Читать книгу The Educational Writings of Richard Mulcaster - Richard Mulcaster - Страница 21

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As for boys, it has been set beyond doubt long ago, that they should be sent to school, to learn how to be religious and loving, how to govern and obey, how to forecast and prevent, how to defend and assail, and in short, how to perform excellently by labour the duties for which nature has fitted them only imperfectly. But in the matter of this so desirable a training, two important questions arise; first, whether all children should be put to school without any restraint upon the number, and secondly, if any restriction is needful, how it is to be imposed. In the body politic a certain proportion of parts must be preserved just as in the natural body, or disturbances will arise, and I consider that it is a burden to a commonwealth on the one hand to have too many learned, just as it is a loss on the other hand to have too few, and that it is important to have knowledge and intelligence well adapted to the station in life, as, if these are misplaced it may lead to disquiet and sedition.

There is always danger to a State in excess of numbers beyond the opportunities of useful employment, and this is specially true in the case of scholars. For they profess learning, that is to say, the soul of the State, and it is too perilous to have the soul of the State troubled with their souls, that is, necessary learning with unnecessary learners. Scholars, by reason of their conceit which learning inflames, cannot rest satisfied with little, and by their kind of life they prove too disdainful of labour, unless necessity makes them trot. If that wit fall to preach which were fitter for the plough, and he to climb a pulpit who was made to scale a wall, is not a good carter ill lost, and a good soldier ill placed?

All children cannot get a full training at school, even though their private circumstances admit of it, yet as regards writing and reading, if that were all, what if everyone had them, for the sake of religion and their necessary affairs? In the long period of their whole youth, if they minded no more, these two would be easily learned in their leisure times by special opportunities, if no ordinary means were available and no school nigh. Every parish has a minister, who can give help in regard to writing and reading, if there is no one else.