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    Otiristianw [ OaQ ( iot ( b ^ uadmire . It may w « U excite wonder } hat ^ sijBple au 4 iiafaralifneansr ^ ffoi ? the purpose oi aiding their children in attaining the true objects of life , should so often have been flisrdgkriled ; % hile ritt % ffdi *^ 1 iaV 0 be ^ h spared to tfmewk- fche w ^ My ad ^ ^ ft ^^ r bfa ; costly education ; whtfe besfve n and earth have beetv ra ^ acfc ^ for iihbiPbvydtaethbfcls of rehdering them leartied or accomplished ; and whiter with tne best ihteritioris , the most injifdicious expedients have been resorted to . —We have been struck with tbe beautiful moral lessons which , in Dr .

    Biber ' s bands , bave be £ n deduced from the most obvious infantine instruction respecting the different bodily organs , their personal use and abuse , their effects upon society ; and still more with the extremely distinct view of the right and wrong of their own feelings , which children upon such a plan are assisted in acquiring . Dr . Biber is surely right in complaining of English education as being in general greatly deficient , as far as respects the cultivation of the-feelings . Much thought is bestowed by sensible parents on the understanding ; and on the showy , mechanical arts by the worldly ; but what

    a child ' s actual state of feeling may be , whether he understands himself , or whether we understand him , is too little regarded . Hence it is that we meet with so many children who cannot do themselves justice , because feeling , with them , has never been drawn out into language , and they have attained no clear ideas—consequently , no clear expressions . Without giving a child actual words , or dictating what its feeling ought to be , a parent , acting as Dr . Biber would recommend , can hardly miss of the pleasure of seeing his offspring not only imbued with good feelings , but ready to communicate them ; to be ashamed of a right movement will , in such a case , be

    almost impossible . Yet how often is a want of early encouragement a bar to the expression of what a child actually feels that is good , as well as evil ! It is perfectly astonishing that this most interesting part of the juvenile character is so little the object , apparently , of the parent's anxious research . Besides , as Dr . Biber says , "If we do not distinguish and acknowledge what may be good in the ehild s feelings , we attack the gfood as well as the bad , and we take upon ourselves an authority over the child ' s nature which does not belong to us , but to a superior influence j and in many cases we attack even the results of that influence / together with the child ' s own perverseness . Thus , the child feels injustice in our proceedings , and he has before his conscience a ground on

    which he may , in his own mind , if not openly , oppose all our efforts , being couscious of good feelings , and seeing they are not acknowledged , but disregarded and condemned , as it were , in a parcel with the others : he begins then to make all the resistance in his power , and , what is much worse , he considers himself as entitled to make this resistance . This is the cause of

    the want of confidence so generally observed in children with regard to their teachers : if teachers and parents understood how to oppose skilfully all the manifestations of a perverse sotjrce of feeling , and at Ike same time to take hold of that pure source trf feeHpg ^ whicH ' likewise eXercis&s its influence over the child , they woiiM be iiityre ^ inthe ' child ' s cbrtficfewc ©/ and more successful in Ms education . " - ^? , 95 . - 1 ' "

    ' ¦' : ¦!* ' .: ' It ill , In passing on to the last four lectures , we are aware of the impossibility of doing justice to a train of thought relative : to the best methods of imparting religious and moral instruction , which is very original , and , to some of our readers ^ may appeal * startling . ¦ All ' , however , will probably coincide in some ' oftheprel ^ ' " — if God himself could so fox condescend to the weakness of man as to

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    818 Biker ' s Lectures on Education .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1828, page 818, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2567/page/18/