GALLERY TEACHING--MORAL AND RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION (part 1)

The taught should see the face of the teacher in these lessons, and
the teacher should see the face of the taught: it establishes a
sympathy between both to the advantage of each. The face is the index
to the mind, and at times shews the intention, even without words.
Some animals can read this index: the horse, the dog, the elephant,
and many of the higher order of animals. Children can always read the
countenance of the sincere, the wise, and the good. Yea! mere infants
can. Reader! Don't smile! were this the time and place, I could
demonstrate these opinions by facts. This is not a book for
controversy and metaphysical disquisition; but for use to teachers.
When the children and teachers see each other, as in the gallery, the
effect is highly beneficial. This may be proved by any teacher. As to
the cause for this effect, it would be out of place to argue it here.
I therefore simply state it is true. Sympathy is a power destined to
be of use in teaching, and hereafter will be better understood.

Many friends to infant education, and casual visitors, having found
these erections in infant schools, have concluded that the children
should always be sitting on them, which is a fatal error, and deprives
the children of that part of the system which legislates for the
exercise of their locomotive powers, such as the spelling and reading
lessons, and the method of teaching object lessons, as described in
another part of this work: the consequence has been, that the schools
have become mere parrot-schools, and the children are restless and
inattentive. And this has not been the only evil that has attended a
misapplication of the gallery; for the teachers, for want of knowing
the system properly, have been at a loss how to occupy the time of the
children, and scores of teachers have ruined their own constitutions,
and also the constitutions of some of the children, by the perpetual
talking and singing, which, I am sorry to say, too many consider to be
the sum total of the system: and I may state here, that the children
should never be more than one hour at a time, or, at most two hours,
during the day, in the gallery. All beyond this is injurious to the
teacher, and doubly so to the little pupils. The forenoon is always
the best time for gallery lessons; the teacher's mind is more clear,
and the minds of the children are more receptive. After the children
have taken their dinner they should be entertained with the object
lessons, a small portion of spelling and reading, and the rest of the
afternoon should be devoted to moral and physical teaching in the
play-ground, if the weather will at all permit it. The more you
rob your children of their physical education to shew off their
intellectual acquirements, the more injury you do their health and
your own; and in the effort to do too much, you violate the laws of
nature, defeat your own object, and make the school a hot-bed of
precocity, instead of a rational infants' school for the training
and educating infants. I have been blamed, by writers on the infant
system, for that which I never did, and never recommended; I have been made answerable for the errors and mis-conceptions of others, who have not troubled themselves to read my writings; and, in their anxiety to produce something new and original, have strayed from the very essential parts of the plan, and on this account I am charged by
several writers with being unacquainted with the philosophy of my own
system. I thought three-and-thirty years ago that if I could arrest
public attention to the subject, it was as much as could be expected.
I knew very well at that time that a dry philosophical detail would
neither be received or read. My object was to appeal to the senses of
the public by doing the thing in every town where practicable. By this
method I succeeded, where the other would have failed, but it by no
means followed that I was unacquainted with the philosophy of my
own plans, merely because I preferred the doing of the thing to the
writing about it. Believing, however, that the time has now arrived,
and that the public mind is better prepared than it was then, I have
thought I might venture to go a little more into detail, in order to
remove some well founded objections, which, but for this reason, would
not have existed. The infant mind, like a tender plant, requires to
be handled and dealt with carefully, for if it be forced and
injudiciously treated during the first seven years of its existence,
it will affect its whole constitution as long as it lives afterwards.
There are hundreds of persons who will not believe this, and those
persons will employ mere boys and girls to teach infants. Let them do
so if they please; I simply protest against it, and merely give it as
my opinion that it is highly improper to do so. If ever infant schools
are to become real blessings to the country, they must be placed under
the care of wise, discreet, and experienced persons, for no others
will be fit or able to develop and cultivate the infant faculties
aright. I have felt it necessary to make these remarks, because in
different parts of the country I have found mere children employed as
school-masters and school-mistresses, to the great detriment of the
young committed to their charge, and the dishonour of the country that
permits it. No wise man would put a mere child to break his colts;
none but a foolish one would employ an inexperienced boy to break in
his dogs; even the poultry and pigs would be attended by a person who
knew something about them; but almost any creature who can read and
write, and is acquainted with the first rules of arithmetic, is too
frequently thought a fit and proper person to superintend infants. I
know many instances of discarded servants totally unfit, made teachers
of infants, merely to put them in place; to the destruction of the
highest and most noble of God's creatures! which I contend infants
are. To expect that such persons can give gallery lessons as they
ought to be given, is expecting what will never, nor can take place.
The public must possess different views of the subject; more rational
ideas on the art of teaching must be entertained, and greater
remuneration must be given to teachers, and greater efforts made to
train and educate them, to fit them for the office, before any very
beneficial results can be seen; and it is to produce such results, and
a better tone of feeling on the subject, that I have thus ventured to
give my opinion more in detail. Efficient gallery lessons--efficient
teachers must be made. They do not at present exist in large numbers,
and can only be made by a suitable reward being held out to them, and
by their being placed under the superintendence of experienced persons
acquainted with the art. The art of teaching is no mean art, and must,
sooner or later, take its proper rank amongst the other sciences.
It is a science which requires deep study and knowledge of human
character, and is only to be learned like all other sciences, by much
perseverance and practice. In another work, on the education of older
children, I have given some specimens of gallery lessons; in this I
shall endeavour to give a few specimens of what I think useful lessons
for infants, and shall also try to clothe them in language suited to
the infant apprehensions; and I sincerely hope they may shew in a
plain manner the method of giving this species of instruction to the
children, and that teachers who were before ignorant of it, may be
benefitted thereby. I shall not pretend to give my opinion as to
whether I have succeeded, but will leave this point entirely to the
judgment and candour of my readers; for I know by experience that it
is a very difficult thing to put practice into theory; and although
this may seem paradoxical, yet I have no doubt that many have
experienced the very same results when trying to explain theoretically
on paper what they have with ease practised a thousand times.

These oral lessons on real objects ought to be given in pure, simple,
and plain language, level to the understanding and capacity of
children. It may be well at times to use words of a more difficult
or scientific character; but these should always have the proper
explanation given; the words used most frequently in common life, in
ordinary and proper conversation, ought to be most strongly impressed
on their memories. It may, perhaps, be retorted on me--why then teach
the difficult and scientific names of geometrical figures. The answer
is very simple. Most of them have no other, and where they have I
always give them also, as sloping, slanting, inclined, for oblique.
The geometrical figures are the elements of all forms, and the
simplest objects which can be presented to the young. I have found
them always learned with the greatest ease and pleasure. Pestalozzi, I
have understood, was led to the use of them by observing the wants
of the young mind, in a similar manner that I was myself. This is,
therefore, one of the many coincidences in thought and discovery by
minds wholly independent of each other, which have been directed to
the same subjects. This is an evitable result. If two men look at the
moon, both must see that it is round, bright, and mottled; and if
two minds far apart, turn their attention to similar subjects, the
probability is that their views will coincide. The most powerful mind
will of course make the deepest and simplest discovery.

Object lessons should be given chiefly on such things as fall under
more constant observation and are daily coming before the sight, and
then useful knowledge will be accumulated, and frequently reimpressed
upon the memory by the seeing of the objects.