Imágenes de página
PDF
ePub

trash to feed upon, when there is better food in the market.

Indecent prints are the most demoralizing of all the forms that the imitative arts can take. No parents give such pictures to their children, but they cannot always prevent them from being seen, because they often appear in shop-windows, at least in London. The mischief which such prints cause depends on the age and temperament of the spectator: that they do much harm in many cases is notorious. An efficient system of police might possibly check the appearance of such prints in windows, though the question between the boundary of decency and indecency would be often violently disputed. With such kind of prints, however, we have no further concern here, than merely to say that they, as well as those mentioned just before, belong to one large class, which comprehends all prints of all kinds that tend to fix in the mind either false fears or false desires. By fears and desires that are false we mean, as to the first, fears which are an indefinite apprehension of some evil, but are not fears of that class which tend to determine conduct in the right way; as to the second, we mean such notions of present or future pleasure as are not founded in truth, and are proved by general experience to cause misery and not happiness.

According to these principles we object to many prints, which appear in religious books, such as representations of the torments of the wicked in a future life; for, though it has been declared that the wicked shall be punished, we do not know the precise mode of the punishment, nor can we, without a gross act of folly, attempt to represent such subjects. On these principles we object also to some of the illustrations which appear

in such books as Mant's and D'Oyley's Bible, though they are all taken from pictures of various degrees of excellence. None of these illustrations, however, are so absurd as some which appear in the older Bibles, and in various books of devotion. Our objection to most pictorial illustrations of this class is, that they are bad for children, because they are either not the representation of a truth, or because they attempt to represent something which cannot be represented; whether or not they are good for older people is not now our business to inquire.

The first proposition laid down was that children should not see prints which tend to mislead or deceive the understanding: the rule may be a very good one, but a wide diversity of opinion may arise upon the interpretation of it. In a recent Number of the Journal of Education (No. XIV. p. 246), a set of historical pictures was recommended as a useful means of fixing great historical events in the memory, and it was there remarked, that Correctness of costume in such prints, or good taste in the drawing, however desirable if they can be easily obtained, are of very subordinate importance. From this remark we entirely dissent: to us such a principle appears likely to be productive of so much mischief as to render null whatever good there may be in the rest of the plan. If we were to make a series of historical illustrations of this kind, and introduce various discordances of dress and circumstance, we should associate in a child's mind a number of things that are not true, with a general fact supposed to be historically true: and the amount of error thus implanted in the mind might be much greater than the worth of the historical fact or facts intended to be fixed

there.

Most persons who have attended to the history of their own minds will probably be able to refer some of their opinions and prejudices of mature age to no better authority or evidence than that of a picture.

The objection here laid down is one that might be extended by some people to all fiction-to all works of fiction, to all fictitious representations, whether on the stage or in pictures. But our remarks here have reference to children only, nor do we mean to say that even they should be excluded from all pleasures which belong to the class of fiction and imitation. We should all lose

much real pleasure if these arts were banished from life, to the dulness and monotony of which they often give a pleasant stimulus and a cheerful variety. As to children, it may be remarked, as it often has been, that they are not so dull as to take all fictions for realities; and that a child, when he reads fables in which animals and even inanimate things act like rational beings, never for a moment supposes that these things are true, while the value of the moral lesson thus conveyed is not diminished by the wrapping in which it is enveloped. We admit, almost in its full extent, the assertion that children are not deceived by fables; but, on the other hand, we think that, as to any moral benefit, if that is the object aimed at in giving lessons in this form, they are just as efficient as a puppet-show, and no more. If they amuse children and do them no harm, that is enough. But the mischief which arises from allowing children to feed their restless curiosity chiefly on fictitious scenes, whether represented in pictures, or exhibited in the shape of novels, or poetry, is perhaps the cause of a large portion of that feebleness of character which is so apparent in our actual society.

There is much difficulty in stating accurately the

VOL. II.

question as to the fictitious part of pictorial representation, we mean when it is designed to teach children something by it: if it is merely intended to amuse, we have no objection to all the absurdities and humours which we see in some of the common caricatures. The more absurd and laughable such things are, the better. But when pictures are systematically presented to children with the professed view of inculcating facts, (which it must be remembered will often incidentally inculcate opinions also,) we cannot be too careful to let our facts be true in all cases where particular truth can be attained; and in all other cases, we should give to our pictures at least that general truth and that reasonable probability which will bear the test of future examination, when the child is grown up into a man, with the recollections in his head which it is the professed design of the scheme to make permanent.*

*

* It is designed by this Society to publish a series of prints illustrative of English History. Most of them will be historical scenes, represented, we believe, as far as is practicable, with regard to the conditions which have been here laid down, as neces sary to the usefulness of the scheme. Some of the prints will contain views of edifices and places of historical celebrity, together with correct views of armour, dress, and other things that illus. trate the subject.

51

ON TEACHING ARITHMETIC.

By A. DE MORGAN.

(From the Quarterly Journal of Education, No. IX.)

We may say of instructors, that each individual ought to have either his own system or no system at all. And this refers not only to those who live by tuition, but to all parents and guardians; and is said, not in ridicule of the various plans which appear every day, but from a conviction that the manner and degree in which the intellects of children develope themselves are so various, that few general rules are applicable: whence he must cease to be the slave of a system, and become its master, who would undertake the management of an infant imind. Very few can place themselves in such a position, as must be evident to any one who has had to instruct a class of boys who have left the nursery and the preparatory school to enter upon subjects which need a little previously-acquired power of thought. They then begin their education, as their parents think, who little guess that the most important part of it is already past, and that they themselves have incurred a greater responsibility than they can ever afterwards lay upon the shoulders of another. If any man who only knew the real meaning of the word education, were told that the rising generation of the richer class was mostly educated at Oxford and Cambridge, he would very much over-estimate the quantity of bread and milk consumed in those ancient institutions.

« AnteriorContinuar »