ARTICLE XI.

EDUCATION-MR WOOD'S SCHOOL.

Account of the Edinburgh Sessional School and the other

Parochial Institutions for Education, established in that City in the Year 1812, with Strictures on Education in general. By John Wood, Esq. Edinburgh ; John Wardlaw, 1828.

This is a sensible, interesting, and instructive book. Bating some errors in principle, to be noticed in the sequel, the work is by far the best exposition of school-instruction we have read; while the system expounded is in itself the nearest to perfection, under the same qualification, which has yet been practically exhibited.

The author, with becoming candour, disclaims the character of an originator. He has taken the best of both Lancaster and Bell ;-indeed he found that basis established when he first volunteered to superintend the Edinburgh Sessional School. But he has improved upon both systems, and produced results in the working beyond any thing which they ever arrived at. The Sessional daily School was an accession to the Parochial Sunday Schools, and is attended by from 500 to 600 pupils, from six to fifteen

age. Mr Wood is a member of the Scottish bar, and sheriff of a county; and has no other connexion with this school than that produced by enthusiastic amateurship; which seems to have impelled him at first to attendance, by degrees to assistance, and, ultimately, by consent of masters and directors, to such unqualified supremacy, as to identify his name with the school, and render it one of the most noted lions of Edinburgh.

Reading, writing, and arithmetic, are the elementary branches of education taught in the Sessional School. Geo

years of

graphy is voluntary. The system is monitorial, the whole directed by one master, and superintended by Mr Wood. The arrangements are excellent ; and the whole presents a model of order, punctuality, economy of time, and division of labour, which renders the management of 600 children as easy as that of a battalion of well-drilled soldiers of the same number. But the boast of this school is the perfection to which the new system is carried of rendering reading the mere vehicle of useful knowledge. This is called the EXPLANATORY method of school-instruction. Reading is gained by the bye. That operation exercises chiefly one faculty, namely, language, or verbal memory; under an overload of which we have all groaned, in our day, during the dull and tiresome hours of the old school. But the Pbren

. ologist can analyze the explanatory system into its elements, and show that its attractions arise from the delighted activity, not only of the knowing, but also of the reflecting faculties and moral feelings. An able explanator conveys ideas of individual existences and events; also of form and size, weights, colours, sounds, places, arrangements, and numbers, with all the relations which subsist among these qualities. He goes farther, and points out the more extended relations of comparison, and even those of necessary consequence. The moral sentiments also of the pupils may be kept in the most beneficial exercise. Phrenology tells us, that the activity of every faculty is attended with pleasure ; how great, then, may not be rendered that pleasure which is the fruit of the simultaneous activity of the whole! Any one who sees Mr Wood and his eager and delighted pupils engaged in a spirited explanatory exercise will cease to wonder at the progress made under his tuition. Task is unknown, except as a word in the course of explanatory definition ; and we hope yet to hear it at Mr Wood's and all other schools defined as “ the “ forced exercise of one or of a few faculties, while the rest

are kept under an unnatural restraint.” Difficulties disappear,--all is the zealous bustle of pleasurable exercise.

Mr Wood's own account of the explanatory system is this: "Before entering upon the consideration of the reading depart"ment," says he, "it may be proper to premise some general obser"vations on that method of EXPLANATION which has been so highly "approved of in the Sessional School. Its object is threefold; first, "To render more easy and pleasing the acquisition of the mechanical "art of reading; secondly, To turn to advantage the particular in"struction contained in every individual passage which is read; and, "above all, thirdly, To give the pupil, by means of a minute analysis " of each passage, a general command of his own language. It is of great importance to the proper understanding of the method, that "all these objects should be kept distinctly in view. With regard to "the first, no one, who has not witnessed the scheme in operation, can well imagine the animation and energy which it inspires. "It is the constant remark of almost every stranger who visits the "Sessional School, that its pupils have not at all the ordinary appearance of schoolboys doomed to an unwilling task, but rather "the happy faces of children at their sports. This distinction is chiefly to be attributed to that part of the system of which we "are here treating; by which, in place of harassing the pupil with a mere mechanical routine of sounds and technicalities, his at"tention is excited, his curiosity is gratified, and his fancy is "amused."*

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Our author, although a great improver of it, does not pretend to be the first introducer of the explanatory system; and he rejoices, as we do, to see it practised, not only in such schools as the Circus Place and the Davy Street, but coming into very general adoption in private seminaries, of course with very different degrees of success, according to the judgment, skill, and knowledge of the teachers. With great propriety he applauds the introduction of explanatory English reading into the High-School and Academy of Edinburgh as accessory (according to yet prevailing opinion) to the more important study of the dead languages. We hail it as the dawning of a wiser day, when that remnant of monachism, the engrossing culture of the dead languages, will be very secondary to a comprehensive and well-arranged system of explanatory English reading.

The author proceeds to detail the application of the ex

We have marked the conclusion in italics for subsequent reference.

planatory method to the various grades of pupils, beginning with the youngest.

“ In explaining,” says he, “ at this stage, it is a special instruction to the monitors never to exact any “ regular definition, but to be satisfied with any explanation given by “ the child himself which indicates his knowledge of the meaning, “ though it be conveyed in his own ordinary or homely language,

or by mere signs. The great object, at this stage, is to enliven « what would otherwise have been intolerably dull,—to teach the « child that every word he reads has a meaning, and to form him “ to early habits of attention.” Nothing can be better than this, so far as it goes. Useful knowledge is extended as the pupil advances, and information in nature and art, in so far as it can be comprehended, is communicated. We cannot follow Mr Wood through several chapters of these interesting de tails, but can safely say, that the reader (especially the phrenological reader) will be highly pleased with them. The system involves a very satisfactory exercise of all the faculties.

This system, like every thing new that tends to benefit the species, has met with the opposition and been subjected to the ridicule of uninquiring, prejudging self-complacency, or disguised self-interest. “ When, therefore,” says the author,

we consider the strong tendency which has existed for years past to “ turn our proceedings into ridicule, and to expose to the

public every slip (often so called, we would add, from the sheer ignorance or “ unfairness of the exposer,) which every individual pupil has hap“ pened to make, the directors may surely, without any extravagant “ boast, be entitled to congratulate themselves on a result which they would certainly not have dared to anticipate.”

We have already said, that the explanatory system of the Sessional School appears to us to stand a phrenological test, so far as it goes. This the reader must have interpreted into an opinion, that there is some shortcoming. There is a shortcoming, and it is very material. It is fortunately, however, of easy remedy, and one or two schools in Edinburgh have already taken the lead of Mr Wood in applying it. His system makes no provision for supplying the most important of the observant faculties with its proper food, without which all knowledge of the material world must be shadowy and imperfect. This faculty of Individuality, so essential to

education, that Dr Gall named it the faculty of Educability, is the power whereby we cognize and remember individual material existences, and without which we could have no knowledge of the external world. Its organ, situated immediately over the nose, is prominent in children ; and the faculty is manifested by them in the ceaseless avidity with which they examine every thing which comes in their way. Now every object, simple and complex, in nature, furnishes an idea to this faculty, and there can be no such idea without the object being presented through the senses to the organ. The faculties of Form, Size, Weight, and Colour, will do their part in affording perception of the qualities of the object; but the comprehension of them all in the individual object is the important funetion of the faculty alluded to. The author's system, unfortunately, starves this faculty; no material objects, not even their simulacra in drawings or models, are presented to Mr Wood's pupils. Material objects are only described and talked about, but are not seen, heard, weighed, touched, or smelled. This is one of the results of neglecting Phrenology; the existence of particular faculties is not dreamt of, and of course no means are used for their exercise. This defect is particularly conspicuous, when the author appeals to nature as the foundation of his method. “ The more the system has been matured, and the s better it has been understood, approbation of it has been the more. “ increased. Its boast is not that it is founded upon any newly-dis" covered principle, but that it arises from the first and most obvious “ dictates of nature. What judicious mother, in teaching her child. “ to read, would not be at pains to show him as early as possible the, “ benefit of reading ? Would she not, in picking out for him the “ smallest words, when she came to the word ox, for example, tell

him, not by any regular definition, but in the simplest language, “ that it meant the animal which he had so often seen grazing in “ the meadows ? Would she not naturally do the same with regard

to every tree or plant that happened to be mentioned ? and as his" “ capacities unfolded, would she not gradually proceed to commu“ nicate to him such higher information as his lessons might sug" gest? The mere artificial methods, which the art of teaching “ subsequently introduced, however useful some of them undoubtedly

are, have had the unhappy effect of banishing, in a great degree,