Samuel Wilderspin

“ If any department in teaching requires knowledge of character more than another it is this. Many a fine child's spirits are broken through the ignorance of teachers and parents in this particular; but for me to lay down invariable rules to manage every child, would be like a person undertaking to describe a voyage to the moon. Every person's own good sense must decide for them according to character and circumstances; and as to rewards, the same discrimination must be used. One child will set much value on a little book, whilst another will destroy it in a day ”

“ I see that the best ground produces the rankest weeds—but not if cultivated. What does not care do for all things in nature, why not then for man? Let him run wild through neglect, and undoubtedly he produces weeds; but this, to my mind, is an argument in his favour, and shews the ground is capable of producing rich fruits. When we study the true nature of his mind, with the same assiduity as we now do study the nature of his body, then will mankind see it in this light, begin at the right end, and cultivate from the first the beautiful faculties of his own species. ”

“ If I would say, shew a child a horse, before you tell it the name of the animal, still more would I urge it on the teacher to let a child see what love, kindness, religion, &c. are, before it is told what names to designate those principles by. If our ignorance as to material things be the result of instructing the children in names, instead of enabling them to become acquainted with things, so, on the other hand, I believe we may account, in the same way to some extent, for virtue being so frequently a mere word, an empty sound, amongst men, instead of an active principle. ”

“ No person who is not qualified to give proper and really useful gallery lessons is by any means fit for a teacher of infants; to learn the mere routine of an infant school is not very difficult, but this will be of no avail if the teacher have not qualifications of a much higher order, which will enable him continually to pour instruction clothed in simple language, into the minds of his pupils; simplicity is the life and soul of gallery teaching ”

“ Let the first sounds of religion which salute the ears of infancy, be that heavenly proclamation which astonished and enraptured the ears of the wakeful shepherds, "Peace on earth and good-will towards men." It was the herald-cry by which salvation was ushered into the world, and surely no other can be so proper for introducing it into the minds of children. I must candidly own, that I have occasionally witnessed a greater desire to teach particular doctrines, than the simple and beautiful truths which form the spirit of religion ”

“ I have traced the progress of delinquency, in actual life, from its earliest stages,—from the little trembling pilferer of the apple-stall, not more than four or five years old, to the confirmed thief of nine or ten years—who had been in gaol three or four times, and was as proud of his dexterity in thieving, and hardihood under punishment, as he could have been of the most virtuous accomplishment, or the most becoming fortitude. The infant thief, conscious of shame, and trembling with fear, will tell you on detection, that "Tommy," or "Billy," some older associate, set him to do it ”

“ Ought not this to entitle me, as respects the education of children, to say such a thing is right, or even such a thing is wrong? The abuse of a plan is no argument against its use. That it has been abused I am well aware,—that the parrot-system has been revived and also applied in infant-schools. It was never intended to injure the young brain by over-exciting it, or to fill the memory with useless rubbish; yet this is done. I cannot help it. I have done and will do my best to prevent such a violation of the very first principles of infant teaching. ”

“ Children. Please, sir, that he would love us again. Teacher. Right. When we love any thing, a dog, or a horse, or a little lamb, it will love us again; for you know, little children, that love makes love, and if you all love one another, and are kind to one another, and never beat or strike each other with any thing, then you will all be very happy, no little children in the world will be more happy, or have prettier smiling faces than you will have; for when we look kind and pleasant we always look pretty, but when we look cross and angry, then we look ugly and frightful. ”

“ When the education which we receive from men does not give scope to that of nature, it is erroneous in its means and its tendency, and enervates both the body and the mind. Nature has her way of rearing men, as she has of healing their maladies. The art of education is to follow her dictates, and the art of education is equally to obey her laws. The ancient inhabitants of the Baleares followed nature in their manner of teaching their children to be good archers, when they hung their dinner aloft by a thread, and left them to bring it down: by their skill in the use of the bow. ”

“ Deprive the children of their amusement, and they will soon cease to be the lively, happy beings, we have hitherto seen them, and will become the sickly, inanimate creatures, we have been accustomed to behold and pity, under the confinement and restraint of the dame's schools. I do not scruple to affirm, that if the play-grounds of infant schools are cut off from the system,—they will from that moment cease to be a blessing to the country. ”

“ Thousands there are among those of whom we have been speaking, who are brought up in as great ignorance of God and religion, as though they had been born in a country where the light of Revelation had never shone—where the glad tidings of salvation have never been proclaimed. With examples of evil continually before their eyes, both at home and abroad, we see and hear its consequences daily in the wickedness with which our streets abound, and in the lisped blasphemy and profanity of those who learn to curse and swear before they can well walk. ”

“ In my humble opinion, children cannot go to a better place for instruction in these matters, or to a place more calculated to teach them the art of pilfering to perfection, than to the theatre, when pantomimes are performed. To say that the persons who write and introduce these pieces are in want of sense, may not be true; but I must charge them with a want of sufficient thought, right feeling and principle, in not calculating on their baneful effects on the rising generation, for whose amusement it appears they are chiefly produced. ”

“ From childhood up to age has this truth been perfecting and strengthening in me, and I have no more doubt that it is a truth, than I have of my own existence. Who can look upon a child without admiring it, without loving it? ”

“ Under the old system of education, I must candidly say, moral treatment has been often altogether omitted, and still more frequently has it been erroneous, and consequently inefficient. Let me ask,—would it promote a child's health to teach it to repeat certain maxims on the benefits resulting from exercise? The answer is obvious. Neither can it be of any service to the moral health of the child, to teach it to repeat the best maxims of virtue, unless we have taken care to urge the practical observance of those precepts. ”

“ Every one knows and feels the difference between that which we call selfishness, and that which is comprehensively termed by the lips of divine truth, the "love of our neighbour." If it must be called self-love, I can only say that it is the proper direction of the feeling which is to be sought.
In the work of moral culture, it will be necessary not only to observe the child's conduct under the restraint of school observation and discipline; but at those times when it thinks itself at liberty to indulge its feelings unnoticed. ”

“ It is to the heart we must turn our attention in the moral treatment of children. We must carefully endeavour to elicit and train out the moral feelings implanted within; and to awaken the conscience to the approval of good, and the dislike and detestation of evil. Another grand object of the master or mistress of an infant school, is, therefore, to win their love, by banishing all slavish fear. They are to be invited to regard their teacher, as one who is desirous of promoting their happiness, by the most affectionate means—not only by kind words, but by kind actions ”

“ The culpability of many parents is beyond dispute. They not only omit to set their children good examples, and give them good advice, but, on the contrary, instil into their minds the first rudiments of wickedness, and lead them into the paths of vice. Their homes present scenes which human nature shudders at, and which it is impossible truly to describe. There are parents who, working at home, have every opportunity of training up their children "in the way they should go," if they were inclined so to do. ”

“ Each creation of the most High is truly wonderful, and worthy of our constant study. We may learn lessons of the truest wisdom from the meanest leaf or insect, if we would regard it as one of His works. But how much more may be learnt, and what an amount of useful instruction may be gained, by a study of the finite mind, the highest work in creation. ”

“ Let us now for a few moments consider how great a blessing an infant school is, even when regarded as a mere asylum to take charge of the child's bodily welfare. I have mentioned before, that the poor are unable to take that care of their children which their tender age requires, on account of their occupations; and have shewn, that it is almost certain, that the children of such persons will learn every species of vice. But there are other kinds of dangers which more immediately affect the body, and are the cause of more accidents than people in general imagine. ”

“ Words appeal only to the understanding, and frequently pass away as empty sounds; but kind actions operate on the heart, and, like the genial light and warmth of spring, that dispels the gloom which has covered the face of nature during the chilly season of winter, they disperse the mists which cold and severe treatment has engendered in the moral atmosphere. ”

“ In some counties children will, in spring and summer, run after a carriage with flowers upon a long stick, thrusting it in the coach or the faces of the travellers, begging halfpence, which habit had been taught them by the same injudicious means.
The most virtuous and pious of men, on looking back to their early lives, have almost invariably confessed that they owe the first seeds of what is excellent in them, to the blessing of God, on the instruction and example of their parents, and those around them in the years of their childhood. ”

“ Gentlemen, I have reason to believe, that the offences for trial on this occasion, are rather less than usual at this season, and, to whatever the diminution of crime may be ascribed, I cannot forbear earnestly to press upon your attention, a constant perseverance in two things, which, above all others, are calculated to diminish crime,—the first is an unremitted attention to the education of the children of the poor, and of all classes of society, in the principles of true morality and sound religion ”

“ With regard to National Schools, I must say, there is too much form, and too little of the spirit of instruction to be found in their management: the minor faculties are attended to in preference to the higher ones; it is the memory alone which is called into action; the understanding is suffered to lie in a state of torpid inactivity.
Their lessons, their plan of using them, and their discipline altogether, are of that monotonous nature, that the children always seem to me to be dosing over them. ”

“ Such, indeed, is the opinion of the unfitness of females for the occupation of teaching, in Scotland, that in many places the very idea of it is scouted. The people of that country have scarcely heard of a school-mistress, even for the youngest children; and certain it is, that education is much better conducted in Scotland than in most other places. If the minds of children are to be cultivated, and a firm and decided tone given to their characters, say they, what can be the use of sending them to a school conducted by a woman only? ”

“ The more I was opposed, the more were my energies lighted up and strengthened; opposition always sharpened my faculties, instead of overcoming and depressing me. The whole gradually prospered from the first, under every disadvantage and notwithstanding the strenuous efforts of the short-sighted and bigoted. These things laid my first patrons prostrate, and the Society of great names which followed, was soon dissolved. Every effort was made by the enemies of true training and education, to crush the thing in the bud, and not only the thing, but also the man who developed it and worked it out. ”

“ In the one case we should find a mind, uninformed and uncultivated, but of a vigorous and masculine character, grasping the little knowledge it possessed, with the power and right of a conqueror; in the other, a memory occupied by a useless heap of notions,—without a single opinion or idea it could call its own,—and an understanding indolent and narrow, and, from long-indulged inactivity, almost incapable of exertion. ”

“ Let any one in the evening visit the homes of the labouring class in a poor neighbourhood, and he will find, in many cases, a barely-furnished room, a numerous family of small children,—perhaps forgetting the pangs of hunger in the obliviousness of sleep,—a wife, with care-worn features, sitting in solitary wretchedness, ruminating on wants she knows not how to supply—namely, clothes and food for her children on the morrow, and on debts which she has no means of discharging. ”

“ Sir John Sinclair, rose, and in addressing Mr. Wilderspin, said, that he was astonished with the results of five weeks training in these perfect infants. He had never seen a greater prodigy. He too had had his prejudices—his doubts of the possibility of infant education; but these doubts had now vanished, and for ever. The arrangements for bodily exercise, connected with mental and moral improvement, especially delighted him. He was amused as well as instructed by the well-applied admixture of diverting expedients to keep the children alive and alert. ”