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 Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow 282.: GRANT'S ARITHMETIC FOR YOUNG CHILDREN AND EXERCISES FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE SENSES GLOBE AND TRAVELLER, 23 OCT., 1835, P. 3 - The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIV - Newspaper Writings January 1835 - June 1847 Part III

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Subject Area: Political Theory
Collection: The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill

282.: GRANT’S ARITHMETIC FOR YOUNG CHILDREN AND EXERCISES FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE SENSES GLOBE AND TRAVELLER, 23 OCT., 1835, P. 3 - John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIV - Newspaper Writings January 1835 - June 1847 Part III [1835]

Edition used:

The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIV - Newspaper Writings January 1835 - June 1847 Part III, ed. Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson, Introduction by Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986).

Part of: Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, in 33 vols.

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Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


282.

GRANT’S ARITHMETIC FOR YOUNG CHILDREN AND EXERCISES FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE SENSES

GLOBE AND TRAVELLER, 23 OCT., 1835, P. 3

This review, containing material important in understanding Mill’s views of education, is of two books by Mill’s friend, walking companion, and colleague in the Examiner’s Office of the East India Company, Horace Grant (1800-59), who wrote a number of elementary textbooks of which these were the first, issued by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. The article, in the “Literary Examiner,” is headed “Arithmetic for Young Children; being a series of exercises exemplifying the manner in which Arithmetic should be taught to young children. [London: Knight, 1835.] / Exercises for theImprovement of the Senses, for Young Children. By the Author of Arithmetic for Young Children. [London: Knight, 1835.]” It is described in Mill’s bibliography as “A notice of Grant’s ‘Arithmetic for young children’ and ‘Exercises on the Senses’ in the Globe of 23d October 1835”

(MacMinn, p. 46).

under the above titles the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge have given to the world the first two works of a series which promises to outweigh in utility all that the Society has yet produced. The appearance of these works amounts to a reform in elementary education.

They are, in fact, the very first works which completely carry into practice, from the earliest commencement of instruction, those principles of teaching which the wisest writers on education have long inculcated, but which have mostly remained barren theories, because no one had submitted to the irksome drudgery of contriving in detail a system of means for carrying the principles into effect.

It has, for instance, been long felt that there are two methods of what is called instruction, which are as remote from each other as light from darkness. One of these is the system of cram; the other is the system of cultivating mental power. One proposes to stuff a child’s memory with the results which have been got at by other people; the other aims at qualifying its mind to get at results by its own observation, experience, and reflection. One treats a child like a creature that has nothing but a memory, and loads that memory with words, trusting to Providence for enabling the child some time or other to put a meaning into those words; the other considers the child as possessing intelligence as well as memory, and believes it to be the main object of instruction to strengthen that intelligence by judicious exercise. The one (to give a sample of the whole) teaches a child the Latin language by making him learn by rote rules of syntax written in the very language which they are to help him to learn; the other does not even give rules at all till the pupil is sufficiently acquainted with the language to be able to understand them, but makes him learn the theory by seeing it at work in his own practice, and instead of beginning with abstractions, helps him to rise gradually to those abstractions through the means by which they were first arrived at, namely, through an accurate knowledge of the particular facts which they are generalizations of.

The ultimate point, the climax, of the method of cram, has been for the first time reached in our age; it is called the system of Jacotot,1 and surpasses all former specimens of the cram method in this, that former cram-doctors crammed an unfortunate child’s memory with abstract propositions in metaphysics, morals, religion, &c., which could not possibly to them have any meaning; but Jacotot, thinking it very improper to teach a child that certain propositions are truths, without giving them the reasons that prove them to be such, actually makes the unfortunate creature get by rote not only the propositions, but the reasons too!

As Jacotot, by his caricature of the cram system, has brought nobly into relief its intrinsic absurdity, so the author of the works before us (Mr. Horace Grant) has shown still more strongly than any one else the excellence of the system which considers a child as a being endowed with reason—by the admirable specimen which he has afforded of the means of bringing that reason into exercise from the earliest years.—In arithmetic, for instance, hardly any child, and not many grown persons, as at present taught, have any idea of numbers but as marks on a slate, or of the rules of arithmetic but as a set of mechanical operations more like tricks of legerdemain than anything else.

Mr. Grant has, in these works, so chosen the ideas to be presented to the child’s mind, and has presented them in such an order, that the child’s intellect is carried with him throughout; and at every step the child acquires not only a set of sounds, but ideas, and with those ideas the habit of really discovering truths for himself; of using his eyes, his hands, all his perceptive faculties, and his first nascent powers of judgment and reasoning. This is done, not with the absurd purpose of preventing the child from acquiring abstract notions, or inclining him to reject all general propositions of which he cannot be made to understand the evidence. That many truths must be taken upon trust from others is inevitable; but though the child must be told many things which he cannot himself investigate, still those things which he can investigate he should be taught to investigate: those things which are level to his faculties—to all our faculties—he should be accustomed not to get by rote without understanding, but to understand, and not merely to understand, but whenever possible to find out for himself.

We cannot conclude without adding, that we have had the testimonies of several intelligent mothers to the admirable adaptation of these works to the intended purposes, and the delight, as well as permanent benefit, which children derive from them.

[1 ]Joseph Jacotot (1770-1840), French mathematician and pedagogue; his views on the virtues of repetition, constant questioning, and discovery of facts found, for example, in his Enseignement universel, langue maternelle (Dijon: Lagier, 1823), were exposited in Joseph Payne, A Compendious Exposition of the Principles and Practices of Professor Jacotot’s Celebrated System of Education (1830).