Classic French Course in EnglishWilkinson, William Cleaver
History
Classic French Course in English
Wilkinson, William Cleaver
French literature -- History and criticism
'Tis the custom of pedagogues to be eternally thundering in their
pupil's ears, as they were pouring into a funnel, whilst the
business of the pupil is only to repeat what the others have said:
now, I would have a tutor to correct this error, and that, at the
very first, he should, according to the capacity he has to deal
with, put it to the test, permitting his pupil himself to taste
things, and of himself to discern and choose them, sometimes
opening the way to him, and sometimes leaving him to open it for
himself; that is, I would not have him alone to invent and speak,
but that he should also hear his pupil speak in turn.... Let him
make him put what he has learned into a hundred several forms, and
accommodate it to so many several subjects, to see if he yet
rightly comprehends it, and has made it his own.... 'Tis a sign of
crudity and indigestion to disgorge what we eat in the same
condition it was swallowed: the stomach has not performed its
office, unless it have altered the form and condition of what was
committed to it to concoct....
Let him make him examine and thoroughly sift every thing he reads,
and lodge nothing in his fancy upon simple authority and upon
trust. Aristotle's principles will then be no more principles to
him than those of Epicurus and the Stoics: let this diversity of
opinions be propounded to, and laid before, him; he will himself
choose, if he be able; if not, he will remain in doubt.
"Che, non men che saper, dubbiar m'aggrata." DANTE, _Inferno_, xl.
93.
["That doubting pleases me, not less than knowing." LONGFELLOW'S
_Translation_.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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