Household Education. Harriet Martineau
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While we have among us far too many who thieve and cheat, and quarrel, and drink, we can scarcely meet with any who do not think these things wrong, or have not thought so before they were too far gone in them. On the whole, the law of Opinion, though far below what the wise see it might be, is a great benefit, and a thing worthy of serious regard in fixing our educational aims.
This prevalent opinion being a good thing as far as it goes, having its origin in nature, there can be no doubt that a good education, having also its origin in nature, would issue in a sufficient accordance with it for purposes of social happiness. As human beings are born with limbs and senses whose thorough exercise brings them out in a high state of bodily perfection, they are born with powers of the brain which, thoroughly exercised, would, in like manner, bring them out as great, mentally and morally, as their constitution enables them to be. There must ever be innumerable varieties, as no two infants could ever be said to be born perfectly alike; and perhaps no two adults could be found who had precisely the same powers of limb and sense: but out of this infinite variety must come such an amount of evidence as to what is best in human character as would constitute a law of Opinion, higher than the present, but agreeing with it in its main points. Let us conceive of a county of England where every inhabitant should be not only saved from ignorance, but having every power of body and mind made the very most of. The variety would appear much greater than anything we now see. There would be more people decidedly musical, or decidedly mechanical, or decidedly scientific: more who would occupy their lives with works of benevolence, or of art, or of ingenuity: more who would speculate boldly, speak eloquently, and show openly their high opinion of themselves, or their anxiety for the good opinion of others. The more variety and the greater strength of powers, the clearer would be the evidence before all eyes of what is really the most to be desired for men. It would come out more plainly than now that it is a bad and unhappy thing for men to have immoderate desires for money, or luxury, or fame, or to have quarrelsome tendencies, or to be subject to distrust and jealousy of others, or to be afraid of pain of body or mind. It would be more plain than ever that there is a soulfelt charm and nobleness and happiness in a spirit of reverence, of justice, of charity, of domestic attachment, and of devotion to truth. Thus, in such a society, there would be an agreement, more clear and strong than now, in all the best points of our present law of Opinion, while there would be fuller scope for carrying up the highest qualities of the human being to their perfection.
Moreover, as men are made every where with a general likeness of the powers of the mind, as with the same number of limbs and senses, there must come out of a thorough exercise of their faculties a sufficient agreement as to what is best to generate a universal idea of duty or moral good. No varieties of endowment can interfere essentially with this result. The Hindoo has slender arms, with soft muscles, and cannot do the hard work which suits the German peasant: yet both agree as to what arms are for, and how they are to be used. The Red Indian can see, hear, smell, and taste twice as well as factory children or plough-boys; yet all will agree that it is a good thing to have perfect sight and hearing. And, in the same way, the African may have less power of thought than the Englishman; and the Englishman may have less genius for music than the African: but not only is the African able to think, more or less, and the Englishman to enjoy music, but they will agree that it is a good thing to have the highest power of thought, and the greatest genius for music. In the same manner, again, one race, as well as one individual, may have more power of reverence, another of love, another of self-reliance; but all will agree that all these are inestimably good.
It follows from this, that parents must be safe in aiming at thoroughly exercising and training all the powers of a child. If it would be safest for all to do so, in the certainty that the result would be in accordance with the best points of the law of Opinion, it must be a safe practice for individuals; and they may proceed in the faith that their work (if they do it well) will turn out a noble one in the eyes of the men of their own day, while they are doing their best to help on a clearer and brighter day, when the law of Opinion will itself be greatly ennobled.
Here I must end my chapter. But I must just say a word to guard against any hasty supposition that when I speak of exercising (as well as training) all the human powers thoroughly, I contemplate any indulgence of strong passions or of evil inclinations. It cannot be too carefully remembered that what I am speaking of is human Powers or Faculties; and that every power which a human being possesses may be exercised to good, and is actually necessary to make him perfect.
It will be my business hereafter to show what this exercise and training should be.
CHAPTER V.
THE GOLDEN MEAN.
It is a large subject that we have to treat;—that of household education; for the main part of every process of education is carried on at home, except in the instance of boarding-schools, where a few years are spent by a small number of the youth of our country. The queen was brought up under a method of household education; and so was, no doubt, the last pauper who went to his grave in a workhouse coffin. Elizabeth Fry was brought up at home; so was the most ignorant and brutish convict that was blessed by the saving light of her pitying eye. Sir Isaac Newton, to whom the starry heavens were as a home-field for intellectual exercises, was reared at home; and so were the poor children in the Durham coal-pits in our own time, who never heard of God, and indeed could not tell the names of their own fathers and mothers. If thus, the loftiest and the lowliest, the purest and the most criminal, the wisest and the most ignorant, are comprehended under the process of household education, what a wide and serious subject it is that we have to consider!
The royal child must, of course, be trained wholly at home; that is, little princes and princesses cannot be sent to school. But, while reared in the house with their parents, the influences they are under scarcely agree with our ideas of home. The royal infant does not receive its food from the bosom first, or afterwards from the hands of its mother. She does not wash and dress it; and those sweet seasons are lost which in humbler homes are so rich in caresses and play, so fruitful in endearing influences both to mother and child. It is a thing to be remarked and praised by a whole court, if not a whole kingdom, if a royal mother is seen with her child in her arms; while the cottager's child is blessed with countless embraces between morning and night, and sleeps on its mother's arm or within reach of her eye and voice. The best trained royal child is disciplined to command of temper and manners; made to do little services for people about him, and sedulously taught that a child should be humble and docile. But the young creature is all the while taught stronger lessons by circumstances than can ever come through human lips. He sees that a number of grown persons about him are almost wholly occupied with him, and that it is their business in life to induce him to command his temper and manners. He feels that when he is bid to fetch and carry, or to do any other little service, it is not because such service is wanted, but for the sake of the training to himself. He is aware that all that concerns him every day is a matter of arrangement, and not of necessity; and a want of earnestness and of steady purpose is an inevitable consequence. This want of natural stimulus goes into his studies. I believe no solitary child gets on well with book-learning as a part of the business of every day. The best tutors, the best books, the quietest school-room, will not avail, if the child's mind be not stirred and interested by something more congenial than the grammar and sums and maps he has to study. And every royal child is solitary, however many brothers and sisters he may have older and younger than himself. He has his own servants, his own tutor, his own separate place and people, so that he can never be jostled among other children, or lead the true life of childhood. And so proceeds the education of life for him. He can never live amidst a large class of equals, with whom he can measure his powers, and from among whom he may select congenial friends. He passes his life in the presence of servants, has no occupations and no objects actually appointed to him, unless his state be that of sovereignty, in which case his position is more unfavourable still. He dies at last in the midst of that habitual solitude which disables him from conceiving, even at such a moment, of the state in which "rich and poor lie down together." Such a being may, if the utmost has been done for him, be decent in his habits, amiable in temper and manners, innocent in his pursuits, and religious in his feelings;