THEEDUCATIONAL MODERNISM OF LOCKE. T HE late Educational Conference and the

presence in my hostess's library of a very beautiful folio edition combined the other day to make me read Locke's Essay on Education. I suppose we are most of us vaguely aware that Locke, with his original and in many ways very modern mind, was beforehand with society in the matter of edu- cation as in other things, but the • comparative detail in which in 1690 he recommends the Montessori system for the proper bringing up of children is rather startling. On the later phases of education, where we should have expected= the author-of the Essay on the Human:Unicrstanding to be most profound, Locke is, as a matter of fact, rather coin-, monplace. It is upon the health and training- of the child from the time it is an infant in arms till it is six years old that he really has things to say. Hardly less sur- prising is the sympathy with which he writes of children. He hopes that his essay may yet give some small light to those ` whose concern for their dear little ones makes them so irregularly bold that they dare venture to consult their own reason in the education of their children,. rather than wholly to rely upon old custom."

There are those, he says, who have a constitution of body and mind so vigorous and well framed that they are, thus privileged, able to do wonders ; but of all the men we meet with nine-tenths are what they are, good or evil, useful or harmful, by their education :- " The little, or almost insensible, impressions on our tender infancies have very important and lasting consequences ; and there it is, as in the fountains of some rivers, where a gentle application of the hand turns the flexible waters into channels that make them take quite contrary courses ; and by this little direction, given them at first, in the source, they receive different tendencies, and arrive at last at very remote and distant places."

But though the mind, or rather, as Locke holds, the cha- racter, is the principal concern of education, " yet the clay cottage is not to be neglected." In his keenness about health we feel sure speaks a man who was often hampered in the business of his life by a weak constitution and not merely the expert physician. Children should not be too warmly clad, and when their hair has grown need a cap neither by night nor by day. They should be much in the open air and as little as may be by a fire. But mothers are vain and unreasonable :-- " If I should advise him to play in the wind and sun without a hat, I doubt whether it could be borne. There would a thousand objections be made against it, which at last would amount to no more, in truth, than being sunburnt. And if my young master be to be kept always in the shade, and never exposed to the sun or wind, for fear of his complexion, it may be a good way to make him a beau, but not a man, of business."

A child's clothes should be loose, for :-

" Narrow breasts, short and stinking breath, ill lungs and crookedness are the natural and almost constant effects of hard bodices and clothes that pinch."

When he goes on to discuss the child's diet we are as sensible of the different age in which he wrote as in the passage about children getting sunburnt. He inveighs against the English nation, who, he says, eat too much flesh. But even this hygienist, who is all for brown bread, milk, flummery, apples and fresh fruit, does not suggest that a child might have any other drink than small beer ! Apparently it was the theory ..at that time that fruit was very bad for children and- they were kept almost wholly from it, but, as Locke remarks, our first parents ventured Paradise for it, and this strictness is apt to make children " the more ravenous after it." Moral training must be begun very early. The mind must be made pliant to reason when it is most tender :- "Parents being wisely ordained by nature to love their chil- dren, are very apt, if reason watch not that natural affection very warily ; are apt, I say, to let it run into fondness. They love their little ones, and it is their duty ; but they often with them cherish their faults too. They must not be crossed, forsooth ; they must be permitted to have their will in all things ; and they being in their infancies not capable of great vices, their parents think they may safely indulge their little irregu- larities, and make themselves sport with that pretty perverse- ness, Which they think well enough becomes that innocent age. The fondling must be taught to strike, and call names ; must have what he cries for, and do what he pleases. Thus parents, by humouring and cockering them when little, corrupt the prin- ciples of nature in their children, and wonder afterwards to taste the bitter waters, when they themselves have poisoned the fountain.

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He had the will of his maid before he could speak or go ; he had the mastery of his parents ever since he could prattle ; and - why, now he is grown up, is stronger and wiser than he was then, why now of a sudden must he be restrained and curbed ? Why must he at seven, fourteen or twenty years old; lose the- privilege that the parents' indulgence, till then, so largely, allowed him ? Try it in a dog, or a horse, or any other creature.

If the child must have grapes, or sugar-plums when he has a mind to them, rather than- make the poor bUby cry or be out of humour ; why, when he is grown up, must he not be satisfied' too, if his desires carry him to wine or women ? They are - objects as 'suitable to the longing of twenty-one or more years. as what he cried for when little was to the inclination of a Mind.'

. But the. way of harshness is worse. With obvious excep- . tions,. into which, he goes in great detail, we must judge children's mental processes by our own, especially must we be careful not to abase and break their spirits, be too strict with them, for " so they lose all their vigour and industry."

" For extravagant young fellows, that have liveliness and spirit, come sometimes to be set_right, and so make able and great men ; but dejected minds, timorous and tame, and low spirits, are hardly ever to be raised, and very seldom attain to anything. To avoid the danger that is on either hand is the great art ; and he that has found a way how to keep up a child's spirit, easy, active and free ; and yet, at the same time, to restrain him from many things he has a mind to and to draw him to things that are uneasy to him ; he, I say, that knows how to reconcile these seeming contradictions, has, in my opinion, got the true secret of education. The usual lazy and short way by chastisement, and the rod, which is the only instrument of government that tutors generally know, or over think of, is the most unfit of any to be used in education ; because it tends to both these mischiefs."

We have yet a further evil to trace to the rod (for the rod the modern reader may substitute punishment in general), and that is that, owing to the child's associative habits of mind, the punishments are bound to get mixed up and confused with the occupations—lessons, for instance —with which they are generally associated. Locke would have no punishment used at all, except as an absolutely last resource. He would work instead. , upon the circumstance that children, earlier than we think, are very sensitive to praise or condemnation and find a pleasure in being esteemed and valued, especially by their parents. If we work upon this characteristic, we shall find that they set great store by being " in a state of reputation " and can be shamed out of their faults. But in this affair of working on the herd instinct and by means of the force of public opinion, Locke touches upon the difficulty which seemed always to haunt seventeenth- century parents :- " The great difficulty here is, I imagine, from the folly and perverseness of servants, who are hardly to be hindered from crossing herein the design of the father and mother. Children, discountenanced by their parents for any fault, find usually a refuge and relief in the caresses of those foolish flatterers, who thereby undo whatever the parents endeavour to establish.

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But how this inconvenience from servants is to be remedied I must leave to parents' care and consideration. Only I think it of great importance ; and that they are very happy, who can get discreet people about their children."

Children should be guided with a light hand. " All their innocent folly, playing and childish actions " should be left as far as possible free and unrestrained and treated with the greatest allowance :- " If these faults of their ago, rather than of the children themselves, were, as they should be, left only to time, and imitation, and riper years to cure, children would escape a good deal of misapplied and useless correction."

Their " gamesome humours " ought to be encouraged as tending to keep up their spirit and improving their strength and health, and we ought to consider the general art of education to be the making of all they have to do, sport and play too. Like Mme. Montessori, he would have each

individual child carefully studied. As for their carriage, the company they are in will most influence that, for we mist never forget .that children, and men too, " do most

by example " :—

" We are all a sort of chameleons, and still take a tincture from things near us ; nor is it to be wondered at in children, who better understand what they see than what they hear."

And here again is a great mischief that comes by servants to children :— " They frequently learn, from ill-bred, or debauched .servants, such language, untowardly tricks and vices, as otherwise they possibly would be ignorant of all their lives. It is a hard matter wholly to prevent this mischief. You will have very good luck if you never have a clownish or vicious servant, and if from them your children never get any infection."

How curious an insight this gives into the domestic life of the time. He goes on to warn the parent that the servants will give children wine and spirits. When the time comes for lessons proper, Locke would behave with all the wariness of the most competent Montessorian :— " None of the things they are to learn should ever be made a burden to them, or imposed on them as a task. Whatever is so proposed, presently becomes irksome ; the mind takes an aver- .awn to-it, though before it were a thing of delight or indifferency.

Let a child be but ordered to whip his top at a certain time every day, whether he has, or has not a mind to it : lot this be but required of him as a duty, wherein he must spend so many hours morning and afternoon, and soo whether lie will not be tired of any play at this rate."

They should seldom be put about doing even those things you have got an inclination in them to, but when they have a mind and disposition to it. He (the adult) that loves reading, writing, music, etc., finds yet in himself certain seasons wherein those things have no relish to him ; and, if at that time he forces him- self to it, he only pothers and wearies himself to no purpose. So it is with children. This change of temper should be carefully observed in them, -and the favourable seasons of aptitude and inclination be heedfully laid hold of ; and if they are not often enough forward of themselves, a good disposition should bo talked into them, before they bo sot upon any thing.

By this means a great deal of time and tiring would be saved : for a child will learn three times as much when ho is in tune, as he will with double the time and pains, when he goes awkwardly or is dragged unwillingly to it. If this were minded as it should, children might be permitted to weary themselves with play, and yet have time enough to learn what is suited to the capacity of each age."

Above all, he goes on, curiosity should be carefully cherished in children. " It is the great instrument which Nature has provided to remove that ignorance they were born with." But we must take care not to confound his understanding with explanations that are above it. Mark what his mind aims at in a question and not what words he expresses it in. Satisfy his curiosity with fit answers and " he may be led on further than perhaps you could imagine," " for knowledge is to the understanding what light is to the eye and children are pleased and delighted with it exceedingly." And the philosopher goes on to say how careful .we should be to treat childish questions civilly and begs the reader to imagine himself in Japan, and what strange questions he would ask, questions that to a supercilious or incon- siderate Japanese would seem very idle and impertinent ; and yet they might be things that it was very necessary for him to know, and he should consider how glad he would be if he found a complacent and courteous Japanese who would answer him civilly. We wonder if Froebel and Pestalozzi and Mme. Mon- tessori were aware of their forerunner ? Locke's testi- mony on their principles is, of course, very valuable, and his priority takes away nothing from the glory of the later pedagogues. For . they systematized and made applicable what were only inspired guesses—guesses mixed, moreover, with other hypotheses which were not so wise. Thus they played the part which metaphysicians say Reason plays in human affairs—Reason is a selector among notions and afterwards an arranger of the selected material so that it can be applied to life or to branches of learning other than that in which it originated. A, W.-E.