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    Untitled Article

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    plying , what i& required . In literary history , moreover , what teacher could put into thehands of an ordinary class of pupils so lengthy , expensive , and , nevertheless , unfinished a work as that of Dunlop on the Roman Literature ? or , to instruct them in the constitutional history of their own country , the work of the late Professor Millar , valuable as it is as a general treatise , and

    for the petusal of adult readers ? We repeat that a series of works on these and similar branches of study , written expressly as introductions for youth , is a great desideratum in English literature—a desideratum which , we fear , judging from the numbers already published , defective as many of them are in simplicity of detail , the avoidance of unnecessary technicalities , and in perspicuity of language—perspicuity , that is , considered relatively to the understanding of youth—the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge is not likely to supply . In the absence of original treatises , something , we believe ,

    might be done by translations from German authors , whose literature , in regard to elementary works , is much richer than our own . The publication of such works would be highly favourable to the promotion of knowledge , not only in our schools , but in our academies also . The method of lecturing whicn prevails in the latter , we do not deem the best fitted to secure the objects at which the professors aim . A lecture delivered vivd vote may either be

    lightened to by a student , or taken down as well as may be in short hand . If listened to , the impression made on the mind by a diksourse lasting one hour ( the usual length ) on a subject with which the student is generally unacquainted , is too faint and indistinct to secure to him all the benefit that may be desired . And if the lecture forms one of a course , extending , perhaps , through several months , all that the student can retain is at the best a general outline of what has been delivered , and that , perhaps , with ideas not very definite . Should the student endeavour to write the lecture down

    in short hand , he will be so engaged with the mere mechanical exertion of listening and writing , as to derive no advantage in regard to memory from the instructions of the teacher ; what has been said will be committed to his paper , not to his mind . But , it may be urged , he will have the instructions in nis notes for subsequent perusal . Experience , however , proves that few young men can take from a professor ' s dictation the elements of any science so perfectly as to acquire a thorough comprehension of , and acquaintance with , the subject . In his notes , there will be many obscurities which he cannot clear up , many passages which , being hastily penned , he cannot even

    decipher , many lacuna which he will labour in vain to supply . Follow him from the lecture-room to his study : already jaded with the mechanical and unpleasant task of writing down ; almost disgusted with the subject through the effects of an exercise in which he has been only a machine for the transmission of sounds from the professor ' s tongue to his own papers , he sets himself down , with these disagreeable associations , to pore over a

    blotted and blurred note-book , and at length , by dint of sturdy perseverance , and after failing in many passages , acquires the majority of the ideas intended to be conveyed ; the majority we say , for this is the best that can be supposed . But many a connecting link is irrecoverabl y gone , and many an impenetrable obscurity remains . Week after week the heap of imperfect and unsightly matter accumulates , till the course of instruction is terminated ,

    when he begins to retrace the ground over which he has passed , and by the lapse of time and the weakness of memory , finds not only old but new difficulties besetting him . What a waste of energy and of time—what an unnecessary tax of patience does all this imply ! How much better to put in to the hand of each student a treatise on the branch of study intended in each

    Untitled Article

    Thoughts on Education . 47

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1829, page 47, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2568/page/47/