promise that they will give them, so as to increase their desire more and more, saying to them such words as these: “Come, my dear child, pray diligently that the time may soon come; be pious, and obedient,” etc.
4. It will also be beneficial to tell them how excellent a thing it is to attend schools and acquire learning, for only such become great men, lawyers, professors, doctors, preachers of the Divine word, senators, etc., all of them excellent men, celebrated, rich, and wise, whom the rest of mankind are necessarily bound to honor; likewise, that it is better and more becoming to attend school than to drone away in idleness at home, or run about the streets, or learn bad habits; that learning is not labor, but that amusement with books and a pen is sweeter than honey; and of this amusement children may have a foretaste.[1]It may be useful to put chalk into their hands, with which they may delineate on a slate or on paper, angles, squares, circles, little stars, horses, trees, etc.; and it matters not that these be correctly drawn, provided that they afford delight to the mind. It cannot fail of being beneficial for the child to be accustomed to form letters easily, and to distinguish them. Whatever else can be done to excite in them a love of school ought not to be omitted.
5. Parents, moreover, should endeavor to excite in their
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Locke, Fénelon, Rousseau, and Basedow would also present learning in the guise of amusement. Pestalozzi, however, took the matter more seriously. He said: “I am convinced that such a notion will forever preclude solidity of knowledge; and, for want of sufficient exertions on the part of the pupils, will lead to that very result which wish to avoid by my principle of a constant employment of the thinking powers.”
Madame Necker de Saussure agreed with Pestalozzi. She wrote: “The education that takes place through amusement dissipates thought; labor of some sort is one of the great aids of nature; the mind of the child ought to accustom itself to the labor of study.”
