THE FORMATION OF CHARACTERS.

Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 3802, 5 March 1881, Page 3

THE FORMATION OF CHARACTERS.

Of the hundreds of people who talk about education every year, scarcely anybody talks so much good sense in so fresh and genial a way as Mr Mundella. Experience has taught him to think about education as it ought to be thought about, less in connection with knowledge than with life and character. According to the old saw. it is not what we know what matters, but what we are. In speaking to the teachers of the Bri- ! tish and Foreign School Society, Mr ! Mundella .reminded them of this—he and all educators desired for the teachers the greatest possible freedom in their teaching; to free them from all unnecessary routine, wishing them to be, so to speak, free men and women endeavoring to impress themselves upon the children and educating their characters as well as their intellects. It may be said that to talk in this way is to invite the teacher to usurp the place that ought to b° filled by the parent. That is a good objection so far as it goes. The answer is that a vast number of parents are unfit to educate character, and it is better that a right bias should be given by the teacher than that it should not be given at all. The bias once imparted, the inclination to what is good propagates itself in the next generation and onwards. No wonder that the inluence of the school teacher in this way should be jealously watched; but it is a wonder, perhaps, or at least an inconsistency, that among those who watch it most jealously should be the clergy of all kinds, who have never held themselves specially bound to leave the education of character to parents, but very much to the contrary.