characters; others were perfect strangers, whom I was yet to study. Many of them had never been to school before, and I knew enough of the usual method of governing schools to be aware that the associations of those who had been in such scenes, were likely to be those of contention for power, the memory of penalties, and a division of interests between teachers and taught. Even at home some of these children had been governed by fixed rules, instead of the instincts of love, and had never been addressed as if they had any sense of right and wrong; others had been weakly indulged, others mostly if not wholly neglected, and left to the care of servants. One little boy and girl, children of wealthy parents, scarcely saw their father from one month's end to another, for he never rose till they went to school; they dined at two and he at five, and before his dinner was done, to which he never returned till the last moment, these little ones were put to bed. Even the elder children who also went to school, saw him only at dinner, for his evenings were usually spent in company, or at some club. I hope this is an extreme case. I should say that the mother in this family was an amiable woman, but not sufficiently like the "near Providence" to counteract the effects of such fatherly neglect.
There was one child, of truly religious and conscientious parents, whose moral influence was null, except indirectly, because they really believed that the human heart was originally depraved, and waited to be saved by special grace from God, irrespective of the conscience; and this girl, who was the oldest of my scholars, had less principle to work upon than any one, and when I first spoke of the cultivation of the mind as a religious duty, she told me very ingenuously that it was the first time she had ever heard such a thought, although she was considered quite remarkable at home for her religious sensibility, and really prayed aloud sometimes like a little seraph, in imitation of her truly devout parents; but she was very untruthful.
A few of the children had been made to feel that every human being has a conscience, which, when enlightened, will guide him right. In these latter the work of growth had already begun, and to them I looked for my allies in the work I was about to undertake. I knew that the best I could do would only come up to the standard that had ever been held up before them.
I seated them all around me and began by telling them how much I loved to keep school for little children, when they were good. But children were not always good, and I was glad to help them cure their little faults before they grew to be great ones, which was the thing most to be feared in the world. I hoped the good children here would help me make the others better, if there were any naughty ones. We must all be patient with naughty people, just as God was. It took naughty people a long time to grow better again. If each child would think about himself a moment, he would remember that he did not always do perfectly right; but God had given everybody a conscience which was sometimes called "the voice of God within us," so every one could improve who would listen to that voice.
There was a right thing to be done in every place. In school it would be necessary for all to keep good order, else it would be impossible to study, where there were so many persons; it was just as necessary too that all should be polite and kind to each other, else there could be no happiness. One unkind person could make all the rest uncomfortable.
After dwelling upon these points till all seemed to recognize their importance, I told them that some people kept order in schools by rigid rules and penalties; for instance, there would be a rule that every scholar who spoke aloud should have a mark for bad conduct, every one that kept order, a mark for good conduct; another rule would be, that every lesson learned well should have a mark of approbation, every lesson learned ill, a mark of disapprobation. The penalties for transgressing rules were floggings, bad reports written for parents to see, keeping lag after school, &c. &c.; the recompense for good marks, either a good report, or a present,—the handsomest prize being given to the one who learned lessons best.
But I did not wish to keep school thus. I had no respect for people who did right only because they feared punishment or hoped for a reward. Such motives made people selfish. I had known of children who would deny having done something they had really done, and try to make a teacher suppose some one else did it; and also of other children who were sorry when some one else got the present. All these things made people selfish, and tempted them to be false. We should do right because it was right, whether it were to bring us pleasure or pain. It was the duty of all to improve their faculties, because God had given them to us for that purpose, and had put us into a beautiful world, and given us parents and teachers to help us prepare for a long existence of which this life is but a small part,—a kind of school in which we are educated for another world.
I wished to have but one rule in my school, and that was the Golden Rule: "do unto others as you wish others to do unto you."
The duty in school was to study well and to keep order, that others might have a chance to study. It would be necessary for them all to respect my arrangements, and obey my wishes for the sake of this order, but they need not think of prizes or marks, for I should give none.
I wished them to govern themselves. This would make it unnecessary for me to watch them all the time. I should soon learn who was worthy of being trusted.
Did they not like to be trusted?
They responded warmly to this.
Did they not like to do as they pleased?
There was, of course, but one answer to this question.
I told them none could be allowed to do that in school except those who pleased to do right, because it was my duty to prevent them from disturbing each other, or from wasting their own time. But I hoped never to be obliged to punish any one for doing wrong. I should make no rules at present, and if I found all were polite, obliging, and industrious, I should never need to make any; but if there were any in school who did not obey conscience, and think about other people's convenience, I should be obliged to make rules for such. I should put the names of such scholars on a paper, and those children must live by my rules, because they had none of their own.
I considered proper manners in school to be quietness, no unnecessary speaking or moving about in study time, politeness to every one, ready obedience to my wishes and arrangements, and industrious habits of study.
I should now leave each one to make rules for himself in his own mind; they might write them down if they pleased. I should like to see what each one would think it right to do in school. They might imagine themselves keeping school, and tell how they should govern it, and what they thought the duties of scholars.
Some of them did this. Their regulations were very strict, their requisitions very great. Those who were then morally ready to apprehend my meaning, have never swerved since from the law laid down at that time.
But it was not long before several names were upon my list. For these I made specific rules, taking especial pains to say that they were not to apply to such or such individuals. If E—— or L—— or S——, for instance, should speak aloud on a pressing occasion, I should not subject them to the penalty, because I knew their principles were good; that they thought of the convenience of others, were studious, &c., &c. I should excuse a particular instance of apparent disorder in them until I had reason to think they were growing careless or thoughtless.
I made the same remark in regard to an occasional want of success in a lesson. I might perhaps have erred in judgment by giving too long a lesson. I might find upon experiment that the mind was not prepared for a particular thing. I should be inclined to think an industrious and conscientious scholar did not feel well, rather than to suppose any want of faithfulness. People must always be judged according to their characters.
I assure you it was a great punishment to have one's name upon my list. These children saw the joys of liberty, and that they could be secured only by doing right. I never saw any system of rewards or punishments have such a stimulating moral or intellectual effect.
Some of my scholars were too young even to be bound in all cases by this law of the general convenience, and these I spoke of as children whose habits were to be formed gradually, and of whom this comprehension of the convenience of others could not always be expected. I called upon the rest to help me keep them as quiet as would be consistent with their good, and took it for granted that none would trouble me by playing or interfering with them. There must, of course, be exceptions to all rules.
There were many occasions of recurring to this conversation, and of repeating its principles. When any overt acts of wrong-doing occurred, when new scholars came, I called them around me to talk about the principles on which we must live and act. These conversations were always interesting to the children, and kept up the government of the school. When I make rules and penalties for my delinquents, I make the rules as simple as possible, and the penalties as nearly like the natural consequences of wrong-doing as is practicable. I never lose an opportunity of inculcating obedience to the inward law as the only sure guide of conduct, and if one's eye is fixed upon this point, a thousand occasions will offer themselves. How can any one who does not believe this inward law to be the only sure guide of conduct govern children morally? I have a friend, quite a distinguished teacher, who believes in original depravity, and that conscience is not an unerring guide, and therefore that religious principle cannot be made to grow out of a child's consciousness, but that it is an arbitrary gift of God; supervened upon the human mind without reference to conscience. He once asked me if there were any religious exercises in my school; if I ever presented religious motives, and what they were. I told him I presented no other, that I made all duty a matter of conscience, and that I never saw a child who did not understand that motive. He said he had no doubt it was the noblest way of treating the child, and brought out the highest morality, but it was not religious education in his opinion! What an admission! the noblest way, bringing out the highest morality, and yet not religious education. His school is the constant scene of religious revivals, and by his own admission the children are told not to keep company with the children of liberal Christians, or of those who go to the theatre! I do not believe in a premature Christianity, so taught as to be able to give an account of itself in early youth.
I once visited an Infant Charity School, composed entirely of children who were not likely to have any kind of instruction at home, so that whatever was taught in the school would be likely to make quite an impression. After a pleasant little exercise in marching and singing, they were seated for a religious lesson. What do you think of the following as a basis of Christian charity?—average age of the children, eight.
What are the principles of Christianity?
To love one's neighbor and obey God, to believe in the Bible and the salvation by Christ.
Who are the heathen?
They are people who never heard of the Christian religion, and who cannot have salvation by Christ.
Name the heathen nations?
Indians, Hindoos, the people of Asia, Africa, and the islands in the Pacific Ocean.
What is the difference between Christians and heathen?
Christians serve God, walk humbly, and love their neighbors like themselves. Heathens lie, steal, commit murder, and are full of revenge.
Are all the people in Christendom true Christians?
No, only those who believe that God the Father took the form of man and came down to the earth, preached, suffered, and was crucified on the Cross.
What becomes of all who are not true Christians, and of all the heathen?
They go into everlasting fire.
This was a rote-lesson which the children rattled off glibly.
Modifications of such lessons are given in schools where revivals are considered religious proceedings.
Is it not fearful to think that there is a child in Christendom who is not instructed in the great fundamental truth that God has planted in every human soul a principle of conscience by which it can distinguish evil from good, and which, if obeyed, will save it, by some natural process alike applicable to Christian or heathen? The first principle to which a child should be pointed is the principle of law in the human breast. God has so made the human soul that this can be taught to young children if one only knows how to do it. If truly taught, we may safely trust that they can never so judge the much-abused heathen.
One day when I was walking in the mall with my little scholars, at recess, some of the children cried out to the others that they must not run upon the banks, or the constable would fine them. The warning was not received in a good spirit, and I perceived that the constable was not in good repute among children. I well remembered the "tidy-man," as our servant called him, of my childish days, and the apprehensions I used to entertain lest he should hook me up with his long pole into the gallery of the church, if I made any noise during service time, and I saw that these children thought it quite desirable to circumvent the constable, and get as many runs upon the banks as could be snatched during his absence.
This was an opportunity not to be lost, and when we returned to the school-room, I asked why they supposed the constable was ordered to let no one run upon the banks.
They were curious to hear a reason. It had not occurred to them, apparently, that there was any other reason than a desire to trouble children. I told them the history of the Boston Common—how much pains had been taken ever since the days of the Pilgrims (whom they know), to keep it inviolate, in order that all the citizens might enjoy its beauties and its advantages; how much money had been expended upon it; how it had been secured as a perpetual possession to all the citizens, and how every attempt to build even very near it, had been resisted for fear of cutting off the fine prospect; that even the cows that used to pasture there, had been turned away that the children of the city might play there undisturbed. I then told them why by-laws were made to preserve the beauty of the banks, particularly just after they were repaired and newly laid down with turf.
When they acknowledged that all this was reasonable, I told them that laws were made for the good of society, and that every good citizen would respect such laws. Whoever understood what law meant, that is, whoever knew the law within themselves, would respect the laws of a country or a city that were made for the good of all. I thought my lesson was successful.
One who has not been a great deal alone with the unsophisticated natures of children has little idea how early the highest principles of action can be instilled into them. It does not need many words, as I well remember from the few indelibly written upon my mind by a religious mother, who never comforted my timidity, which was excessive, by anything but principles which my soul responded to: "Do right always, and then you need not be afraid of anything;" and, "Your Heavenly Father will take care of you, and will let nothing happen to you but what is for your good," comprised the religious inculcations of my childhood, varied according to circumstances. And when I first fully realized that Christ, who was held up as a model, was "tempted like as we are," my religious education was complete, except what practice could give me. The imagination is as boundless in the images it evokes as imagery itself, and no specific cure for fears of darkness and unmeasured danger can ever meet the difficulty. If a timid child cannot be taught that he is under the eye of a tender and watchful Providence, his childhood may be one long terror, as I have known to be the case. If to this is to be added everlasting woe for wrong-doing, there is no wonder that God must come down from heaven to set things right, and invent a scheme which will virtually annihilate his own original provisions.
Many of my children have been religiously educated in the right way, have been made to think of God as their creator, benefactor, and preserver, and the author of all the beauties of nature that they see, and the powers they possess. When I say "we must return good for evil as Christ did, who was the most perfect being that ever lived," they understand me as speaking of a principle which they can apply directly to themselves; for I often add, "Christ said things when he was very young that showed he understood all about right and wrong, and in those years of his life which we are not told anything about in the Bible, he must always have obeyed his conscience, or he never could have preached to others as he did afterwards,"—for the only vital use of Christ's life to others is to make his spirit of action our own, and to believe that we can do likewise.
I have been led to think much of this in relation to children, by hearing my orthodox friend talk; for he is a very conscientious man, and his admission that to address the child's conscience was the noblest way of treating it, though not the canonical one, let in a world of light upon me touching the unchristian condition of Christendom. How can truth prevail where the noblest appeal is not considered the religious appeal? Truly yours,