Edgeworth, Maria

Practical Education

London

Joseph Johnson

1798

Habits of eight or nine years standing cannot be instantaneously, perhaps can never be radically destroyed; they will mix themselves imperceptibly with the new ideas which are planted in their minds, and though these may strike the eye by the rapidity of their growth, the others, which have taken a strong root, will not easily be dispossessed of the soil.

It is sometimes asserted, that the novelty of a school life, the change of situation, alters the habits, and forms in boys a new character. Habits of eight or nine years standing cannot be instantaneously, perhaps can never be radically destroyed; they will mix themselves imperceptibly with the new ideas which are planted in their minds, and though these may strike the eye by the rapidity of their growth, the others, which have taken a strong root, will not easily be dispossessed of the soil. In this new character, as it is called, there will to a discerning eye appear a strong mixture of the old disposition. The boy, who at home lived with his father’s servants, and was never taught to have any species of literature, will not acquire a taste for it at school, merely by being compelled to learn his lessons; the boy who at home was suffered to be the little tyrant of a family, will, it is true, be forced to submit to superior strength or superior numbers at school; but does it improve the temper to practise alternately the habits of a tyrant and a slave? The lesson which experience usually teaches to the temper of a schoolboy, is, that strength, and power, and cunning, will inevitably govern in society: as to reason, it is out of the question; it would be hissed or laughed out of the company. With respect to social virtues, they are commonly among schoolboys so much mixed with party spirit, that they mislead even the best dispositions. A boy at home, whose pleasures are all immediately connected with the idea of self, will not feel a sudden enlargement of mind from entering a public school. He will, probably, preserve his selfish character in his new society; or, even suppose he catches that of his companions, the progress is not great in moral education from selfishness to spirit of party: the one is a despicable, the other a dangerous principle of action. It has been observed, that what we are at twenty, depends on what we were when we were ten years old. What a young man is at college, depends upon what he was at school; and what he is at school, depends on what he was before he went to school. In his father’s house the first important lessons, those which decide his future abilities and character, must be learned. We have repeated this idea, and placed it in different points of view, in hopes that it will catch and fix the attention. Suppose that parents educated their children well for the first eight or nine years of their lives, and then sent them all to public seminaries, what a difference this must make immediately in public education: the boys would be disposed to improve themselves with all the ardour which the most sanguine preceptor could desire; their tutors would find that there as nothing to be unlearned; no habits of idleness to conquer; no perverse stupidity would provoke them; no capricious contempt of application would appear in pupils of the quickest abilities. The moral education could then be made a part of the preceptor’s care, with some hopes of success; the pupils would all have learned the first necessary moral principles and habits; they would, consequently, be all fit companions for each other; in each others society they would continue to be governed by the same ideas of right and wrong by which they had been governed by the same ideas of right and wrong by which they had been governed all their lives; they would not have any new character to learn; they would improve, by mixing with numbers, in the social virtues, without learning party spirit; and though they would love their companions, they would not therefore combine together to treat their instructors as pedagogues and tyrants. This may be thought an Utopian idea of a school; indeed it is very improbable, that out of the numbers of parents who send their children to large schools, many should suddenly be much moved, by any thing that we can say, to persuade them to take serious trouble in their previous instruction. But much may be effected by gradual attempts: ten well educated boys, sent to a public seminary at nine or ten years old, would, probably, far surpass their competitors in every respect, they would inspire others with so much emulation, would do their parents and preceptors so much credit, that numbers would eagerly inquire into the causes of their superiority; and these boys would, perhaps, do more good by their example, than by their actual acquirements. We do not mean to promise, that a boy judiciously educated shall appear at ten years old a prodigy of learning; far from it: we should not even estimate his capacity, or the chain of his future progress, by the quantity of knowledge stored in his memory, by the number of Latin lines he has got by rote, by his expertness in repeating the rules of his grammar, by his pointing out a number of places readily in a map, or even by his knowing the latitude and longitude of all the capital cities in Europe; these are all useful articles of knowledge ; but they are not the test of a good education. We should rather, if we were to examine a boy of ten years old, for the credit of his parents, produce proofs of his being able to reason accurately, of his quickness in invention, of his habits of industry and application, of his having learned to generalize his ideas, and to apply his observations and his principles: if we found that he had learned all or any of these things, we should be in little pain about grammar, or geography, or even Latin; we should be tolerably certain that he would not long remain deficient in any of these; we should know that he would overtake and surpass a competitor who had only been technically taught, as certainly as the giant would overtake the panting dwarf, who might have many miles the start of him in the race. We do not mean to say that a boy should not be taught the principles of grammar, and some knowledge of geography, at the same time that his understanding is cultivated in the most enlarged manner: these objects are not incompatible; and we particularly recommend it to parents who intend to send their children to school, early to give them confidence in themselves, by securing the rudiments of literary education ; otherwise their pupils, with a real superiority of understanding, may feel depressed, and may, perhaps, be despised, when they mix at a public school with numbers who will estimate their abilities merely by their proficiency in particular studies” (II, 504-7)

Contributed by PC Fleming

1 entry in ESTC (1798).

Edgeworth, Maria and Richard Lovell Edgeworth. Practical Education; by Maria Edgeworth, Author of Letters for Literary Ladies, and the Parent’s Assistant; and by Richard Lovell Edgeworth, F.R.S. and M.R.I.A., 2 vols. (London: Printed for Joseph Johnson, in St. Paul's Churchyard, 1798). <Link to ESTC><Vol I, Link to ECCO><Vol II, Link to ECCO>

Thomas Beddoes contributed to chapter 1. Chapters 13-18 by R. L. Edgeworth; the rest by Maria Edgeworth. Based on the Edgeworths' own experiences, and a work by Richard Lovell and Honora Edgeworth, privately printed in 1780. Maria began this work at least as early as 1796.

Bibliographical description and metaphors contributed by PC Fleming. See also Richard Lovell and Honora Edgeworth's Practical Education: or, The History of Harry and Lucy. (Lichfield: Printed by J. Jackson. And sold by J. Johnson, London, 1780). <Link to ESTC>

06/30/2010