this, too, mismanaged in a
similar manner? Grant that the phenomena of intelligence conform to
laws; grant that the evolution of intelligence in a child also conforms
to laws; and it follows inevitably that education cannot be rightly
guided without a knowledge of these laws. To suppose that you can
properly regulate this process of forming and accumulating ideas,
without understanding the nature of the process, is absurd. How widely,
then, must teaching as it is differ from teaching as it should be; when
hardly any parents, and but few tutors, know anything about psychology.
As might be expected, the established system is grievously at fault,
alike in matter and in manner. While the right class of facts is
withheld, the wrong class is forcibly administered in the wrong way and
in the wrong order. Under that common limited idea of education which
confines it to knowledge gained from books, parents thrust primers into
the hands of their little ones years too soon, to their great injury.
Not recognising the truth that the function of books is
supplementary--that they form an indirect means to knowledge when direct
means fail--a means of seeing through other men what you cannot see for
yourself; teachers are eager to give second-hand facts in place of
first-hand facts. Not perceiving the enormous value of that spontaneous
education which goes on in early years--not perceiving that a child's
restless observation, instead of being ignored or checked, should be
diligently ministered to, and made as accurate and complete as possible;
they insist on occupying its eyes and thoughts with things that are, for
the time being, incomprehensible and repugnant. Possessed by a
superstition which worships the symbols of knowledge instead of the
knowledge itself, they do not see that only when his acquaintance with
the objects and processes of the household, the streets, and the fields,
is becoming tolerably exhaustive--only then should a child be introduced
to the new sources of information which books supply: and this, not only
because immediate cognition is of far greater value than mediate
cognition; but also, because the words contained in books can be rightly
interpreted into ideas, only in proportion to the antecedent experience
of things. Observe next, that this formal instruction, far too soon
commenced, is carried on with but little reference to the laws of mental
development. Intellectual progress is of necessity from the concre