REMARKS ON THE PREVAILING METHODS OF EDUCATION, AND THEIR INFLUENCE UPON HEALTH AND HAPPINESS. ""Tis granted, and no plainer truth appears, COWPER. MANY reflecting persons, who have impartially considered the matter, are fully aware of the deficiencies and imperfections of the modes of education most prevalent at the present day; but there are none who have such frequent opportunities of witnessing the truly lamentable consequences produced by them as those who are engaged in the practice of medicine; and although these consequences have been referred to their true causes in various medical works, yet little has been done towards calling the attention of the non-medical public to the unhappiness, disordered states of health, and fatal diseases, which so frequently originate from the improper management of early life and adolescence, but which are usually ascribed to accidental or other circumstances beyond control. I therefore avail myself of the present opportunity to offer some remarks upon education; but as there exists much diversity of opinion upon the subject, I have preferred citing the observations of some authorities than too freely obtruding my own, (which are chiefly restricted to considering the matter in a hygienic point of view,) and have consequently quoted pretty largely from publications in which education is treated of in its general and medical bearings, considering that these quotations would have much greater weight than the opinions of an individual, (especially of so humble a one as myself,) and that from the aggregate, each reader would be better able to form a correct judgment, as well as to perceive more clearly the source whence arise some of the evils which afflict the community, and the most likely means of diminishing the frequency of their occurrence. As the happiness or unhappiness of individuals depends in great measure upon the mode of conducting their education, this all-important subject should be viewed in a more comprehensive manner than is generally the case, and not merely with reference to what is usually taught by tutors and governesses, in schools and colleges, but also especially as regards the formation of disposition, the acquisition and maintaining of right principles, and habits of thought and action, as well as of information relating to ordinary matters and to the phenomena which fall under the daily cognizance of the senses, (which are frequently but little understood,) which is most easily acquired in early life. These points, which it is the province of mothers (or if * * "A man's nature runs either to herbs or weeds, therefore let him seasonably water the one and destroy the other."-Bacon's Essays. they should be disqualified by circumstances, of proper persons selected by them) to superintend, have been strongly urged by Lord Brougham, who says, "The child is, at three and four, and even at two and under, perfectly capable of receiving that sort of knowledge which forms the basis of all education. It is not enough to say, that a child can learn a great deal before the age of six years; the truth is, that he can learn, and does learn, a great deal more before that age than all he ever learns or can learn in his after-life. His attention is more easily roused in a new world; it is more vivid in a fresh existence; it is excited with less effort, and it engraves ideas deeper in the mind. His memory is more retentive in the proportion in which his attention is more vigorous; bad habits are not formed, nor is his judgment warped by unfair bias; good habits may easily be acquired, and the pain of learning be almost destroyed; a state of listless indifference has not began to poison all joy, nor has indolence paralysed his powers, nor bad passions quenched or perverted useful desires. He is all activity, inquiry, energy, exertion, motion; he is eminently a curious and learning animal, and this is the common nature of all children—not merely of clever and lively ones, but of all who are endowed with ordinary intelligence, and who in a few years become by neglect the stupid boys and dull men we see.” "Perverse and obstinate habits are formed before the age of seven, and the mind that might have been moulded like wet clay in a plastic hand becomes sullen, intractable, obdurate, after that age. To this inextinguishable passion for all learning succeeds a dislike to instruction amounting almost to disease. Gentle feelings, a kind and compassionate nature, an ingenuous open temper, unsuspecting, and wanting no guard, are succeeded by violence, and recklessness, and base fear, and concealment, and even falsehood, till he is forced to school, not only ignorant of what is good, but also much learned in what is bad. These are the effects of the old system, and the neglected tuition of infants." * The aim of education ought, then, to be the confirmation of good, and the alteration for the better of bad dispositions, as well as the cultivation of the intellectual faculties consistently with that of the bodily powers, and with reference to the position of individuals in the social scale; for it will ever be found that the greatest amount of durable happiness of intelligent beings will depend more upon the proper exercise of the moral and mental faculties than upon purely material enjoyments, which are generally incapable of affording more than a transient satisfaction, as is abundantly evident from the ills to which a not inconsiderable proportion of persons in civilised states is liable, though in possession of all that can contribute to their temporal well-being, and which have, for the most part, their origin in the inactivity, perversion, and constraint of these faculties, which so generally obtain in an artificial state of society; whereas, many individuals, on the other hand, can find contentment and happiness by the exercise of them, even though they may be subjected to many privations. The influence of causes of a moral or mental nature, in predisposing to, and in the production of, many distressing diseases, (though more than ever exerted at the present time,) has not received from medical practitioners the degree of attention which its importance requires; hence a reason of the intractability of several of them under a purely medicinal treatment; and this influence will be the more felt in proportion as certain faculties are unduly exercised, and as others, which are more conducive to the * Speeches. |