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HOME EDUCATION

BY THE

AUTHOR OF NATURAL HISTORY OF ENTHUSIASM

SECOND EDITION

LONDON

JACKSON AND WALFORD

1838

367.

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PREFACE.

IN determining to give my own children the kind of education which I myself received, namely, a domestic one, I soon found the want, not merely of elementary books on particular subjects, such as I could employ with entire satisfaction, but also of any comprehensive system, specifically applicable to the peculiar circumstances of a home course of instruction.

In a word, and with all the respect that is due to the many able and amiable writers who have favoured the world with their thoughts on the general subject of education, I have felt myself compelled, as well to digest the principles of procedure in such a course, as to devise the methods proper for giving them effect.

It is manifest that a scheme of family instruction ought, not merely to comprise what may in some

degree compensate for the unquestionable advantages that attach to schools; but also include the means for improving, to the utmost, those peculiar and inestimable opportunities of moral and mental advancement which are to be found at home, and there only. Not to do this, would be to place ourselves in a position in which private education could not at all sustain comparison with the more usual method.

Now, not to mention some incidental, and yet important recommendations of the plan which we have at present in view, the chief and the most decisive one (moral considerations apart) is the facilities afforded, at home, for bestowing a well-considered culture upon each of the several faculties of the mind; and for doing this in the order of their natural develop

ment.

This point may then be named as the leading characteristic of the system which it is the intention of the present volume to explain.

But a scheme of intellectual culture, conformed to the principle of a careful adherence to the order of nature, in expanding the several faculties, is not to be comprised within very narrow limits. Indeed it is

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evident that, an elaborate operation, extended through ten or twelve years (the five or six years of infancy not included) if it be so far described in its details as to be made available to others, must occupy a good deal of room. In the present volume, after advancing some observations applicable to the home economy in general, I have gone no further than to open the subject of a systematic culture of the mind, by suggesting some methods for eliciting, and for enriching, those faculties that are passive, and recipient chiefly, and which, as they are developed early, demand the teacher's attention before the time when any strenuous labours ought to be exacted from children.

I wish to secure the attention of some who may be my readers, to a point, adverted to more than once in the course of the volume, namely, that although the phrase-Home Education, understood in its primary import, means, of course-the education of a family under the paternal roof; yet, the principles and the methods of instruction propounded in this work are, I hope, such as, with more or less modification, may be applied in all cases where the number assembled around a teacher does not greatly exceed the limits of a large family.

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