Essays on Educational ReformersQuick, Robert Hebert
History
Essays on Educational Reformers
Quick, Robert Hebert
Education -- History; Educators
§ 40. Much that Rollin has said applies only to classical or at most
to literary instruction; but some of his advice will be good for all
teachers as long as the human mind needs instruction. I have met with
nothing that seems to me to go more truly to the very foundation of the
art of teaching than the following:
“We should never lose sight of this grand principle that STUDY DEPENDS
ON THE WILL, and the will does not endure constraint: ‘_Studium discendi
voluntate quæ cogi non potest constat._’ (Quint. j, 1, cap. 3.)[97] We
can, to be sure, put constraint on the body and make a pupil, however
unwilling, stick to his desk, can double his toil by punishment, compel
him to finish a task imposed upon him, and with this object we can
deprive him of play and recreation. But is this work of the galley-slave
studying? And what remains to the pupil from this kind of study but a
hatred of books, of learning, and of masters, often till the end of his
days? It is then the will that we must draw on our side, and this we
must do by gentleness, by friendliness, by persuasion, and above all by
the allurement of pleasure.” (_Traité_, 8th Bk. _Du Gouvernement des
Classes_, 1re Partie, Art. x.)
§ 41. The passage I have quoted is from the _Article_ “on giving a taste
for study (_rendre l’étude aimable_);” and if some masters do not agree
that this is “one of the most important points concerning education,”
they will not deny that “it is at the same time one of the most
difficult.” As Rollin truly says, “among a very great number of masters
who in other respects are highly meritorious there will be found very few
who manage to get their pupils to like their work.”
§ 42. One of the great causes of the disinclination for school work is
to be found according to Rollin and Quintilian, in the repulsive form in
which children first become acquainted with the elements of learning. “In
this matter success depends very much on first impressions; and the main
effort of the masters who teach the first rudiments should be so to do
this, that the child who cannot as yet love study should at least not get
an aversion for it from that time forward, for fear lest the bitter taste
once acquired should still be in his mouth when he grows older.”[98]
(Begin. of Art. x, as above.)
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