FullReads

[Footnote 9:
On this point there is however an exception made, which amuses us not a little. ‘In a few instances,’ says the Experimentalist, ‘it has been found or supposed necessary to resent insolence by a blow: but this may be rather called an assertion of private right, than an official punishment. In these cases a single blow has almost always been found sufficient, even the rarity of the infliction rendering severity unnecessary.’ He insists therefore that this punishment (which, we cannot but think, might have been commuted for a long imprisonment) shall not be called a punishment, nor entered on the public records as such: in which case however it becomes a private ‘turn-up,’ as the boxers call it, between the boy and his tutor. ]

[Footnote 10:
The details of the system in regard to the penal and premial counters may be found from pp. 23 to 29. We have no room to extract them: one remark only we must make–that we do not see how it is possible to ascribe any peculiar and incommunicable privileges to the premial as opposed to the penal counters, when it appears that they may be exchanged for each other ‘at an established rate.’ ]

* * * * *

We have thus gone through a pretty full analysis, and a very accurate one, of the new system as contained in the three first chapters. Of the five miscellaneous chapters, the seventh or last but one (on voluntary labour), has been interwoven with our analysis; and the eighth, which contains a comparison of public and private education, we do not purpose to notice; the question is very sensibly discussed; but it is useless to discuss any question like this, which is a difficult problem only because it is an unlimited problem. Let the parent satisfy himself about the object he has in view for his child, and let him consider the particular means which he has at his disposal for securing a good private education, and he may then determine it for himself. As far as the attainment of knowledge is concerned,–it is always possible to secure a good public education, and not always possible to secure a good private one. Where either is possible indifferently, the comparison will proceed upon more equal grounds: and inquiry may then be made about the child’s destination in future life: for many destinations a public education being much more eligible than for others. Under a perfect indetermination of everything relating to the child–the question is as indeterminable as–whether it is better to go to the Bank through Holborn or through the Strand: the particular case being given, it may then be possible to answer the question; previously it is impossible.—-Three chapters therefore remain, viz.–Chap. IV. on Languages; Chap. V. on Elocution; and Chap. VI. on Penmanship.

Chap. IV. On the best method of acquiring Languages.–The Experimentalist had occasion to observe ‘that, in the Welsh towns which are frequented by the English, even the children speak both languages with fluency:’ this fact, contrasted with the labour and pain entailed upon the boy who is learning Latin (to say nothing of the eventual disgust to literature which is too often the remote consequence), and the drudgery entailed upon the master who teaches Latin,–and fortified by the consideration, that in the former instance the child learns to speak a new language, but in the latter only to read it,–first drew his attention to the natural mode of learning languages, i. e. learning them from daily use. This mode never fails with living languages: but how is it to be applied to dead languages? The Experimentalist retorts by asking what is essential to this mode? Partly the necessity which the pupil is laid under of using the language daily for the common intercourse of life, and partly his hearing it spoken by those who thoroughly understand it. ‘Stimulus to exertion then, and good models, are the great advantages of this mode of instruction:’ and these, he thinks, are secured even for a dead language by his system: the first by the motives to exertion which have already been unfolded; and the second by the acting of Latin dramas (which had been previously noticed in his Exposition of the system). But a third imitation of the natural method he places in the use of translations, ‘which present the student with a dictionary both of words and phrases arranged in the order in which he wants them,’ and in an abstinence from all use of the grammar, until the learner himself shall come to feel the want of it; i. e. using it with reference to an experience already accumulated, and not as an anticipation of an experience yet to come. The ordinary objection to the use of translations–that they produce indolent habits, he answers thus: ‘We teach by the process of construing; and therefore, even with the translation before him, the scholar will have a task to perform in matching the English, word by word, with the language which he is learning.’ For this natural method of learning languages he alleges the authority of Locke, of Ascham, and of Pestalozzi. The best method, with those who have advanced to some degree of proficiency, he considers that of double translations–i. e. a translation first of all into the mother tongue of the learner, and a re-translation of this translation back into the language of the original. These, with the help of extemporaneous construing, i. e. construing any passage at random with the assistance of a master who supplies the meaning of the unknown words as they arise (a method practised, it seems, by Le Febvre the father of Madame Dacier, by others before his time, and by Condillac since)–compose the chief machinery which he employs for the communication of dead languages.