education among the most civilised nations, in the study of the faculties as regards the training of children, in an investigation, explanation, and comparison of the best methods of tuition, and in a minute inquiry into the duties and qualifications of the teacher. The educator must have a thorough knowledge of the human faculties and propensities; for they are the materials on which he has to operate. He must be able to distinguish the shades of difference which exist in the various dispositions and capacities of children; otherwise he could not discriminate where the blame should end and where the praise should commence; nor can he assign suitable tasks to their different degrees of intellect. He must exercise and bring to maturity their intellectual powers; he must foster and cherish in their hearts noble and generous sentiments; he must devise and prosecute the best modes of sowing and cultivating the seeds of knowledge. With a view to study more completely the natural laws which govern the physical, moral, and mental constitution of man, the educator ought not perhaps to neglect phrenology. Although all the principles of this science are not generally admitted, an investigation of the doctrines of its most eminent votaries could not fail to produce useful results: already it has drawn forth many interesting facts respecting the functions of the brain and the nervous system. Alchymy, absurd as it was, has led to very important discoveries; it was the parent of chemistry. How widely soever the phrenological theory may differ from received notions, when we consider the number of its advocates, and the eminence of some of them, we cannot refrain from thinking that there must be in it something worthy the attention of those who sincerely and earnestly wish to study the faculties and propensities of childhood. SECT. III.-IMPORTANCE OF THE TEACHER'S OFFICE. The teacher who is in possession of the qualifications and professional knowledge which we have but feebly sketched, has in his power to accomplish extensive good. His influence on society is incalculable; he is the best promoter of man's prosperity in life, the true apostle of civilisation. His office is, in reality, the most important; for, as Plato remarks, and Barthélémy after him, “On the education of youth depends the fate of empires.' "I will," observes Goldsmith, "be bold enough to say that schoolmasters in a state are more necessary than clergymen, as children stand in more need of instruction than parents."+ The learned professions derive their respectability and consideration from the knowledge which their duties are supposed to require, from the responsibility which they assume, and the liberality with which it is thought they would sacrifice every expectation of profit for the advantage of those who confide their dearest interests to them. Does the profession of the educator yield, in this respect, to any other? Does it assume less responsibility? Does it exhibit less self-denial, less zeal for public good? Surely not. The physician operates on matter, the teacher on mind; the influence of the physician is confined to the individuals who are under his care; whereas the influence of the teacher extends, through the virtues or vices, through the knowledge or ignorance of his pupils, to the whole community and to succeeding generations. Can there be a doubt which of the two professions is of greater importance to society? If, for the most part, we yield the direction of our conscience to the care of the clergyman, if we trust our fortune and our good name to the abilities of the lawyer, to the educator we implicitly abandon what is equally dear to us-the direction of the minds and of the hearts of our children,-their success in life, their happiness in this world, and, perhaps, their eternal condition in that which is to come. High as is the position of the legislator, as the guardian of public liberty and happiness, that of the instructor is still higher; for laws, to be efficacious, must already exist in the manners and habits of a nation; and these, if not the creation of the instructor, are much under his influence, and depend no less on his example than on his tuition. He who thoroughly fulfils his task, is more than a parent. It is the teacher who makes the man, the citizen, the living soul. There is no profession more responsible and more elevated than that which, as Dr. Thomas Brown beautifully expresses it, "has the charge of training the ignorance and imbecility of infancy into all the virtue, and power, and wisdom of maturer manhood, of forming, of a creature the frailest and feeblest, perhaps, which heaven has made, the intelligent and fearless * Voyages du Jeune Anacharsis. The Bee. Education. sovereign of the whole animated creation, the interpreter, and adorer, and almost the representative of the Divinity."* Lord Brougham justly appreciated the high position which the educator ought to occupy in modern society, when he said, "The schoolmaster, and not the cannon, will henceforth be the arbiter of the world. His progress leads to a far more brilliant triumph, and to laurels more imperishable than the destroyer of his species, the scourge of the world, ever won.” † * * * SECT. IV.-SOCIAL POSITION OF THE TEACHER. We have seen what is the position in society to which the educator is entitled; let us now examine how he stands in this country. Many consider themselves his superiors, who not only are greatly his inferiors in mental and moral acquirements, but whose pursuits in life are much beneath the occupation in which he is engaged. He shares, in fact, in the neglect (alluded to in a preceding Book) to which an undue and exclusive regard for birth, titles, and money, leads the English to consign all the votaries of science and literature. But, on this subject, we prefer to state the opinions of English writers, lest our own should be taxed with partiality as coming from a foreigner. Sir David Brewster, after having contrasted the disgraceful indifference entertained here for the professors of science, with the high estimation in which they are held on the continent, and the honours conferred on them by all enlightened governments, goes on to say, "No statute, indeed, disqualifies them from holding the titles which reward the services of other men; but custom, as powerful as statute, has torn all such hopes from their grasp; and, while the mere possessor of animal courage, one of the most common qualities of the species, has been loaded with every variety of honours, the professor of the highest endowments of the mind,-he whom the Almighty has chosen to make known the laws and mysteries of his works, he who has devoted his life, and sacrificed his health and the interests of his family, in the most profound and ennobling pursuits, is allowed to live in poverty and obscurity, and to sink into the grave without one mark of the affection and gratitude of his country. And why does England thus persecute the votaries of her science? Why does she depress them to the level of her hewers of wood and her drawers of water? It is because science flatters no courtier, mingles in no political strife, and brings up no reserve to the minister, to swell his triumph or break his fall. She is persecuted, because she is virtuous; dishonoured, because she is weak."* "Mere teaching, like mere literature," says Dr. Arnold, "places a man in rather an equivocal position: he holds no undoubted station in society by these alone; for neither education nor literature have ever enjoyed that consideration and general respect in England, which they enjoy in France and in Germany."+ Far from meeting with liberal encouragement, the teacher is denied what he is entitled to, courtesy as a gentleman, esteem as a man of cultivated mind, and gratitude as a benefactor. Such a state of things is worthy of the feudal times, when it was the interest of political rulers to keep the people in darkness; for to discourage the teacher is to encourage ignorance. If, as has been justly remarked, his social position be a perfect index of the real mind of society on the subject of education, we must only deplore the spirit of the present age. "Nothing can more clearly indicate a low state of public morals than the vulgar disrespect and parsimonious remuneration with which the teacher is sometimes requited."‡ The depreciation of the teacher's useful services is particularly seen in the case of resident tutors and governesses. "The illtreatment to which," says a modern writer, "this class of persons is too frequently exposed in private families, has lowered their attainments and moral bearing; and the lowered character and pretensions of instructors, by an inevitable reaction, has diminished the respect in which they are held by parents, subjecting them to a still more galling ill-treatment. This vice in the social arrangements, which, by the bye, is, in a great degree, peculiar to the British isles, could not exist, if parents possessed a requisite knowledge of the true value of education, and of the qualities it demands in the instructor.” "For the higher class of male instructors, it is true, the prestige of a university education, and a prevailing reverence for the clerical character, do something towards raising them above the * Decline of Science in England. Quart. Rev., Oct., 1830. condition of menials, — forcing from the most ignorant and vulgar-minded some show of decent respect; but, even in their case, the avarice, which seeks to remunerate their noble services by the lowest possible salary, gives a true measure of the position they hold in the estimation of their employers. Much worse does it fare with the teachers of minor academies, and tutors brought into houses of an inferior caste; but, of all the degraded, dispiriting positions in which intellectual and virtuous poverty can be thrust, that of the governess is commonly the most revolting and the most digraceful to the society by whose opinions it is determined." In the great majority of cases, when parents place their children in the hands of a teacher, they absurdly wish him to do every thing for them; and not only do they neglect giving him assistance, but they frequently take every pains to render the fulfilment of his task impossible. By the little regard or sympathy which they evince for him, they instil into the hearts of young people feelings of antipathy against him, which counteract the effect of his best exertions: few parents ever visit him as a friend, or invite him to their houses; some make their children the bearers of disagreeable messages to him, or listen with complacency to their distorted and malicious reports of him, or his school; while others most incautiously express, within their hearing, opinions unfavourable to him, and calculated to lower him in their estimation. They require of him the greatest service which a man can expect from another; and yet, in their unconsciousness of the importance of that service, they commonly treat him with the most barefaced ingratitude, and are often even shamefully remiss in fulfilling their pecuniary engagements towards him, taking as little notice of his demand for fees so painfully earned-nay, a debt so sacred-as they would of a tailor's bill. Although unacquainted with the details of teaching, or the relative worth of the different branches of knowledge, many parents, in the absence of a regular recognised system of instruction, presume to dictate to experienced teachers the course which they ought to pursue; they sometimes value most what is least important, and are regardless of their children's improvement in really useful acquirements; not a few imagining that education consists solely in the learning of lessons, and, anxious to obtain immediate and ostensible value for their money, judge of the *Journal of Education, No. 17. |