Homeschool Fever

The following article was found in Greek for Beginners … By Edward Gustin Coy, and written well over 100 years ago.  In it, the author discusses the value of rote memorization of facts and making use of a child’s active memory.  You can view and then download this entire free lesson book by clicking on the link.

It is true that the memory, being earlier developed than the other faculties and probably more active in childhood than in later life, it is desirable for children to learn many things before they can fully understand them.

But on the other hand, the continued unreasoning exercise of memory is the cause of much of that want of interest and even contemptuous disbelief in all knowledge which we so often meet with in grown men and women. Children as a general rule overflow with curiosity; they can not understand all things, they must be content to take a great deal on trust, but it does not follow from this that they should not be helped and encouraged to understand wherever their faculties admit of it.

The rapid growth of memory is given to them that under its shelter the finer powers of the mind, imagination, and reason, may find room and opportunity for gradual developmentment. If these are not called into exercise, the exercise of the memory itself soon becomes irksome, the mind is stunted, and all intellectual interest dies away.

What has been just said will to a certain extent hold good against those who want no grammars (rote memorization of facts) but would have a boy pick up his classics from his master at school as he might pick up his modern languages from a Swiss bonne at home. The only meaning of this can be that there is to be no systematic teaching of the classics - which is equivalent to saying that a multitude of isolated facts are more easily received and retained in the memory than the same facts classified and arranged. Thus we have again the unreasoning exercise of the memory attended with the further disadvantage that there is no call upon the learner to brace up his mind for strenuous effort. It may however be said that under the direction of his teachers he is to be gradually trained to classify the facts for himself and thus gain a valuable lesson in observation and induction.

If such is the view taken, it seems to fall into the opposite error of demanding too great an exercise of the reasoning powers. A boy may fairly be expected to recognize instances of laws which he has been already taught, but hardly to discover the law for himself. If on the other hand the master first states and explains the law to him, and then points out instances, or asks him to point them out, this is just the old grammar over again only that it is to be taught viva voce by the master instead of being prepared beforehand by the pupil for himself.

I (the author) feel as strongly as any one, over the importance of a boy, especially a young boy, having all his lessons thoroughly catechised into him; and if the alternative lay between a boy’s learning off grammatical rules by rote without explanation and his having them taught to him by the master without book I should certainly prefer the latter. But as a security against the possible inefficiency of masters on the one hand and the probable carelessness of boys on the other I think there can be no doubt that the best plan is the use of a text book to be first explained by the master and then learned by the boys.

Greek for Beginners … By Edward Gustin Coy