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the entire series of facts which compose the subject as presented to his view . This , however , cannot be done , unless the pupil is taught to connect what he learns one day with all that he has learned , relating to the same subject , on every previous day , from the time when it was first urged on his attention . But the facts forgotten cannot , of course , he connected with those remembered ; though it is easily seen that , were these supplied , the whole subject would be
before the mind . This leads again to the remark previously made , that scarcely a thousandth part of what is learned ( using the word in its conventional sense ) at school , is retained for use in the actual business of Me ; though this , most evidently , was the ostensible purpose throughout the entire course . —If the considerations here adduced be thought to have any weight , they must evince one of two things , —either the positive incapacity of pupils of the usual scholastic age to comprehend any subject in the manner referred
to , or the defectiveness of the customary method of tuition . It would be impossible , in the face of countless instances in opposition , to maintain the former assertion . If a child can be made to commit to memory and
understand one sentence , for instance , there seems no physical obstacle to his doing the same with another , still retaining the first in his memory by constant repetition , and thus connecting the new fact with all that preceded it . This is the method of Jacotot , and he has proved incontestibly both the possibility and effectiveness of such a process . "—As to the fitness of the old systems of education to the purposes for which instruction is valuable" Two or three facts , from which the inferences requisite to the view now
intended may be drawn , are sufficiently obvious to the personal experience of all . After sedulously going through all the manoeuvres of instruction for several years , we come from school to begin our education afresh , according to the particular objects which it may be desirable for us to attain in life . We are in possession , indeed , of a vast number of facts , but tb-ey lie for the most part unconnectedly and incoherently in the mind . Of a number of others we have a loose and vague notion , just sufficient to admit of
consciousness that they exist and have names attached to them , which names we know well , without knowing the things themselves . Still less , however , in these latter fragments of knowledge than in the former do we perceive any sort of
coherency or natural connexion : and upon a review ot the whole of our acquirements during the long time that we have been employed in making them , the feeling which takes full possession of our mind is , that nine-tenths of all that we learned has been forgotten ; that we are well acquainted with no one subject whatever ; and that in nearly every point which most concerns us , we are
" Unpractis'd , unprepar'd , and still to seek . " But , by the system of Jacotot , the faculties of the mind are kept in constant action , from the commencement to the end of the course of instruction ; the first acquisitions , as well as all that succeed , are permanently retained , and accordingly every thing learned once is learned for ever . "—Pp . 2—6 . If we ever learn any more languages , we shall be tempted to begin on this system , which seems to us admirably calculated 10 help such an
achievement . Our readers will judge for themselves of the Synopsis of the Method ; and as for the introduction to Latin , —the Epitome Historiae Sacra , —it can scarcely be too highly praised . The style rises from extreme simp licity ( through a most ingenious choice of parallel idioms ) to a considerable degree of involution ; and ihe pupil is lea on insensibly from phrases so inartificial that he cannot , mistake them , to paragraphs of easy and even
elegant Latinity . This little work , originally compiled by M . L'Hocoond , Emeritus Professor in the University of Paris , is used as an introduction , to the Latin language in nearly a ] I the Jacototian . establishments on the continent . —We give the Synopsis of the method of learning a language ; and
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266 Exposition of Professor Jacotot ' s System of Education .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1831, page 266, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2596/page/50/
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