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    among a-certain number , faithfully and exclusively educated on his principles , a fair average will arise of independent thinkers , — -of men of free intellect , who will do as much for their race as their master has pfrobahly done . Fluent writers , cultivated readers , ready-witted speakers , will probably issue from his schools in abundance ; but for a higher order of intellect than theirs we shall have , we imagine , to look elsewhere . This system has done much by making its disciples *• learn something thoroughly , " which is more

    than can be said for some other modern systems ; and , by doing this , it has opened the way for various and extensive future improvements which were not originally anticipated . Thus it is with all reforms . They do something that was intended ; they fall short of much that was intended ; and they ultimately effect a vast deal that never was intended . Jacotot ' s system will initiate many into the analytical process at the beginning instead

    of the middle part of their course . It will not long or advantageously keep up its practice of repetition , and it will be obliged to limit its rule of reference ; but it will suggest new systems which in their turn will have partial success , and be , in due course , improved upon . As , we feel that we have scarcely sanctioned our remarks sufficiently by extracts from the Exposition of the system before us , we proceed , in justice to it and to ourselves , to give a passage in which the principles of Jacotot and the practice of the old school are contrasted with much force and truth :

    " It may not be amiss to consider , in the first instance , what is generally meant by the expression—learning- a thing" . To learn any thing is evidently not the same as to forget it ; yet we might almost imagine it were , by referring ' a moment to the common plan pursued in the old method . Will any one maintain that , speaking generally , at the end of his seven years or more of school instruction , he actually recollects one thousandth part of the facts that have been brought before him , or the observations that have been addressed to him , connected with the course of tuition ? A considerable portion of all

    this combined mass of information has remained perfectly unintelligible to him , from the first moment that it was introduced to bis notice , to the time at which he throws down his books and enters on the world . He perceived neither the end nor the design of it ; and perhaps even the terms in which it was expressed were never thoroughly comprehended , although repeated incessantly in his hearing " . In illustration of this it may be asked , Does one child in a hundred understand a single page of that book which is put into his hands as soon as he can read , and over which he pores , year after vear , and

    at length by dint of constant repetition , has thoroughly impressed on his memory—the English Grammar ? " ( An exposure of the incomprehensibility of grammar rules follows . ) ** The same remarks will apply , more or less , to many others of the generalities which , in the common course of instruction , a pupil is called upon to learn , but which he cannot , from a want of t !; e information previously requisite , understand . Even , however , supposing that he does actually acquire a number of useful facts , they form in his miud an indigesta moles , a shapeless mass , in which he perceives neither order nor connexion . He has not been taught by the method of Jacotot to refer every

    thing learned for the first time to something previously learned ; and he cannot , therefore , perceive the relation which the latter bears to the former . But there must necessarily exist a relation . Unless the parts of the book committed to memory had been connected with each other in the mind of the author , he would , or . course , have produced a disorderly patchwork of incoherent facts . But this is not the case , at least in any approved work ; and if this be not the case , if it was necessary for the author to see clearly the end and aim of all that he proposed to write in order to convey a connected idea of the subject to the reader , it must be equally necessary for the reader , if he wishes to understand the subject as well as the author , to gain possession of

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    Exposition of Professor Jacotot s System of Education . 265

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    vol . v . u

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1831, page 265, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2596/page/49/