Part 17 (2/2)

Parents would then have a measure, by which they could estimate the merit of a school; the master would have another motive for action, and there would be an emulation amongst the scholars. The business professed to be done, and undertaken, would then be performed. At present, at about three times the expense necessary, children learn about half what they are intended to be taught.

Interfering in this manner would be no infringement on private liberty; nothing would be done that could hurt, in any way, the individuals, but what must greatly benefit them. The evil habits that are contracted in early childhood, at home, would be counteracted, and the

{85} As even those find it is necessary to make a strong impression on the minds of parents, (and as some wish their children to be treated with rigour,) there are teachers, who obtain a credit by overstraining the discipline, after having obtained a fair reputation, by carrying it only to a proper length.

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youth would be taught to know what it is that renders a man happy in himself, and respected and valued by society.

But the consideration of the system to be followed is not the least important part of the business. The useful should be preferred to the useless, and in this the example of the ancients might be followed with advantage. They had no dead languages to study, and the mind appears to have been in many cases expanded, far beyond its present compa.s.s.

Nothing, indeed, can equal the ignorance of the most part of boys, when they leave school; those who are considered as bad scholars, have lost the good opinion of themselves, that ought to be maintained throughout life; they think every thing difficult or impossible. Those, again, who have excelled, are something less ignorant, but become vain and conceited, owing perhaps to their having learnt some useless and superfluous pieces of knowledge.

Education, on the general principle, consists in learning what makes a man useful, respectable, and happy, in the line for which he is destined, whether for manual labour, or for study; for a high or a low occupation.

What is useful becomes a question, in some sort depending upon place, and still more on circ.u.mstances, it will therefore be better to discuss it at length in the Third Book, where England is the place, and particular circ.u.mstances are taken into consideration.

There are, however, some general rules that apply to all places and to all situations.

Good principles, honour, honesty, and integrity, are equally necessary in every rank of society; with those qualities, even a beggar is respectable, and will be respected; without them, no man ever was or ever will be so. In every mode of education, the importance of those should be inculcated; and that they may be adhered to, every man, either by inheritance, or by talents, or by habits of industry, should have it put in his power to command the means of living in the way that he has been brought up.

Were this attended to, many scenes of misery and vice would be prevented. Admitting that there are propensities in some minds, [end of page #97] that lead to evil, independent of every possible check or control, it must be allowed that the far greater proportion of those who do well or ill in the world owe it to the manner in which they have been brought up in their early days.

It follows, from this general rule, that parents should carefully avoid bringing up children in a manner in which they have not the means of being afterwards maintained; and that, in the second place, when they cannot leave them in an independent fortune, they should, by making them learn a trade or profession, give them the means of obtaining what they have been accustomed to consider as necessary for them to enjoy.

There are, indeed, great numbers, and the greatest numbers of all; unable even to have their children taught what is called a trade. But there are none whom poverty prevents from bringing their children up to industry; and, if they have been taught to live according to their situation, they will find themselves above their wants, and therefore the same general rule will still apply.

Most writers have considered the subject of education as relative to that portion of it only which applies to learning; but the first object of all, in every nation, is to make a man a good member of society; and this can never be done, unless he is fitted to fill the situation of life for which he is intended.

Governments and writers on education fall, generally speaking, into the same errors. They would provide for the education of persons destined for the learned professions and sometimes for the fine arts; but agriculture, commerce, and manufactures, are totally left out: {86} the most essential, the most generally useful, are not noticed at all.

As so much value is set upon the language of the Greeks and Romans, surely we might pay a little attention to the example of those distinguished nations.

The Greeks studied the Egyptian learning, and improved upon it; but this was only confined to those who followed learning as a profes-

{86} Lord Somerville has some excellent observations, relative to this, in his publication on Agriculture, published in 1800.

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sion, or whose means allowed them to prosecute it as a study. The common education of citizens was different; it consisted in teaching them to perform what was useful, and to esteem what was excellent. It was a principle with them that all men ought to know how happiness is attained, and in what virtue consists; but they neither trusted to precept nor example. They enforced by habit and practice, and in this the Romans followed the plan the Greeks had laid down, and, by that means, they surpa.s.sed all other nations.

When those great nations of antiquity abandoned their attention to the useful parts of education, they soon sunk in national character. It so happens, in this case, that the mode of education and the manners of a people are so closely connected that it is difficult, from observation, to know which is the cause, and which the effect. Youth, badly educated, make bad men, and bad men neglect the education of their children; they set them a wrong example: such is the case, when a government does not interfere. How this is to be done with advantage is the question.

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