§ 4. But there is good reason why Mulcaster should not be forgotten. When we read his books we find that wisdom which we are importing in the nineteenth century was in a great measure offered us by an English schoolmaster in the sixteenth. The latest advances in pedagogy have established (1) that the end and aim of education is to develop the faculties of the mind and body; (2) that all teaching processes should be carefully adapted to the mental constitution of the learner; (3) that the first stage in learning is of immense importance and requires a very high degree of skill in the teacher; (4) that the brain of children, especially of clever children, should not be subjected to “pressure”; (5) that childhood should not be spent in learning foreign languages, but that its language should be the mother-tongue, and its exercises should include handwork, especially drawing; (6) that girls’ education should be cared for no less than boys’; (7) that the only hope of improving our schools lies in providing training for our teachers. These are all regarded as planks in the platform of “the new education,” and these were all advocated by Mulcaster.
§ 5. Before I point this out in detail I may remark how greatly education has suffered from being confounded with learning. There are interesting passages both in Ascham and Mulcaster which prove that the class-ideal of the “scholar and gentleman” was of later growth. In the fifteen hundreds learning was thought suitable, not for the rich, but for the clever. Still, learning, and therefore education, was not for the many, but the few. Mulcaster considers at some length how the number of the educated is to be kept down (_Positions_, chapp. 36, 37, 39), though even here he is in the van, and would have everyone taught to read and write (_Positions_, chapp. 5, 36). But the true problem of education was not faced till it was discovered that every human being was to be considered in it. This was, I think, first seen by Comenius.
With this abatement we find Mulcaster’s sixteenth-century notions not much behind our nineteenth.
§ 6. (1 & 2) “Why is it not good,” he asks, “to have every part of the body and every power of the soul to be fined to his best?” (_PP._, p. 34[49]). Elsewhere he says: “The end of education and train is to help Nature to her perfection, which is, when all her abilities be perfected in their habit, whereunto right elements be right great helps. Consideration and judgment must wisely mark whereunto Nature is either evidently given or secretly affectionate and must frame an education consonant thereto.” (_El._, p. 28).