80 EDUCATION, AS IT IS AND AS IT SHOULD BE. 



One great error in which parents wreck many a fond hope uncon- 

 sciously, is their idea that they have only to procure teachers who 

 know the subject that is to be taught ; and so rooted is this idea that 

 nothing can exterminate it. It hangs like a mill-stone about their 

 necks, and renders futile all their exertions. It is in vain that it is 

 argued, nay demonstrated, that all the learning and knowledge in the 

 world is useless, or worse than useless, if the teacher has not the tact 

 for teaching, which is only possessed by those with a particular orga- 

 nization, and which, as Mr. Wood, of Edinburgh, truly remarks, no 

 experience can give. It is in vain, also, that it is urged that Pesta- 

 lozzi himself declares some of his most successful teachers to have been 

 those who knew nothing of the subject they intended to teach, and 

 that Jacatot says the same thing, and that common sense says the 

 same thing ; the original idea clings like a leech, and the consequen- 

 ces we all know. 



There is a village schoolmaster in my neighbourhood who knows 

 as much or more than he will ever have occasion to communicate to 

 his pupils, and yet it all lies useless in his own brain, because he has 

 not the tact to communicate it. He has not, during many years, got 

 beyond teaching his pupils to read ! I have heard some of them read 

 at various times, and they did not read as if they understood the sub- 

 ject ; I accordingly questioned them. One boy came to the passage 

 in the New Testament, " wearing a crown of thorns." I asked him 

 what " wearing" meant : he did not know. A girl came to the 

 expression " dissolved :" she did not understand the meaning. I 

 asked her what a lump of sugar became when put into tea. 

 Her eyes, before expressionless, now brightened up ; the mean- 

 ing, which was before dark, now dawned on her. In this way 

 I cleared up the various unintelligible words ; and the business 

 thus became as delightful as it must before have been irksome. 

 Reading and writing are not knowledge, but mere learning, and they 

 only exercise the organ of Form ; but if knowledge can be mingled 

 with the learning, it is like causing the desert to blossom as the Rose. 

 A valuable precept of Locke is entirely disregarded. He remarks, 

 " But, under whose care soever a child is put to be taught, this is 

 certain, it should be one who thinks Latiii and languages the least 

 part of education." And after this he proceeds to shew how Latin 

 or other languages may be taught, as he has known from personal 

 experience, by one who is unacquainted with them. Let a teacher 

 have the manner, and the matter cannot fail to follow ; but parents, 

 in their anxiety for the latter, lose all. 



