What De Fellenberg has done for education

II De Fellenberg

HAS DONE

FOR

EDUCATION.

LONDON:

y

LONDON : PRINTED BY LEVEY, KOBSOIN, AND FIUM&LYM,

46 St. Martin's Laue.

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The name of De Fellenberg is familiar to all the civilised nations of Europe and North America, and may now be mentioned without offence. This expression implies that it once was otherwise. Yes ; the age in which he has lived having been one of political storms, every name which was eminent enough to appear above the surface of the troubled waters was claimed or denounced by a party ; none could escape. Even those who disclaimed all party, but who, from the highest motives, thought they were bound not to live for themselves alone, nor to hide their talent in a napkin, but to labour, like the holy men of old, according to the light given them, for the permanent good of their fellow-creatures, were exposed to a moral martyrdom, from the ignorance, misconception, and hostility of their contemporaries.

Schools and education had certainly been heard

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of from the times of Rome and Greece — had not been totally destroyed at the fall of the Empire — and had in a degree revived with the revival of learning : but the kind of education which Fellenberg contemplated, with its application to the lowest as well as the highest class of society, was so new, that it is still a novelty in enlightened England, after his forty years' experimental labours at Hofwyl. The great object to which he had determined to devote his life was the practical solution of the question, whether it is possible to influence and form the human character by early discipline and instruction ; to set the motives, feelings, and passions, in a proper course ; to fix in the mind moral and religious principles, giving rise to corresponding habits of action; to store the mind with just ideas, and the heart with Christian sentiments. He wished to raise the school from a mere technical system to one of intelligence ; and from a place of irksome constraint to one of pleasing and beneficial occupations.

As these objects had never been attained, nor even attempted, with a direct, specific, and undivided purpose, Fellenberg's wise and benevolent plans for the improvement of character were looked at as dangerous innovations in the usual mode of

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bringing up the young, and as connected with some deep, secret plot for the subversion of society. He had, therefore, to contend, during many years, with a combination of ignorance, prejudice, and, we fear we must add, in some instances, of malignity. Before his time, almost the only medium of instruction for the people was the pulpit ; almost the only means of discipline, of training and forming character, were domestic ; which domestic training consisted in a short * intercourse between parent and child at certain hours of the day, when labour was over ; and in permitting the children, during the rest of the day, to wander at large in the streets of towns, or the fields of the country, encouraging each other to vice and impiety. It was this pernicious training which Fellenberg proposed to supersede by one of order, method, and discipline ; to put useful employment in the place of mischievous idleness, and hourly Christian instruction and superintendence in the place of total neglect and ignorance. Was such a scheme feasible ? and if so, would it not be better and more Christian than the former state of things ?

Fellenberg was led to study this question in consequence of observing the state of Europe, at that time convulsed by the French revolution. The am-

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bition of political power was the moving principle of the few, to which the many were made subservient ; and the lives of all, instead of being passed in the exercise of peaceful virtues, with the hope and expectation of a better world, were exhausted in the rage and passions of savages. Fellenberg groaned over this exhibition of human ferocity, — over the social ruin which it occasioned, — over the total absence of Christian character which it betrayed. He beheld Christian men, as they called themselves, tearing one another to pieces, and for no ostensible good, — the mere instruments of the few ringleaders of the world's misery. Human nature seemed to have discarded all virtue, and to have become the receptacle of that assemblage of vices denounced by the apostle — " envy, variance, wrath, strife, hatred, sedition, drunkenness, revellings, adultery, murder."

Fellenberg at first imagined that something might be done among the rulers of mankind, the directors of the political storm, to calm this turbulent state, and to introduce harmony into this chaos; but he found them totally indifferent and apathetic, and blind to all but the scene in which they lived. Every man forms a horizon for himself by his actions, thoughts, and reading. The demagogue

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sees nothing but the mob before him ; the soldier, nothing but the battle ; the politician, often, especially in troublous times, nothing but the intrigues around him. None but the Christian philanthropist can take an enlarged view of man in his present and future hopes — his social condition, his capabilities of improvement, the possible extent of happiness or misery for which he may be born. The Bible presents him with the ideal perfectibility of universal man - inspiring those who drink deep into its spirit with high and noble hopes for the welfare of humanity, and with an ardent desire to promote it ; while those who are wholly absorbed in the business of life remain pagans in a Christian age, and all their ideas of man are mean, low, and perishing : to them man still continues " a brute that perishes." Fellenberg, therefore, found no sympathy from the statesmen of his day ; they were callous to the common social rights of states and of men, as well as indifferent to all views and projects of moral im* provement. In fact, what does the mere politician, whether demagogue or tyrant, require of man, but to be a blind instrument in his ambitious grasp ? He wishes his follower to have enough mind to direct his physical strength most effectually accord-

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ing to the command of a superior, but no more. It is the enlightened politician — the legislator properly so called — who considers man not as a tool with which he is to work, but as a ward committed to his charge, and for whose character, usefulness, and happiness, he will be held responsible at the day of judgment.

Fellenberg living in such an age of vice, impiety, and misery, felt keenly the degradation and corruption of man ; and also that this was no new state of things, though an aggravated one. He saw that Europe had never been practically Christianised ; that she had been converted from paganism little more than in name; and that her barbarism had never been extirpated. He beheld in history a swarm of nations issuing from savage forests, conquering a comparatively civilised nation, separating into feudalities, continuing their wars with each other, ignorant of letters, studying no art or science but that of the sword. The outbreakings of modern revolutions were nothing but a continuance of the history of the race. It was no new or sudden volcano, acting by new and unknown laws : the causes were deeply laid in the ignorance and barbarism of the people, and in the pugnacious and arbitrary prin-

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-ciples of the rulers. We are not here questioning the providential wisdom of the history of man, as shewn in the European march from barbarism and paganism to civilisation, Christianity, and rational and constitutional liberty : but we cannot insist too strongly upon our pristine barbarism and ignorance, and the total want of any general moral means of removing them, beyond the formalities of religion ; lest it should be imagined that the mass of the people among our ancestors were in possession of ample and efficient means of moral and religious instruction.

Fellenberg was one of the few who traced the tumults and troubles of his age to the moral depravity of men in their social relations. With the Bible in his hand, and an enlightened philosophy in his heart, he considered society and men as they were in fact, as they ought to be as Christians, and as they might be under a proper guidance and system of early discipline and instruction. Unlike others who had preceded him, but with partial and theoretic views of the subject, he did not propound his ideas to the public in writing ; but, convinced of the truth, power, and force of the principles he had arrived at, he determined upon submitting them

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to the test of an experiment, to which he pledged his talents, property, and life, — and for so doing was denounced as the enemy of his race !

The improvement of mankind in the arts of civilisation seems to be under laws of more certain, or, rather, more rapid operation, than their improvement in morals. The civilisation of arts seems to be first attained ; that of intellect next ; and that of morals last of all. Indeed, the two former may advance while the latter seems to retrograde. This was the case among the early Eastern nations, and among the Greeks and Romans : so much so, that it became a kind of philosophical proverb, that when nations had attained to what was then deemed their highest point of so-called civilisation and refinement, they retrograded and declined by a natural necessity. The most civilised nations of Europe seem to have attained, during the last century, about the same degree of refinement which belonged to Greece and Rome in their best days. They were great in arms, arts, oratory, and poetry ; but they had not improved in morals in an equal degree. They had, indeed, theoretically a better religion ; but the superstitions of barbarous times were not worn out, the reformation of a corrupt creed was only partially effected ;

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and the peculiar sublimity of the Christian code of morals, the conquest over the selfish principle of man, and the exaltation of his motives into a dependence upon Divine direction and assistance, opening to him a field of progressive and infinite improvement, were almost unknown. Vice abounded in all classes of society, according to the circumstances, opportunities, and temptations of each ; and the few holy characters which were scattered through the mass, seemed to be entirely isolated, and to exert no leavening process upon the surrounding crowds. At one time, vice was the test of loyalty, as piety was of disaffection ; and the spread of infidelity was by some considered as a sign of national prosperity. We venture to say, that these feelings and judgments are not yet extinct. In our own age, it has been scarcely creditable to belong to Bible or missionary societies ; and infant-schools were once considered as the nurseries of freethinkers, or as the visionary projects of Utopian philanthropists. It seemed to be absolutely necessary that mankind should experience practically the utmost horrors, misery, and anarchy of vice and ignorance, and have that experience reiterated upon them generation after generation, before they could be convinced of the inherent

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and indefeasible malignity of vice, and of the sublime beauty of holiness. The French revolution did indeed strike terror into the hearts of men, and made crime at length detestable. Not that it was the first or only consequence of vicious principles which Europe had witnessed — far from it — for she was bred in war and rapine ; but vice appeared in a new garb, and less under the direction of its usual leaders. Still, the horror that was felt was more political than moral. Men feared the miseries of vice as exhibited in public convulsions ; but they continued blind to its effects on social and domestic happiness. Provided the state were free from change, they cared not for the tears shed in secret over the degradation of private infamy. Another step was necessary in the moral demonstration; which was, that public prosperity and security should be deemed to be utterly incompatible with private vice.

To arrive practically at this momentous conclusion is a great era in the history of man, because it leads at once to a practical inquiry of an experimental kind ; and when men are once bent upon an experimental pursuit, universal experience proves that their labours will be rewarded with a rich harvest.

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Slow are men to be convinced of the importance and necessity of moral character to the security and prosperity of states ; but slower still are they to discover in what way that moral character can be attained. The subject of the formation of character among the mass of mankind is altogether new. The characters of men have been formed in past times by national circumstances, and not at all by artificial means. By artificial means, we understand schools. There are only two means of forming character — the domestic hearth and the school. The former is evidently suited only to nations in a barbarous or semi-barbarous state. When men have advanced to a certain point of civilisation, the parents among the mass of the people are too much occupied in their daily callings to be able to influence their children sufficiently. The children then cease to imbibe the instructions or character of the parent, and come under the irregular and mischievous influence of each other ; the parents also themselves, in passing from the barbarous to the civilised state, contract the vices peculiar to the latter. Every state of society is harassed by its peculiar vices, of which the mass are the victims. The domestic teaching, therefore, soon becomes worse than nothing — it is only a

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name. Under that name, the children of neighbouring families herd together, and contaminate each other. The character of man is habit : what, then, more fatal than the association of human beings, without the practice of virtue and prudence ; without self-denial and experience ; full of passion and irregular desire ; and without control and discipline ? Profligacy and recklessness must be the inevitable consequences. If there were not some unknown check upon this state of society, some providential superintendence, permitting all evils to have a certain sway and no more, with a view to the ultimate extermination of evil through its own odiousness, we should be filled with despair at the moral prospects of man under such circumstances, and foresee nothing but increasing vice and increasing political convulsion.

We have said, that parents, as soon as society passes from the barbarous state to the pursuit of arts, are totally incompetent to educate their own children, and that the artificial education of the school must commence. This is true of all classes of society, as well as of the lowest. Education becomes an art, as well as the manufacture of articles of consumption. It becomes subject to the law of

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the division of labour; and they who engage in it will excel in it by the same necessity that a mechanic excels in his peculiar occupation. Upon this principle, schools become necessary for all classes, to supply the want of time, attention, and knowledge, in parents ^f all ranks. If mankind had been capable of anticipating and foreseeing their own wants before they were pressed upon them by a painful experience, schools and schoolmasters would have been coeval with the first transition from a state of barbarian war to one of incipient civilisation and the cultivation of the arts. But man cannot foresee, and can only learn by pain and sorrow how to obviate the recurrence of similar suffering. The formation of character by means of schools, — i.e. by means of systematic discipline and instruction, — is a new thought. Schools were first established for other purposes; and when established, the formation of character was not an element in their system, nor is it so yet. Schools were established for the sake of mere knowledge ; for cultivating the intellect, not the heart. The progress of society required a certain number of persons who could read and write, in order to fill, in church and state, certain offices which had sprung up from the necessities of society ;

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and it was long before these necessities were really supplied. Of those who were thus educated, some turned their attention to literature and general knowledge, and thus opened a new field for the employment of the human mind — afield of mere abstract knowledge and speculation, totally unconnected with practical purposes.

But by the same condition that the practical position of government and of the church required that a certain number of persons should receive what was called a learned education, the position of affairs in the middle classes of society also began to make some education appear desirable. Persons were not fitted to carry on the common business of life without a certain amount of instruction ; and as only one kind was to be had, men were obliged to send their children to the schools which happened to be in existence. These schools were all of the same character : the subjects taught, and the mode of teaching, were the same, whatever condition of life the pupils were intended for; and this system was a necessary one under the circumstances, because some of the scholars being intended for the learned professions, as they were called, became the principal objects of the master's care. He adapted

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his system to them ; and the others were obliged to follow it, and to make the best of it, though it might not be the best preparation for them and their professions> as it was supposed to be for others.

In order to understand the history of schools, and to make allowance for the defects of the early ones, and through this history to improve our own, we must consider that the early schools were confined in the materials they had to work with. These were few and scanty both in kind and degree. Every science and art had to be discovered before it could be taught : grammar and logic, geography and maps, arithmetic, geometry, and natural philosophy, elementary history, the mythology of the classics, illustrations of manners and customs, dictionaries, — every thing had to be constructed ; so that it is wonderful what and how the early schools contrived to teach. The subjects taught, and the mode of teaching, had to undergo a progress of discovery and improvement, like all other sciences. It might have been expected, the teachers should have discovered what they were most in want of; but we should bear in mind, that their time and thoughts are occupied not in discovering, but in teaching. Many of the most important materials of teaching

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are derived from other professions. The teacher only selects and concentrates what he finds useful to his purpose. The early schools, of necessity exceedingly imperfect, have unfortunately entailed their imperfections upon their successors. The objects they contemplated were unfavourable to enlarged views, or to any thing like an educational system. With them education was a mere apprenticeship to the learned languages — a mere trade, not a science. They professed to teach one thing, and one thing only, the grammatical elements of Latin, and, perhaps, of Greek. We say elements, because that degree of teaching which consists in writing and speaking those languages with facility, has hardly yet been attained in any school. This leads us to consider a wonderful fact, that, though every child learns to talk his own language while he is a child, yet, after ten years' teaching of the Latin or Greek language, the scholar has not learnt to speak, and scarcely to write it. The withering effects of this contracted system of teaching, this limiting of instruction to Greek and Latin, were not so much felt in the higher departments of society, for which it was chiefly intended, because such instruction occupied only a portion of a long period

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of pupilage, and because no other knowledge or science was required in some of the professions; while in others, personal labour and perseverance made up for all deficiencies of elementary teaching. And we must never forget that the innate powers, faculties, and principles of the human mind, are not to be judged of by the results of any teaching which has hitherto prevailed. Teaching cannot create : mind is a creation. Teaching is only moulding that which already exists ; and this moulding, if not conducted skilfully, and agreeably with the original laws and intentions of the Creator, will only deface his work, instead of bringing it to its intended perfection. The mind of original ability and talent, therefore, made its way amid all difficulties, and amid the vices of all teaching, to its proper station in the world of mind, and was no proof of any excellence in the system under which it was trained. With the majority of minds it was far different. A contracted and dry system was to them a second nature, and frustrated the first which they had received at birth; and the faults of the teaching were imputed to the original creation. Thus nature became libelled by the very persons who ought to have worshipped her : the beauties they had defaced were pronounced b

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never to have existed, and the distortions of art were asserted to be natural deformities.

The incurable and ruinous consequences of this contracted system were seen and first remedied in the profession of arms. As the art of war became a science, and dependent upon mind more than upon brute force, real knowledge, a knowledge of arithmetic and geometry, became the only basis upon which it could be erected. Government was therefore obliged to establish schools of its own, adapted to its purpose ; not merely schools for completing education, analogous to universities, but elementary schools for teaching the simplest properties of numbers and space. When other persons demanded that these elements should be made a part of teaching in schools, they were pronounced unnecessary and useless, except for certain mechanic arts. When admitted, they were taught by permission rather than upon principle, and a certain air of contempt was thrown over them. Elements upon which depended the perfection of the art of war and national security and independence, and upon which the whole fabric of the universe was created, were pronounced to be contemptible, and are still held in all the higher English schools to be of very inferior importance.

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The middling classes of society also at length perceived the imperfect and inadequate teaching of the schools. At the age when parents were obliged to remove their children from school, they found them not only deficient in all knowledge calculated to prove practically useful in the employments for which they were destined, but even in that to which their time had been solely devoted. Not to have been taught useful practical knowledge, was an evil ; but not to have been taught that which alone had been attempted, was more serious still. These middling classes, however, had not the power, like government, of correcting these evils : they could not establish schools and professorships of their own ; neither their time nor their funds allowed of it. They were compelled to accept what the schools offered, and to make the best of it. Fortunately the consequences, however injurious, were not so fatal as they would have proved in the other case, had that also been without a remedy. Inferior and limited teaching rendered them a less intelligent class of people, less skilful in their employments, less capable of improving their situation and circumstances, less useful members of the community, with fewer resources, fewer means of self-recreation and rational amuse-

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ment, and left their moral character much lower than it ought to have been ; but it did not expose these classes to absolute ruin, as would have been the case with the nation, had government not taken the education of its military servants out of the hands of the common schools.

We have called the schools of former days a system of mere teaching, because of their confined plan, objects, and attainments; we have now to consider what they were as places of education. School and education are thought to be synonymous terms ; and so they ought to be — but so it has not been. Education is a term of wide signification, and will not apply, except in a most qualified manner, to any narrow or partial system. A system which merely proposes to teach one particular art, science, or language, is not an education, except in a very loose acceptation. All the early period of life, up to the time when a person enters upon a profession or a business, is the period of education. In whatever way he may be taught or managed during that period, that teaching and management is called his education, however imperfect or even objectionable it may be. In one sense, every thing which happens to a person, from the cradle to the period of his

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entering on active and responsible life, may be very justly called his education ; because, by all those circumstances, whatever they may be, whether good or bad, favourable or unfavourable, in a school or out of a school, private or public, his habits and character are formed, and he becomes a good or bad member of society. But true education contemplates the whole man, — not one faculty alone, but all his faculties, powers, feelings, and principles ; so that the word is of wide import, and may include either the very highest or the very lowest set of circumstances in which a human being may be brought up. It is necessary to bear in mind this expansive meaning of the term, because it affects every argument on the subject, and entirely alters its complexion, according as it is applied to the higher or lower classes of the community. Thus a person who has low and contracted ideas of education will call any school -instruction an education, however few may be the subjects taught, or however imperfect the method of teaching. In speaking of even the highest schools, he will consider their education perfect, because they stand high in public estimation, without inquiring into the details of the system followed, or its effect upon the character and prin-

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ciples. Some people have no idea of any education beyond the bare teaching of the classics, and will hence condemn the education of the lower classes ; as if there was nothing else which they might profitably learn, and as if education had nothing to do with the formation of character independently of learning Latin and Greek.

To have a worthy conception of all that is meant by the term education, we must not be content with a dictionary, and call it with Johnson, " the instruction of children ;" but we must consider what man is in his original and divine faculties, what is the calling for which he is destined in this life, and what are the ultimate expectations and responsibilities of his being in the life to come. Education brings out all the faculties of man with a view to the two great ends of his being, both present and future ; to his own personal happiness, and to the good of society. If there is one feature in education more prominent than another, it is this, that it involves moral and religious character more than intellect. It is the connexion of education with character, and the great dependence of the one upon the other, which renders the subject of universal interest and of unbounded importance.

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This view of education has only of late began to be generally taken. The early schools were entirely intellectual. They proposed to themselves only the cultivation of the intellectual powers, talents, and abilities, in a restricted sense ; and they only attempted to educate for the demands of the day, which were some knowledge of the Latin and Greek languages. There was a historical reason for this : the records of revelation were enclosed in these languages; those records could only be understood and fairly estimated by the study of their languages. They had been the mother-tongue of the first disciples of the religion, and of the great works of the first scholars, and orators, and, we might almost say, philosophers, which had adorned it. They contained what may be called its early literature and external history. When, therefore, our Germanic forefathers were sufficiently civilised to begin the acquisition of literature, they were compelled, by the moral necessity of circumstances, to cultivate the Latin and Greek languages ; and schools were compelled, in like manner, to make those languages their principal, if not their only subject of instruction. Thus education became identified with the study of those two languages, and the name and thing were defined in accordance

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with this narrow, but, at that period, not unimportant purpose. To teach them, was to educate ; and to be educated, was to have been at a school where they were taught. After the demand for persons so educated had been supplied, and persons intended for other professions, and for the middle walks of life, began to frequent these schools — and after some other kinds of knowledge began to creep into them, — as such knowledge grew up in the world, and came also into demand, the same intellectual character continued to possess the schools. The training of the moral habits was not considered to be the chief, or even a leading end to be aimed at.