PART V LESSONS AS INSTRUMENTS OF EDUCATION I.—THE MATTER AND METHOD OF LESSONS           It seems to me that we live in an age of pedagogy; that we of the teaching profession are inclined to take too much upon ourselves, and that parents are ready to yield the responsibility of direction, as well as of actual instruction, more than is wholesome for the children.   … Continue reading Home Education Volume 1 Pt 5. Ch 1

VIII.—TRUTHFULNESS           It is unnecessary to say a word of the duty of Truthfulness; but the training of the child in the habit of strict veracity is another matter, and one which requires delicate care and scrupulosity on the part of the mother.           Three Causes of Lying—all Vicious.—The vice of lying arises from three causes: carelessness in ascertaining the truth, carelessness … Continue reading Home Education Volume 1 Pt 4. VIII

VII.—SOME MORAL HABITS—OBEDIENCE           It is disappointing that, in order to cover the ground at all, we must treat those moral habits, which the mother owes it to her children to cultivate in them, in a slight and inadequate way; but the point to be borne in mind is, that all that has been already said about the cultivation of habit applies with the greatest … Continue reading Home Education Volume 1 Pt 4. VII

VI.—THE HABIT OF PERFECT EXECUTION           The Habit of turning out Imperfect Work.—‘Throw perfection into all you do’ is a counsel upon which a family may be brought up with great advantage. We English, as a nation, think too much of persons, and too little of things, work, execution. Our children are allowed to make their figures, or their letters, their stitches, their dolls’ clothes, … Continue reading Home Education Volume 1 Pt 4. VI

V.—THE HABIT OF REMEMBERING           Remembering and Recollecting.—Memory is the storehouse of whatever knowledge we possess; and it is upon the fact of the stores lodged in the memory that we take rank as intelligent beings. The children learn in order that they may remember. Much of what we have learned and experienced in childhood, and later, we cannot reproduce, and yet it has formed … Continue reading Home Education Volume 1 Pt 4. V

IV.—THE HABIT OF IMAGINING             The Sense of the Incongruous.—All their lessons will afford scope for some slight exercise of the children’s thinking power, some more and some less, and the lessons must be judiciously alternated, so that the more mechanical efforts succeed the more strictly intellectual, and that the pleasing exercise of the imagination, again, succeed efforts of reason. By … Continue reading Home Education Volume 1 Pt 4. IV

III.—THE HABIT OF THINKING            ‘A Lion’ Operations included in Thinking.—The actual labour of the brain is known to psychologists under various names, and divided into various operations: let us call it thinking, which, for educational purposes, is sufficiently exact; but, by ‘thinking,’ let us mean a real conscious effort of mind, and not the fancies that flit without effort through the brain. This sort … Continue reading Home Education Volume 1 Pt 4. III

II—THE HABITS OF APPLICATION,ETC.           Rapid Mental Effort.—The habits of mental activity and of application are trained by the very means employed to cultivate that of attention. The child may plod diligently through his work who might be trained to rapid mental effort. The teacher herself must be alert, must expect instant answers, quick thought, rapid work. The tortoise will lag behind the hare, but … Continue reading Home Education Volume 1 Pt 4. II

I.—THE HABIT OF ATTENTION           Let us pass on, now, to the consideration of a group of mental habits which are affected by direct training rather than by example.           First, we put the habit of Attention, because the highest intellectual gifts  depend for their value upon the measure in which their owner has cultivated the habit of attention. To explain why … Continue reading Home Education Volume 1 Pt 4. I

PART IV SOME HABITS OF MIND—SOME MORAL HABITS   A Science of Education.—Allow me to say once more, that I venture to write upon subjects bearing on home education with the greatest deference to mothers; believing, that in virtue of their peculiar insight into the dispositions of their own children, they are blest with both knowledge and power in the management of them which lookers-on … Continue reading Home Education Volume 1 Pt 4