XII. SUBJECTS AND METHODS OF EARLY EDUCATION.*

BY JAMES CURRIE, A. M.

Principal of the Church of Scotland Training College, Edinburgh.

I. INTRODUCTION.-GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE INSTRUCTION.

1. PHYSICAL exercise for the healthy growth and relaxation of the body; exercises of observation, conception, and imagination, for the mind; and moral and religious lessons for the cultivation of the heart, are the principal engagements of infancy, and, therefore, of the infant school. Under physical exercise we include the right regulation of the physical circumstances in which the child receives his instruction, which, though he is outwardly passive under them, very greatly influence the tone of his mind and feelings; physical exercises, strictly so called, requiring positive bodily exertion, such as he is subjected to in the school-room; the recreation of the play-ground, where, in full apparent freedom, he is yet under superintendence; and, lastly, singing, which in one aspect of it is one of the keenest of all the physical incitements to the general work of the school. Exercises of observation and conception are given by means of things or objects such as the eye can see, the hand handle, and the ear hear; their appearance to the eye in color, form, and size; to the touch in weight, hardness, and other qualities; to the ear in sound. As a distinct exercise of observation by this last sense, is to be mentioned the combination of musical sounds by singing. Exercises of imagination are found in the elementary geographical lesson, in which the pupil is required to group natural things, such as he has already observed, variously as to place; and in reading or relating stories of real or imaginary life. Moral and religious instruction comprises doctrines or points for belief in morality and religion; feelings to be cherished, and actions to be practiced. This kind of instruction may for the most part be best given in the form of incidental reflections throughout the daily work, and exercises of devotion.

2. The instruction of the infant school is carried on through the medium of familiar conversation between the teacher and his pupils.

* From "Principles and Practice of Early and Infant School Education." Edinburgh Thomas Constable & Co.

They can not read when they begin their course; yet they have powers which are eager for activity. The most advanced of them, though they may be able to read very easy narrative, have not that facility that enables them to extract information from what they read; and, even if by the teacher's help they can turn this to account, they ought to know, and they are able to know, much more than this source can supply them with. It is most unnatural to make their reading-power the measure of their intellectual activity. It is by conversation upon actual objects and feelings that the parent first calls forth the glimgering intelligence of the child; so it is by conversation, or, to call it by its technical name, oral instruction, that the teacher is to continue the process which the parent has begun. By this method alone is it possible to give the child a stimulus to attention; for it interposes nothing between the child and the living voice of his instructor to prevent the full play of that mutual sympathy which is the very breath of the school life. By this method alone is it possible to give an impulse to his observation, imagination, curiosity; for it submits interesting things to his inspection, while it humors his volatility by turning aside to notice any thing that attracts his own notice by the way. And by this method alone is it possible to engage the child in full activity without restraining his freedom; the teacher presents to him things of which he already knows something, and, speaking to him as a friend and companion rather than as a preceptor, easily draws from him the knowledge he is so willing to show.

3. There is another aspect of this oral instruction not less important; it is our great means for giving the child the use of his mothertongue. When the time comes for the parent to initiate the child in this, she does not make "set" lessons on language; she speaks to him of things and feelings in which he will be interested, knowing that in learning of these he is learning to speak.* The teacher must. proceed in the same way. Language is nothing apart from ideas; words must be taught to the infant in connection with things. This aspect of oral instruction is frequently forgotten in the infant school; otherwise, it would not be thrust into the subordinate place it is often found to occupy. In oral instruction, whatever subjects it deals with, the teacher should remember that he is training the child to language. He must engage each one, therefore, in conversation; he must vary the subjects of conversation, as each subject has a vocabulary particular to itself; he must watch attentively to secure a gradual increase of power over words, content at first, perhaps, with their utterance of single words, but looking, by and by, for phrases, and then easy sen

• See Girard, chap. i.

tences. Nor must he be wearied with repetitions, as the children are just beginning their exercises in language, and require long and varied practice to learn its endless variety of forms. Whilst oral instruction is the rule in the infant school, it is pre-eminently the want of the youngest infants. The teacher may observe in the elder pupils some diminution of interest in the oral lessons; this is one of the symptoms that the time has come for advancing them from the infant school. They have now got a practical command over speech which serves them for all ordinary purposes; and they not only require, but feel a desire for, the new field of exercise which book-instruction gives. But the younger children have no such command of language; and what they want most is such a knowledge of the names of common things and actions as shall enable them to characterize these when they see them, and to hold intercourse with their fellows regarding them. Hence their acquisition of language goes on with great rapidity. The younger the children, therefore, the more should they be occupied by oral instruction.

4. What are we to say of book-learning, which in point of fact occupies a place in all infant schools? The power to read with intelligence is the greatest benefit which school-education bestows upon us; for this enables us to educate ourselves in after-life. Not unnaturally, therefore, the reading-lesson occupies the principal place in the common school. It does not follow from this, however, that it should hold, as it is commonly made to hold, the principal place in the infant school; for the proper study of it requires certain powers which the child in the first period of his education does not possess. It is selfevident that reading is an effort for the child, whilst conversation is not. Even to read mechanically is so. It is impossible for him to fix his eye upon a page, and to thread his way from word to word, and from line to line, in their close succession, without feeling a strain upon the nerves of sight, and through them upon the brain, which has only to be prolonged to do him serious injury. To read with intelligence is a double or complex effort. It includes all the effort necessary for mechanical reading, and in addition the effort which is necessary to keep the mind moving at the same rate as the eye. The mechanical motion tends from the first to outstrip the mental; and the effort to keep them together is the most painful to which the infant can be subjected. The brain is under a twofold strain; that from without through the nerves of sight, and that from within proceeding from the reflex action of the mind upon it. Well has it been said that "it is not so much the actual process of learning to read as the consequences of being able to read during early years

that are to be guarded against." From physical considerations, then -which dictate the fundamental law in infant education-we conclude that is imprudent to have the child's attention fixed for any considerable portion of a day on a book.*

5. Systematic reading from books should be delayed till the child becomes physically capable of a little conscious effort, which it does about four and a half or five years of age; that is to say, it may be carried on during the last year and a half or two years of his infantschool attendance. There would be no harm in delaying it even till the very end of this period; his progress would be all the more rapid when he did begin. But on this point the teacher may defer to the desires of parents, provided he do not urge forward the child too much with the reading-task, by keeping him at his book over an immoderate proportion of his daily time. During the first half of his infant-school attendance, the child should be prepared for learning to read rather than engaged in reading. His oral instruction will put him in possession of a large number of words with their applications; without which it is altogether a solecism to engage him with written language. It can also make him acquainted with the forms and sounds of all the most familiar words of the language, and with the elements of words, in connection with the things which it speaks to him about, not only without tasking him, but by way of amuse

ment.

With these limitations we may consent to reckon the readinglesson as one of the occupations of the infant school.

6. The following table presents at one view the different parts of the school-work :

PHYSICAL,

1. Healthy condition of the school-room.

2. Physical exercises in school.

3. Recreation in play-ground.
4. Singing.

* The limits to the use of books in infancy are nowhere better defined than in the work on Home Education," above referred to, chap. iv, which should be carefully read by the stu Jent. "Not a syllable of book learning," says the author, "need have been acquired, and scarcely a task learned, and yet the mind of a child in its fifth year, may be not merely in a state of the happiest moral activity, but may be intellectually alive, and actually possessed too of various information concerning the visible universe; and he may have made acquaintance with whatever presents itself under a pleasurable aspect, (and assuredly nothing but what is agreeable should be presented to the infant mind.") Speaking of the labor of the child in reading with intelligence, he says, "There is a particular jar (between the motion of the eye and that of the mind,] a want of synchronous movement, and a sense of distress, and a strain which quickly exhaust the power of attention; or if persisted in, impair the brain. . It is certain that the ruddy vigor of high health will almost always be found in inverse proportion to the hours in the day, during which a child has a book before his eyes."

† On the general character of early instruction, Marcel has an excellent chapter in his work on "Language." See book iy, chap. i.

7. It is the first and constant duty of the infant-school teacher to attend to the regulation of physical influences. He has to deal with a large number of children, of tender age, of different temperaments and degrees of health, keenly susceptible of external influence on their bodily frames, and liable to suffer from even slight irregularities. A disregard of the plainest laws of health in the school-room must, in the end, affect the health of the children; in the meantime it prevents them deriving any benefit from the work in which they are engaged. For his own sake, too, the teacher must be mindful of these laws. If he is depressed in spirits, not to say enfeebled in health, the whole school suffers. One day's work in a close room may not affect him much; but no constitution can resist the effect of a continuance of this over several years. It is in the fact that such influences operate almost imperceptibly that his danger lies. Let the sanitary state of his school-room, then, be his first thought when he enters it in the morning; and let his thoughts recur to this at the end of every lesson.

8. First in order of importance is ventilation. The school must have a steady supply of fresh air throughout the day. The symptoms which indicate neglect of this are very plain. Perhaps the teacher may often be conscious of a dimness of eyesight, a giddiness of head, a general languor and drowsiness which nothing can shake off and for which he can not well account; it is probable they are largely owing to his working in impure air. Many continue even to bear headaches, sickness, or sore throat, without ever suspecting that these are owing to the same cause. If such be the effect on the teacher, is it to be supposed that the children will escape? Their countenances and the tones of their voice are some index to the state of the school. And if the teacher will scrutinize these, as he should accustom himself to do, he will be kept from error in this matter. It is not enough that the air be fresh in the morning; or that the windows be opened and closed fitfully throughout the day, just as acci