ページの画像
PDF
ePub

mother, rises next towards the invisible Father of the whole universe? The mother avails herself of the early piety of her tender pupil as the foundation of all the moral lessons she inculcates. As opportunity offers, she talks to him of that Father above, who loves all that is good, and hates all that is evil, who knows every thing, even our most secret thoughts, who will bless the good, and punish the wicked, according to their deserts. Here she is inculcating on her child religious morality, which is at once the most intelligible to him, and the most influential on all ages and descriptions of persons. Undoubtedly self-interest is appealed to in this teaching, but it is not a debasing self-interest, for its object is to repress all the evil inclinations which would compromise the peace and welfare of the community.

Rigid morality demands in the name of virtue, absolute disinterestedness; but of this, man, with all his wants and his wishes, is incapable. It is enough for him that when duty and pleasure come in collision he should give the preference to the former. The same rigid morality would require that the idea of virtue should alone be our motive, and that divine authority should not be referred to: but here there is an evident fallacy. The Father on High to whom the mother appeals, in the morality which she endeavours to inculcate, is goodness personified, and is it not far better to refer her pupil to his will, his superintendence, and his government, than to speak to him of a mere idea without force or life? Here, again, we have no hesitation in giving the preference to the mother's method.

But she also appeals to the conscience, which is the law of the universal Father, graven on the heart of man: she does not attempt to talk of what her pupil would not understand, and what she does not thoroughly understand herself; but she hears this voice in her own heart, and she finds an echo to it in her child. The two great precepts, that we should not do to others what we would not have them do to us, and that we should do to them as we would they should do to us, these are the essence of the morality which she inculcates on all occasions. She thus awakens

his young conscience, which comes in aid of her words, and stamps them with its paramount sanction.

She has also at command other resources which she does not fail to employ; she feels in herself a natural sympathy with all that is great and good in human conduct, and an instinctive aversion to the opposite qualities. She presupposes the same disposition in her dear pupil, and she turns them to account in his education. It is taken for granted that the first teacher of language aims at expressing herself throughout so as to be understood, and, in the. end, she invariably succeeds.

Admirable, indeed, both as to its means and its twofold object, is this system, which I call maternal, because it springs from maternity itself, which inspires it to woman at the sight of the child whom she has brought forth and nourished from her own substance. How impressive are those words of our divine Teacher, "A woman when she is in travail."

The mother attaches, indeed, inestimable value to that being, the fruit of her body, and who has cost her so dear. She sees reflected in him her own image, and under this image she discerns with her mind's eye all the noble faculties of which she is conscious in herself, the elevated dignity of our nature, and its lofty destinies, which have made so vivid an impression on the imagination of one who has been quite recently brought down to the very threshold of eternity! Thence her tenderness, her zeal, her perseverance, which find no parallel on earth, and thence also her maternal inspiration, which cannot be too highly estimated.

I hope I shall not be accused of having drawn an imaginary picture. I have painted from nature, and the reality may be found throughout the Christian world in which our happy lot is cast. As to myself, individually, I was one of a family of fifteen children, of whom ten were born after I was; and I have a lively recollection of what my good mother daily did to train up the younger as she had trained the elder ones. True

it is, that she brought to bear on her noble work an intelligence, a tenderness, an activity, and a charm which.

are rarely combined, but still I have, for the most part, found what was substantially the same.

Afterwards, for nineteen years, I had the superintendence of a numerous school composed of all classes of society, and I bestowed particular attention on the little scholars, who were often brought at six years old, or under. As I wished to be something more than a mere master of reading, writing, arithmetic, and recitation,-in short, to be an instructor of childhood in the largest sense of the term, I sought to ascertain the degree of mental development and cultivation which each of my pupils brought with him. I found, undoubtedly, as I expected, great variety; but in spite of all these different shades, however strongly marked, I found a vast and profound similarity in the language, the thoughts, and the affections which were offered to my observation. Thus I obtained the general result of the mother's method, and to this result I carefully attached the first links of the great chain which I had in view for the education of the children entrusted to my care.

CHAPTER II.

It is obvious that the mother's instruction is entirely oral, and though adapting itself to circumstances, it is incessant. Very perceptible progress will be observed in the objects to which she calls the attention of her tender pupil; for she speaks a different language to him in the cradle from what she does a little later, when he begins to express thoughts after his fashion, and to ask questions in order to learn that which he wishes to know. She carefully brings herself down to his level, and even imitates his expression, pronouncing words as he does with his imperfect articulation, and thus altering them as he does; but the child does not require this act of condescension; indeed, it is rather prejudicial to him; so the mother would do well to omit it.

She is right in avoiding every thing that belongs to grammatical instruction; though she might, as we have before said, pave the way for it by easy exercises in oral conjugation; but notions of grammar would be quite out of place in her teaching. The child from its birth is entirely engrossed by things and living realities; and then grammar steps in and drags him forcibly into an unknown land, into the region of words of which he has hitherto formed no conception (though continually using them), and worse still, into the wilderness of our abstractions. This is indeed a new world to him. Can we wonder, then, that even at a much later period he should have difficulty in entering it, and that his thoughts should continually flee from this inhospitable desert and revert to their dear native land where they fared so well? Ere he can sustain himself in this new world, the child must fight and gain a glorious victory over himself. The duty of the grammarian is to facilitate this victory-and this is what l'Abbé Gaultier has successfully laboured at with the true tact of a mother, but who has followed in his steps?

"Grammar is the art of speaking and writing correctly" --such is its definition. In order to accomplish this task, it ought to be pre-eminently the art of thinking; for words are the expressions of thoughts; and if the latter are incorrect, so must their expression be also. Grammar ought, therefore, to be the logic of childhood, but this it is not. Indeed, it hardly concerns itself with the art of speaking, for most of the grammars in general use refer especially to written language; as they are aware of the difficulty of writing with correctness a language which has so many signs to express the same sounds.

But if you consider the limited extent of maternal teaching in words, and their construction, and consequently in individual ideas, and the thoughts which must result from their combination, you will understand that regular instruction in language must greatly enlarge upon the mother's lessons, in order not to leave childhood, as it were, in its swaddling-clothes.

We do not wish then to suppress or to restrict this

instruction, but we ask of it to accomplish its task more fully than hitherto it has.

Is it not true that the mother following, without study, the mere dictates of her heart, in a few years succeeds in imparting to her child both intelligence and the use of language; and to such an extent that we question whether any degree of subsequent study will achieve any thing comparable to it? Is it not true also that by language, and without the assistance of art, she has awakened all the intellectual faculties of her pupil, and has put him in a condition to make indefinite progress in human knowledge? And lastly, is it not true that she has spoken to the conscience of her child, and to those human feelings with which the Creator has endowed him; and that his feelings and his conscience have responded to the lessons of his first teacher of language? Let regular instruction, then, connect itself with hers, both in its process and its principle, and it will become in turn a powerful engine for developing and completing what the mother has so well begun.

"Make instruction in language subservient to the cultivation of the mind and the improvement of the heart." Such is our appeal to the instructors of youth.

I would have them keenly alive to the degradation they incur when, in their instruction in language, they only keep in view words and idioms, without concerning themselves about the precious mind, which alone thinks, feels, loves, wills, and acts; which alone forms the words for the tongue or dictates them to the pen. The most ordinary mother, in teaching her child to speak, only uses language as the simple means of reaching the mind in order to form it; and then the teacher who succeeds her, and who imagines himself immensely superior to her, falls in reality infinitely below her. He appears to be unconscious of the treasure which lies beneath the surface, and only to perceive the veil which conceals it from his view. One should say he had only to deal with talking, writing, or reciting machines, which he had undertaken to wind up as Vaucanson did his automatons.

The pupils are ill at ease when receiving instructions

« 前へ次へ »