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    48 Review . ~ Pe $ talozxi on Early Education .

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    they be calculated to lead the child to that faith and to that love from which alone salvation springs , ' *—P . 149 , ' This being the view taken by Pestalozzi of the importance of early cultivation of the affections , no wonder that he endeavoured to advocate an imitation of the spirit of domestic education , whenever that education cannot be obtained by the pupil . May we not observe here , that if our Infant

    Schools must be regarded , when well ; conducted , with pleasure , as an approximation to this idea , the case is lamentably the reverse with the majority of other . schools ? One of two ideas seems , most frequently present to the minds of the patrons of these institutions—the idea of an army , under the discipline and subjection of officers and a military chief , or of . a state under an arbitrary civil government—the notion of a family of brothers or

    sisters looking up to one maternal or paternal head , is the last and most rare conception which education committees seem to recur to . Do we not forget our days of childhood too early ? Are we not in too great haste to lead these little ones from natural to artificial life ? Is not there risk of doing harm in providing them with so many positive excitements and rewards of our own appointing , for proficiency in some species of attainment , and forbearance from some inconvenient faults ? Is it not , at all events , better to

    keep as long as we can to the safer path of the imitation of nature ? But this is no easy matter . True ; and it would lead too far , were we to attempt to shew why it is so . Schools dependent on the personal intelligence , principle , and affectionate and judicious management of children by the teacher , are rare , and till these qualities are more in request , and more widely distributed , it is well thati they are so ; but this is a state of things which every one who wishes to find something more in scholars than a set of beings trained

    to go through certain exercises with method and order , and to learn a few , but a very few , useful things , will desire to see amended . Nothing is more wanted than judicious instruction for schoolmasters and mistresses . They fill an office o f high importance in society ; but one who has imbibed the Pestalozzian spirit cannot but think that they in very few cases possess the range and comprehension of ideas which is desirable . But reverses of fpr 7 tune , often painfully felt , and at the time repiningly borne , are sometimes the means of introducing into this department more gifted , more improvable , and improving spirits . And from idle days and hours of vapid

    intercourse , how noble may be the transition to a field of usefulness like . this ! How full of honour and respectability the character , how dignified and soothing the reflections , of one whose vocation it is to be a doer of good ! And if , even here , selfishness is ever ready to steal in and corrupt our purer f eelings , there may be many a worse remedy than a frequent study of the

    spirit of Pestalozzi ' s writings ; not that critical and merely intellectual study , which is ever on the watch to detect faults of style and arrangement , diffuseness , and a tinge of romantic enthusiasm , but an honest acknowledgement of the pure purpose and exalted views of the writer , and a practical ref erence to t | ie Source whence he himself derived all that is worthy of atten-. tion in his precepts .

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    £ ,

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1828, page 48, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2556/page/48/