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Untitled Article
forfeiture of reward * , is obvious enough , and the fact has k * en admitted to me by some who have had opportunities , more than myself , of watch * ing the practical effects of the system . But even without such an admission it would be evident , from the combination of all the influences enumerated , that the British system must beget a set of hirelings , who , for hire ' s sake , do the good , and , for hire ' s sake , abstain from evil . But , as if there had been an anxiety to collect , on the score of motfves , all that it
unscriptural , and to put it into practice in those schools , the conversion of the reward tickets into actual rewards , at the expiration of each three months , is celebrated in the following manner : When alt the boys have received the prizes , they are conducted round the school-room by the general monitors , who proclaim that they have obtained their prizes for good behaviour , regular attendance , and improvement in learning ; after walking two or three times round the school , they are permitted to go home / ' Is not this , in plain language , sounding a trumpet before the boys ?
* Now , I would ask my Christian friends—for so , I know , some of the managers and supporters of the British system will permit me to call them , in spite of what I have said against that system— -I would ask them , us Christians , whether they can justify any of these practices individually : the setting aside of genuine moral feeling ; the stimulus of appearing greater and better , one than the other ; the seeking a reward for every performance of duty ; the exemption from punishment through rewards before gained ; the calculation of the total amount of these rewards within a given period ; and lastly , the going round " the coiners " of the school , with the monitors as trumpeter * before them V
Lastly , of the infant schools : and this is the most frightful perversion of all . That any kind of technical instruction should , in vulgar and -unintelligent hands , degenerate into mechanical routine , is less wonderful : but that an institution designed for moral culture only—a place where the child learned nothing , in the vulgar sense of learning , but only learned to live ; that places
designed exclusively for the cultivation of the kindly affections , should by dulness , hardness , and miserable vanity , be converted into places for parroting gibberish ; this is a more wretched example than any other , of the state of mind of the people who subscribe the l , 20 O , 0 O 0 Z . which Lord Brougham is afraid they should prefer to keep in their pockets if more rational views of education were substituted for their own .
• The original design of the infant system lias been entirely perverted ; and , as a natural consequence of this , the system itself has undergone considerable alterations . The first idea , if I am correctly informed , was to collect those children who were below the grasp of the other systems , and to endeavour , at the very tendere&t age , to awaken them to a life of love and intelligence . Positive instruction was not made an
object of , but merely considered as a means for the attainment of that higher object , the developement of the soul in the true life . With this view , the first infant schools were founded , and it seemed as if , from the mouths of babes , the public would receive evidence , to convince them of the errors of long cherished prejudices . But , as it is written > " Thoug h
Untitled Article
510 k * ftm in EdttmtioTt *
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1834, page 510, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2635/page/50/
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