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PREFACE TO LONDON EDITION.

THESE Hints on Home Training and Teaching (although it is hoped they may be of use to governesses and private tutors) are addressed also to parents.

The increased educational opportunities now afforded to girls and women justify the belief that in the next generation mothers will take a large part in the teaching and training of the young, at all events in the middle classes; and, even where parents have not the leisure or the desire to superintend in detail the studies of their children, they can go far to form in them those habits which constitute the foundation of their intellectual as well as their moral future, and can assist the day-school or the private tutor by an influence always most valuable, when wise. To enable parents thus to contribute to the training of their children, is one of the objects of this treatise.

It need scarcely be said that the following pages make no claim to be called an exhaustive book. They contain little more than the results of the Author's observation in the training of his own children, supplemented by experience in class-teaching and in the examination of pupils of every age. During a long professional career many books on education have been of course studied and assimilated, such as the instructive and stimulating works on "Educational Reformers" and "Practical Educationalists" by Mr. Quick and Mr. Leitch, and the suggestive though uneven treatise by Mr. Herbert Spencer. To these and others the Author doubtless owes unconscious debts, but more especially to Stowe's "Training System." In spite of many exaggerations and some mistakes (inevitable for every enthusiast), that book is likely to retain for many years a very great value for all teachers. The interesting work by the Baroness Marenholtz-Bülow on Froebel's system, and the valuable Lectures delivered by Mr. Fitch before the University of Cambridge, were not studied until after the composition of the rough draft of the book; but the former has helped to put some old truths in a new light; and to the latter the

Author is indebted for several hints about the teaching of special subjects obligations which will be found duly acknowledged as they occur.

Partly to save the space that must otherwise have been devoted to transitions and introductions, and partly to give the book the appearance of being what it really is, viz., a collection of hints, and not a continuous or complete treatise, the Author's remarks are set down disconnectedly, and perhaps in some cases abruptly, the main object being to say as briefly and clearly as possible no more than needed to be said.

Some apology may seem to be required when a single teacher presumes to give even hints on the teaching of so many subjects. But in supervising the miscellaneous curriculum of a large school, the Author has been forced to consider in detail both the theory and practice of many departments of instruction; and hence the area of these "hints," wide though it be, is very little wider than the Author's perhaps too wide circle of professional experiences; which are here set down in the hope that they may enable others to avoid some of the mistakes that he made, and improve on the successes that he thought he had achieved.

EDWARD A. ABBOTT,

LONDON, 1883.

City of London School.

I. MORAL TRAINING.

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MAN has been described as a bundle of habits; and Bacon tells us that, whatever may be our sentiments and professions, it is habit that dictates our actions: "Men's thoughts are much according to their inclination; their discourse and speech according to their learning and infused opinions; but their deeds are after as they have been accustomed."

The business of the trainer of children is to mould them for right action by creating in them good habits.

2. THE FORMATION OF HABITS.

Habits are formed by the repetition of actions; and therefore in deciding whether this or that action is good for children, we must constantly ask ourselves not only, "Is the action good in itself?" but also, "Suppose this action, by repetition, to develop a habit; will the habit be a good one?"

It is a pleasure to healthy children to move and to act; and it must be the trainer's object not to suppress action, but to regulate it with a view to producing good habits.

As Nature supplies a plant with influences from earth, sun, and air, all tending to growth, so Nature supplies a child with sights, sounds, objects of touch and taste, inciting him to act, to experimentalize, to attend, observe, and remember, thus stimulating both bodily and mental development.

Put a child to roll on the sea-beach. With the sand to shape at his pleasure, the shells, pebbles, and sea-weed, all close at hand and suggesting countless observations and experiments, he cannot be in a better school. Shut up the same child within the four walls of a room, and his growth will be retarded, because you have deprived him of Nature's gifts.

All children bred up in towns are to some extent thus imprisoned; and they require a kind of interpreter to represent Nature, as it were, to them, and to supply them with substitutes for the gifts from which they are excluded. Even for children in the country Nature does not always suffice without the intervention of some kind selecting hand. The gifts of Nature are sometimes too vast, too distant, too complex, and too similar to come within the compass of a child's observation and discrimination. Nature gives, but it is the business of the trainer to select such of her gifts as may be near, distinct, and suggestive. What is called the system of Froebel is based upon the recognition of the importance of Nature's influence in the training of the young, the part which may be played by the trainer in the selection

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of her "gifts." For example, he lays it down—and the precept seems in accordance with common sense- -that children should first be presented with opposites, e. g. yellow and blue, treble and bass, rough and smooth, hard and soft, because contrast naturally appeals most powerfully to the infant perception. Afterwards he would present the intermediate objects which connect these opposites, showing the child, for example, the different colors of the rainbow which lie between the yellow and blue, and, as it were, unite and reconcile them so as to exhibit what he calls the Law of Reconciliation. For details of Froebel's gifts the reader is referred to special works upon his system; but it must be borne in mind that no toys of this kind, and no system of any kind, can supply a substitute for common sense and observation of Nature's rules on the part of the trainer.

3. HABITS FORMED BY IMITATION.

It is well known that children will imitate irrational objects of every kind, from ducks to steam-engines; but few recognize the very great extent to which they unconsciously imitate their elders in voice, manner, temper, and in a thousand other minute matters which go towards the formation of habits.

Where parents undertake the training of their children there is a special likelihood of imitation, because, in many cases, the latter will have a physical predisposition for the habits of the former. Those, therefore, who are hasty, careless, unobservant, slovenly, hot-tempered, and the like, ought not to be surprised if these habits are reproduced in their children. To come to a smaller matter as an instance, no amount of scolding or teaching is likely to induce a child to attach sufficient importance to writing legibly and carefully, if he constantly sees his father or mother producing an illegible scrawl.

It is in part for this reason that children taught in a school are, for the most part, more orderly and neat in their handwriting and schoolwork than those who are taught at home. At school there is generally a supply of methodical, orderly pupils, whose work can serve as a pattern for the rest, and the less methodical are more influenced by the sight of what is actually done by their school-fellows than by general exhortations about order and neatness. Another reason is, that parents—and, in a less degree, governesses and private tutors-because they are in sympathy with their pupils and "understand what they mean "--often pass too indulgently over omissions, slips, and slight errors of eccentricity, which would be more wholesomely and justly criticised if contrasted with the better work of other children of their own age.

Although, therefore, there are very great advantages in early home training where it can be given regularly and thoroughly, yet parents and private tutors will do well to be on their guard against the special dangers of inexactness and slovenly incompleteness.

4. THE HABIT OF ATTENTION.

Of all habits, the most valuable, both intellectually and morally, is, the habit of attention.

In their religious rites the Romans, the conquerors of the world, were wont to enforce attention by saying to bystanders, "Do this "— meaning, "Do what you are doing, and nothing else"; and it is by the habit of doing what one is doing, or, in other words, by attention, that worlds and difficulties are conquered. This habit can be encouraged even in the very youngest; but it is too often discouraged, especially in the children of the richer classes, by an injurious multiplicity of toys and distractions.

On this point I should be glad to quote some quaint remarks by a teacher of considerable experience, on whose judgment I place great reliance. His illustrations deal mainly with common things, and are set down in a familiar style that may seem to some a little too familiar for publication, and to others occasionally savoring of hyperbole. But, without asking my readers to pin their faith on every one of his opinions, I believe they will generally be found to contain much that is fresh and suggestive. As I shall have frequent occasion to quote him, may be well to give him, both here and elsewhere, the title of "Preceptor." It will be seen that he is vehement against the evil of distracting young children, and he begins from the very youngest.

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"Give," he says, "a baby a ball, and he will begin to study it as Nature dictates. He will look at it, feel it, turn it, squeeze it, suck it, smell it, throw it away, and crawl after it for a second study. All this while he is a Student in the University of the World, and under the supervision of the best of private tutors, Experience. Every faculty is being naturally exercised; through every avenue knowledge is being naturally and pleasurably acquired. Let the student alone, then. You did your part when you gave the child the ball, making yourself the Interpreter between Nature and Nature's student. Now suffer Nature to do her work. You cannot improve upon it.

"But now suppose a couple of kind, well-meaning aunts break in upon the happy and interested child, one shaking a silver rattle in his ear, and the other pushing before him a big white horse or a bleating sheep; and simultaneously let two or three elder cousins or friendly visitors attract his attention by various noises and gestures of endearment. At once the spell of interest is broken. The little creature looks from one to the other, distracted but not attracted, bewildered but not pleased. How happy could I be with either!' he would say if he were old enough. But not being old enough, he must endure the consequences of the misplaced kindness of his friends-consequences not quite so transient as they seem! His first voyage of discovery has been rudely interrupted, and the poor little adventurer returns laden with a cargo of nothing. Nay, rather say a cargo of something worse than nothing. For instead of helping the child to implant in his own

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