Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects | Page 4

It has been demonstrated that the
only useful reformatories are those which diminish the criminal's
liberty of action as little as possible, require him to perform productive
labour, educate him for a trade or other useful occupation, and offer
him the reward of an abridgment of sentence in return for industry and
self-control. Repression and compulsion under penalties however
severe fail to reform, and often make bad moral conditions worse.
Instruction, as much freedom as is consistent with the safety of society,
and an appeal to the ordinary motives of emulation, satisfaction in
achievement, and the desire to win credit, can, and do, reform.
Many schools, both public and private, have now adopted--in most
cases unconsciously--many of Spencer's more detailed suggestions. The
laboratory method of instruction, for example, now common for
scientific subjects in good schools, is an application of his doctrines of
concrete illustration, training in the accurate use of the senses, and
subordination of book-work. Many schools realise, too, that learning by

heart and, in general, memorising from books are not the only means of
storing the mind of a child. They should make parts of a sound
education, but should not be used to the exclusion of learning through
eye, ear, and hand. Spencer pointed out with much elaboration that
children acquire in their early years a vast amount of information
exclusively through the incessant use of their senses. To-day teachers
know this fact, and realise much better than the teachers of fifty years
ago did, that all through the school and college period the pupils should
be getting a large part of their new knowledge through the careful
application of their own powers of observation, aided, indeed, by books
and pictures which record the observations, old and new, of other
people. The young human being, unlike the puppy or the kitten, is not
confined to the use of his own senses as sources of information and
discovery; but can enjoy the fruits of a prodigious width and depth of
observation acquired by preceding generations and adult members of
his own generation. A recent illustration of this extension of the method
of observation in teaching to observations made by other people is the
new method of giving moral instruction to school children through
photographs of actual scenes which illustrate both good morals and bad,
the exhibition of the photographs being accompanied by a running oral
comment from the teacher. In this kind of moral instruction it seems to
be possible to interest all kinds of children, both civilised and barbarous,
both ill-bred and well-bred. The teaching comes through the eye, for
the children themselves observe intently the pictures which the lantern
throws on the screen; but the striking scenes thus put before them
probably lie in most instances quite outside the region of their own
experiences.
The essay on "What Knowledge is of Most Worth?" contains a hot
denunciation of that kind of information which in most schools used to
usurp the name of history. It is enough to say of this part of Spencer's
educational doctrine that all the best historical writers since the middle
of the nineteenth century seem to have adopted the principles which he
declared should govern the writing of history. As a result, the teaching
of history in schools and colleges has undergone a profound change. It
now deals with the nature and action of government, central, local, and
ecclesiastical, with social observances, industrial systems, and the

customs which regulate popular life, out-of-doors and indoors. It
depicts also the intellectual condition of the nation and the progress it
has made in applied science, the fine arts, and legislation, and includes
descriptions of the peoples' food, shelters, and amusements. To this
result many authors and teachers have contributed; but Spencer's
violent denunciation of history as it was taught in his time has greatly
promoted this important reform.
Many twentieth-century teachers are sure to put in practice Spencer's
exhortation to teach children to draw with pen and pencil, and to use
paints and brush. He maintained that the common omission of drawing
as an important element in the training of children was in contempt of
some of the most obvious of nature's suggestions with regard to the
natural development of human faculties; and the better recent practice
in some English and American schools verifies his statement;
nevertheless some of the best secondary schools in both countries still
fail to recognise drawing and painting as important elements in liberal
education.
Modern society as yet hardly approaches the putting into effective
practice of the sound views which Spencer set forth with great detail in
his essay on "Physical Education." The instruction given in schools and
colleges on the care of the body and the laws of health is still very
meagre; and in certain subjects of the utmost