Imatges de pàgina
PDF
EPUB

FEMALE EDUCATION IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

The second wife of Sir Nicholas and mother of Francis Bacon was Anne, one of the daughters of Sir Anthony Cooke, a man of distinguished learning who had been tutor to Edward the Sixth. Sir Anthony had paid considerable attention to the education of his daughters, and lived to see them all splendidly and happily married. Their classical acquirements made them conspicuous even among the women of fashion of that age. Katherine, who became Lady Killigrew, wrote Latin Hexameters and Pentameters which would appear with credit in the Musa Etonenses. Mildred, the wife of Lord Burleigh, was described by Roger Ascham as the best Greek scholar among the young women of Eng land, Lady Jane Grey always excepted. Anne, the mother of Francis Bacon, was dintinguished both as a linguist and as a theologian. She corresponded in Greek with Bishop Jewel, and translated his Apologia from the Latin, so correctly that neither he nor Archbishop Parker could suggest a single alteration. She also translated a series of sermons on fate and free-will from the Tuscan of Bernardo Ochino. This fact is the more curious, because Ochino was one of that small and audacious band of Italian reformers, anathematized alike by Wittenberg, by Geneva, by Zurich, and by Rome, from which the Socinian sect deduces its origin.

Lady Bacon was doubtless a lady of highly cultivated mind after the fashion of her age. But we must not suffer ourselves to be deluded into the belief that she and her sisters were more accomplished women than many who are now living. On this subject there is, we think, much misapprehension. We have often heard men who wish, as almost all men of sense wish, that women should be highly educated, speak with rapture of the English ladies of the sixteenth century, and lament that they can find no modern damsel resembling those fair pupils of Ascham and Aylmer who compared, over their embroidery, the styles of Isocrates and Lysias, and who, while the horns were sounding and the dogs in full cry, sat in the lonely oriel, with eyes riveted to that immortal page which tells how meekly and bravely the first great martyr of intellectual liberty took the cup from his weeping jailer. But surely these complaints have very little foundation. We would by no means disparage the ladies of the sixteenth century or their pursuits. But we conceive that those who extol them at the expense of the women of our time forget one very obvious and very important circumstance. In the time of Henry the Eighth and Edward the Sixth, a person who did not read Greek and Latin could read nothing, or next to nothing. The Italian was the only modern language which possessed any thing that could be called a literature. All the valuable books then extant in all the vernacular dialects of Europe would hardly have filled a single shelf. England did not yet possess Shakspeare's plays and the Fairy Queen, nor France Montaigne's Essays, nor Spain Don Quixote. In looking round a well furnished library, how many English or French books can we find which were extant

Lady Jane Grey (Lady Guilford Dudley) was the daughter of Frances Brandon (the daughter of Mary Queen Dowager of France and sister of Henry VIII. and Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk) and Henry Grey, Marquis of Dorset, who was descended from Elizabeth, Queen to Edward IV. Her teacher was Mr. Eliner, or Aylmer, who was made Bishop of London in 1576. Roger Ascham records that he found her reading Plato's Phadon while her parents and their guests were hunting in the park-declaring that she owed her love of learning to the greatest benefit God ever gave me,-a gentle schoolmaster, who teacheth me so gently, so pleasantly, with such fair allurements to learning, that I think all the time nothing while I am with him.'

when Lady Jane Grey and Queen Elizabeth received their education? Chaucer, Gower, Froissart, Comines, Rabelais, nearly complete the list. It was therefore absolutely necessary that a woman should be uneducated or classically educated. Indeed, without a knowledge of one of the ancient languages no person could then have any clear notion of what was passing in the political, the literary, or the religious world. The Latin was in the sixteenth century all and more than all that the French was in the eighteenth. It was the language of courts as well as of the schools. It was the language of diplomacy; it was the language of theological and political controversy. Being a fixed language, while the living languages were in a state of fluctuation, and being universally known to the learned and the polite, it was employed by almost every writer who aspired to a wide and durable reputation. A person who was ignorant of it was shut out from all acquaintance, not merely with Cicero and Virgil, not merely with heavy treatises on canon-law and school-divinity, but with the most interesting memoirs, state papers, and pamphlets of his own time-nay, even with the most admired poetry and the most popular squibs which appeared on the fleeting topics of the day, with Buchanan's complimentary verses, with Erasmus's dialogues, with Hutten's epistles.

This is no longer the case. All political and religious controversy is now conducted in the modern languages. The ancient tongues are used only in comments on the ancient writers. The great productions of Athenian and Roman genius are indeed still what they were. But though their positive value is unchanged, their relative value, when compared with the whole mass of mental wealth possessed by mankind, has been constantly falling. They were the intellectual all of our ancestors. They are but a part of our treasures. Over what tragedy could Lady Jane Grey have wept, over what comedy could she have smiled, if the ancient dramatists had not been in her library? A modern reader can make shift without (Edipus and Medea, while he possesses Othello and Hamlet. If he knows nothing of Pyrgopolynices and Thraso, he is familiar with Bobadil, and Bessus, and Pistol, and Parolles." If he can not enjoy the delicious irony of Plato, he may find some compensation in that of Pascal. If he is shut out from Nephelococcygia, he may take refuge in Lilliput. We are guilty, we hope, of no irreverence toward those great nations to which the human race owes art, science, taste, civil and intellectual freedom, when we say, that the stock bequeathed by them to us has been so carefully improved that the accumulated interest now exceeds the principal. We believe that the books which have been written in the languages of western Europe, during the last two hundred and fifty years,-translations from the ancient languages of course included,- —are of greater value than all the books which at the beginning of that period were extant in the world. With the modern languages of Europe English women are at least as well acquainted as English men. When, therefore, we compare the acquirements of Lady Jane Grey with those of an accomplished young woman of our own time, we have no hesitation in awarding the superiority to the latter. We hope that our readers will pardon this digression. It is long; but it can hardly be called unseasonable, if it tends to convince them that they are mistaken in thinking that the great-great-grandmothers of their great-great-grandmothers were superior women to their sisters and their wives.-Edinburgh Review, July, 1837.-LORD BACON.

RECENT CONTRIBUTIONS TO ENGLISH PEDAGOGY.

JOSEPH PAYNE.

Professor of the Science and Art of Education to the College of Preceptors.

PREFATORY NOTE.

PROF. PAYNE has taken an active and influential part in the Proceedings of the College of Preceptors, and made many valuable contributions to the current literature of education by his papers and addresses prepared for the meetings of this large body of professional teachers. The address, from which the following extracts are taken, was introductory to a course instituted by the Council of the College for the benefit of their own members, and other teachers who chose to avail themselves of the opportunity.

THE SCIENCE OF EDUCATION.

The Science of Education is a branch of Psychology, and both Education and Psychology, as sciences, may be studied either deductively or inductively. We may commence with general propositions, and work downward to the facts they represent, or upward from the facts to the general propositions. To students who had been mainly occupied with the concrete and practical, it seemed to me much better to commence with the concrete and practical; with facts, rather than with abstractions. But what facts? That was the question. There is no doubt that a given art contains in its practice, for eyes that can truly see, the principles which govern its action. The reason for doing may be gathered from the doing itself. If, then, we could be quite sure beforehand that perfect specimens of practical teaching based on sound principles, were accessible, we might have set about studying them carefully, with a view to elicit the principles which underlie the practice, and in this way we might have arrived at a Science of Education. But then this involves the whole question-Who is to guarantee dogmatically the absolute soundness of a given method of teaching, and if any one comes forward to do this, who is to guarantee the soundness of his judgment? It appears, then, that although we might evolve the principles of medicine from the general practice of medicine, or the principles of engineering from the general practice of engineering, we cannot evolve the principles of education from the general practice of education as we actually find it. So much of that practice is radically and obviously unsound, so little of sequence and co-ordination is there in its parts, so aimless generally is its action, that to search for the Science of Education in its ordinary present practice would be a sheer waste of time. We should find, for instance, the same teacher acting one day, and with regard to one subject, on one principle, and another day, or with regard to another subject, on a totally different principle, all the time forgetting that the mind really has but one method of learning so as really to know,

*Mr. Payne was for many years proprietor of a large boarding school at Denmark Hill near London. He early made himself practically acquainted with the suggestions and systeme of Jacotot, and other Continental educators, which he makes known to the profession by lectures and through the press.

[blocks in formation]

though multitudes of methods may be framed for giving the semblance of knowing. We see one teacher, who is never satisfied until he secures his pupils' possession of clear ideas upon a given subject; another, who will let them go off with confused and imperfect ideas; and a third, who will think his duty done when he has stuffed them with mere words—with husks instead of grain. It is then perfectly clear that we cannot deduce the principles of true science from varying practice of this kind; and if we confine ourselves to inferences drawn from such practice, we shall never know what the Science of Education is. Having thus shut ourselves off from dealing with the subject by the high à priori method, commencing with abstract principles, and also from the unsatisfactory method of inference founded on various, but generally imperfect, practice; and being still resolved, if possible, to get down to a solid foundation on which we might build a fabric of science, we were led to inquire whether any system of education is to be found, constant and consistent in its working, by the study of which we might reach the desired end. On looking round we saw that there is such a system continually at work under our very eyes,-one which secures definite results, in the shape of positive knowledge, and trains to habit the powers by which these results are gained,-which cannot but be consistent with the general nature of things, because it is Nature's own. Here, then, we have what we were sceking for-a system working harmoniously and consistently towards a definite end, and securing positive results-a system, too, strictly educational, whether we regard the development of the faculties employed, or the acquisition of knowledge, as accompanying the development—a system in which the little child is the Pupil and Nature the educator.

[ocr errors]

Having gained this stand-point, and with it a conviction that if we could only understand this great educator's method of teaching, and see the true connection between the means he employs and the end he attains, we should get a correct notion of what is really meant by education; we next enquire, "How are we to proceed for this purpose? The answer is, by the method through which other truths are ascertained-by investigation. We must do what the chemist, the physician, the astronomer do, when they study their respective subjects. We must examine into the facts, and endeavor to ascertain, first, what they are; secondly, what they mean. The bodily growth of the child from birth is, for instance, a fact, which we can all observe for ourselves. What does it mean? It means that, under certain external influences-such as air, light, food-the child increases in material bulk and in physical power; that these influences tend to integration, to the forming of a whole; that they are all necessary for that purpose; that the withholding of any one of them leads to disintegration or the breaking up of the whole. But as we continue to observe, we see, moreover, evidences of mental growth. We witness the birth of consciousness; we see the mind answering, through the senses, to the call of the external world, and giving manifest tokens that impressions are both received and retained by it. The child "takes notice" of objects and actions, manifests feelings of pleasure or pain in connection with them, and indicates a desire or will to deal in his own way with the objects, and to take part in the actions. We see that this growth of intellectual power, shown by his increasing ability to hold intercourse with things about him, is closely connected with the growth of his bodily powers, and we derive from our observation one important principle of the Science of Education, that mind and body are mutually interdependent, and co-operate in promoting growth.

We next observe that as the baby, under the combined influences of air, light, and food, gains bodily strength, he augments that strength by continually exercising it; he uses the fund he has obtained, and, by using, makes it more. Exercise reiterated, almost unremitting; unceasing movement, apparently for its own sake, as an end in itself; the jerking and wriggling in the mother's arms, the putting forth of his hands to grasp at things near him, the turning of the head to look at bright objects; this exercise, these movements, constitute his very life. He lives in them, and by them. He is urged to exercise by stimulants from without; but the exercise itself brings pleasure with it (labor ipse voluptas), is continued on that account, and ends in increase of power. What applies to the body, applies also, by the foregoing principle, to the intellectual powers, which grow with the infant's growth, and strengthen with his strength. Our observation of these facts furnishes us, therefore, with a second principle of education-Faculty of whatever kind grows by exercise.

Without changing our ground we supplement this principle by another. We see that the great educator who prompts the baby to exercise, and connects pleasure with all his voluntary movements, makes the exercise effectual for the purpose in view by constant reiteration. Perfection in action is secured by repeating the action thousands of times. The baby makes the same movements over and over again; the muscles and the nerves learn to work together, and habit is the result. Similarly in the case of the mind, the impressions communicated through the organs of sense, grow from cloudy to clear, from obscure to definite, by dint of endless repetition of the functional act. By the observation of these facts we arrive at a third principle of education :-Exercise involves repetition, which, as regards bodily actions, ends in habits of action, and as regards impressions received by the mind, ends in clearness of perception.

Looking still at our baby as he pursues his education, we see that this manifold exercise is only apparently an end in itself. The true purpose of the teaching is to stimulate the pupil to the acquisition of knowledge, and to make all these varied movements subservient to that end. This exercise of faculty brings the child into contact with the properties of matter, initiates him into the mysteries of hard and soft, heavy and light, etc., the varieties of form, of round and flat, circular and angular, etc., the attractive charms of color. All this is knowledge, gained by reiterated exercise of the faculties, and stored up in the mind by its retentive power. We recognize the baby as a practical enquirer after knowledge for its own sake. But we further see him as a discoverer, testing the properties of matter by making his own experiments upon it. He knocks the spoon against the basin which contains his food; he is pleased with the sound produced by his action, and more than pleased, delighted, if the basin breaks under the operation. He throws his ball on the ground, and follows its revolution with his enraptured eye. What a wonderful experiment it is! How charmed he is with the effect he has produced! He repeats the experiment over and over again with unwearied assiduity. The child is surely a Newton, or a Faraday, in petticoats! No, he is simply one of nature's ordinary pupils, enquiring after knowledge, and gaining it by his own unaided powers. He is teaching himself under the guidance of a great educator. His self-teaching ends in development and growth, and it is therefore strictly educational in its nature. In view of these facts we gain a fourth principle of the Science of Education. The exercise of the child's own powers, stimulated but not superseded by the educator's interference, ends both in the acquisition of knowledge and in the invigoration of the powers for further acquisition.

« AnteriorContinua »