Adams. — On Early Instruction. 177 



the unknown, and memory can work with pleasure when the link of a&socia- 

 tion is supplied ; even the twenty-six letters are unconsciously learned after a 

 time, and only require to be named. 



In numbers also a child learns to count his marbles and divide his sweets 

 before he goes to school, and his instruction should commence with the 

 concrete rather than the abstract. The object of a teacher should be to 

 connect the previous knowledge with the subject of instruction, otherwise no 

 knowledge can possibly be acquired. 



But it is not to be supposed that the child is better taught when he can 

 repeat the alphabet. He is then put in possession of a Mavor's Spelling Book, 

 where he spells words that he may need at some far distant future. In due 

 time he learns to read, word by word, that is to say he has not the remotest 

 notion of the subject. As he repeats the words no ideas are awakened, just 

 as though he read in Hebrew or Greek ; whereas if he had been properly 

 taught every phrase and every sentence would convey a vivid picture to the 

 mind. The method employed in teaching the child to read is carried out in 

 every other subject. He is driven blindfolded up the steepest side of 

 Parnassus, with little care how bruised he may get as he stumbles onward. 



As an instance I will take geography. Kow the natural way of teaching 

 this subject is to trace first the roads leading to the school, marking the 

 position of well-known objects in the immediate vicinity, and then get the 

 child himself to draw a similar plan. Afterwards to produce the roads to 

 more distant objects in the neighbourhood, and so on to extend his ideas to the 

 relative positions of the principal places in the whole country. There is no 

 subject he will take a greater interest in as he finds that he can actually map 

 down every place that he is acquainted with in the whole district. 



The usual method is first to make the child commit to memory the names 

 of the kingdoms of Europe and their capital cities, or indeed to begin with 

 the latitude and longitude of the globe. He listens with astonishment, 

 mingled with awe, to his teacher talking of meridians, the tropics of Cancer, 

 the tropics of Capricorn, the equinoctial line, the vernal and autumnal 

 equinoxes and suchlike terms. This is essentially a foreign language to our 

 pupil, but it makes him wonder at the teacher's learning, and as every subject 

 is taught in the same obscure way the pupil unconsciously associates his idea 

 of great learning with that of unintelligible language. Later in life, from 

 mere habit, he will listen with reverence to the most nonsensical discourse 

 when couched in scientific language. I suppose for the same reason a song in 

 a foreign language is much more heartily applauded than one in English. 



The early impressions are always the most permanent, and early instruction 

 tends in a great measure to produce the conviction that the working of a 

 great mind can only be manifested in vague and vapoury language. Although 





