The Education of Catholic Girls Part 7

Yet there is unlimited room for reading, and for Catholics a great choice of what is excellent. The modern manner of writing the lives of the Saints has been very successfully cultivated of late years in France, making them living human beings "interesting as fiction," to use an accepted standard of measurement, more appealingly credible and more imitable than those older works in which they walked remote from the life of to-day, angelic rather than human. There are studies in criticism, too, and essays in practical psychology and social science, which bring within the scope of ordinary readers a great deal which with us can only be reached over rough roads and by-ways. No doubt each method has its advantages; the laboriously acquired knowledge becomes more completely a part of ourselves, but along the metalled way it is obvious that we cover more ground.

The comparison of these values leads to the practical question of translations. The Italian saying which identifies the translator with the traitor ought to give way to a more grateful and hopeful modern recognition of the services done by conscientious translations. We have undoubtedly suffered in England in the past by well-meaning but incompetent translators, especially of spiritual books, who have given us such impressions as to mislead us about the minds of the writers or even turned us against them altogether, to our own great loss. But at present more care is exercised, and conscientious critical exact.i.tude in translating important spiritual works has given us English versions that are not unworthy of their originals. [1--An example of this is the late Canon Mackey's edition of the complete works of St. Francis of Sales, which has, unfortunately, to be completed without him.]

There is good service to be done to the Church in England by this work of translation, and it is one in which grown-up girls, if they have been sufficiently trained, might give valuable help. It must be borne in mind that not every book which is beautiful or useful in its own language, is desirable to translate. Some depend so much upon the genius of the language and the mentality of their native country that they simply evaporate in translation; others appeal so markedly to national points of view that they seem anomalous in other languages, as a good deal of our present-day English writing would appear in French. It has also to be impressed on translators that their responsibility is great; that it takes laborious persistence to make a really good translation, doing justice to both sides, giving the spirit of the author as well as his literal meaning, and not straining the language of the translation into unnatural forms to make it carry a sense that it does not easily bear.

The beauty of a translator's work is in the perfect accord of conscience and freedom, and this is not attained without unwearied search for the right word, the only right word which will give the true meaning and the true expression of any idea. To believe that this right word exists is one of the delights of translating; to be a lover of choice and beautiful words is an attraction in itself, leading to the love of things more beautiful still, the love of truth, and fitness, and transparency; the exercise of thought, and discrimination, and balance, and especially of a quality most rare and precious in women--mental patience. It is said that we excel in moral patience, but that when we approach anything intellectual this enduring virtue disappears, and we must "reach the goal in a bound or never arrive there at all." The sustained search for the perfect word would do much to correct this impatience, and if the search is aided by a knowledge of several modern languages so that comparative meanings and uses may be balanced against one another, it will be found not only to open rich veins of thought, but to give an ever-increasing power of working the mines and extracting the gold.

CHAPTER X.

HISTORY.

"We have heard, O G.o.d, with our ears: our fathers have declared to us, 'The work thou hast wrought in their days, and in the days of old.'"--Psalm XLIII.

"Thus independent of times and places, the Popes have never found any difficulty, when the proper moment came, of following out a new and daring line of policy (as their astonished foes have called it), of leaving the old world to shift for itself and to disappear from the scene in its due season, and of fastening on and establishing themselves in the new.

"I am led to this line of thought by St. Gregory's behaviour to the Anglo-Saxon race, on the break-up of the old civilisation."--Cardinal Newman, "Historical Sketches," III, "A Characteristic of the Popes."

Of the so-called secular subjects history is the one which depends most for its value upon the honour in which it is held and upon the standpoint from which it is taught. Not that history can be truly a secular subject if it is taught as a whole--isolated periods 01 subdivisions may be separated from the rest and studied in a purely secular spirit, or with no spirit at all--for the animating principle is not in the subdivided parts but in the whole, and only if it is taught as a whole can it receive the honour which belongs to it as the "study of kings," the school of experience and judgment, and one of the greatest teachers of truth.

In modern times, since the fall of the Western Empire, European history has centred, whether for love or for hatred, round the Church; and it is thus that Catholic education comes to its own in this study, and the Catholic mind is more at home among the phenomena and problems of history than other minds for whom the ages of faith are only vaults of superst.i.tion, or periods of mental servitude, or at best, ages of high romance. Without the Church what are the ideals of the Crusades, of the Holy Roman Empire, of the religious spirit of chivalry, or the struggle concerning Invest.i.tures, the temporal power of the Popes and their temporal sovereignty, the misery of the "Babylonian Captivity," the development of the religious orders--in contemporary history--the Italian question during the last fifty years, or the present position of the Church in France? These are incomprehensible phenomena without the Church to give the key to the controversies and meaning to the ideals.

Without knowing the Catholic Church from within, it is impossible to conceive of all these things as realities affecting conscience and the purpose and direction of life; their significance is lost if they have to be explained as the mere human struggle for supremacy of persons or cla.s.ses, mere ecclesiastical disputes, or dreams of imperialism in Church matters. Take away the Church and try to draw up a course of lessons satisfactory to the minds even of girls under eighteen, and at every turn a thoughtful question may be critical, and the explanations in the hands of a non-Catholic teacher scarcely less futile than the efforts of old Kaspar to satisfy "young Peterkin" about the battle of Blenheim.

What about Invest.i.tures?

"Now tell us all about the war, And what they fought each other for?"

What about Canossa?

"What they fought each other for, I could not well make out.

But everybody said" quoth he, "That 'twas a famous victory."

What about Mentana or Castel-Fidardo?

"What good came of it at last?"

Quoth little Peterkin.

"Why that I cannot tell," said he, "But 'twas a famous victory."

The difficulty is tacitly acknowledged by the rare appearance of European history in the curriculum for non-Catholic girls' schools. But in any school where the studies are set to meet the requirements of examinations, the teaching of history is of necessity dethroned from the place which belongs to it by right. History deserves a position that is central and commanding, a scheme that is impressive when seen as a whole in retrospect, it deserves to be taught from a point of view which has not to be reconsidered in later years, and this is to be found with all the stability possible, and with every facility for later extension in the natural arrangement of all modern history round the history of the Church.

During the great development which has taken place in the study of history within the last century, and especially within the last fifty years, the ma.s.s of materials has grown so enormous and the list of authors of eminence so imposing that one might almost despair of adapting the subject in any way to a child's world if it were not for this central point of view, in which the Incarnation and the Church are the controlling facts dominating all others and giving them their due place and proportion. On this commanding point of observation the child and the historian may stand side by side, each seeing truth according to their capacity, and if the child should grow into a historian it would be with an unbroken development--there would not be anything to unlearn.

The method of "concentric" teaching against which there is so much to be said when applied to national history or to other branches of teaching is entirely appropriate here, because no wider vision of the world can be attained than from the point whence the Church views it, in her warfare to make the kingdoms of the world become the kingdom of G.o.d and His Christ that He may reign for ever and ever. The Church beholds the _rational_ not the _sensible_ horizon of history, and standing at her point of view, the great ones and the little ones of the earth, historians and children, can look at the same heavens, one with the scientific instruments of his observatory, the other with the naked eye of a child's faith and understanding.

But the teaching of history as it has been carried on for some years, would have to travel a long way to arrive at this central point of view.

As an educational subject a great deal has been done to destroy its value, by what was intended to give it a.s.sistance and stimulus. The history syllabus and requirements for University Local and other examinations have produced specially adapted text-books, in which facts and summaries have been arranged in order with wonderful care and forethought, to "meet all requirements"; but the kind intention with which every possible need has been foreseen between the covers of one text-book has defeated its own purpose, the living thing is no longer there--its skeleton remains, and after handling the dry bones and putting them in order and giving an account of them to the examining body, the children escape with relief to something more real, to the people of fiction who, however impossible to believe in, are at least flesh and blood, and have some points of contact with their own lives. "Of course as we go up for examinations here," wrote a child from a new school, "we only learn the summaries and genealogies of history and other subjects."

A sidelight on the fruit of such a plan is often cast in the appreciations of its pupils. "Did you like history?" "No I hated it, I can't bear names and dates." "What did you think of so and so?" "He wasn't in my period." So history has become names and dates, genealogies and summaries, hard pebbles instead of bread. It is unfair to children thus to prejudice them against a subject which thrills with human interest, and touches human life at every turn, it is unfair to history to present it thus, it is misleading to give development to a particular period without any general scheme against which it may show in due proportion, as misleading as the old picture-books for children in which the bat on one page and the man on the other were of the same size.

There must necessarily be a principle of selection, but one of the elements to be considered in making choice ought always to be that of proportion and of fitness in adaptation to a general scheme. It was pointed out by Sir Joshua Fitch in his "Lessons on Teaching" (an old-fashioned book now, since it was published before the deluge of "Pedagogics," but still valuable) that an ideal plan of teaching history to children might be found in the historical books of Holy Scripture, and in practice the idea is useful, suggesting that one aim should be kept in view, that at times the guiding line should contract to a mere clue of direction, and at others expand into very full and vivid narrative chiefly in biographical form. The principle may be applied in the teaching of any history that may be given to children, that is to say, in general, to Sacred history which has its own place in connexion with religious teaching, to ancient history within very small limits, to Greek and Roman history in such proportion as the years of education may allow, and to the two most prominent and most necessary for children, the history of their own country and that of modern Europe directed along the lines of the history of the Church.

There are periods and degrees of development in the minds of children to which correspond different manners of teaching and even different objects, as we make appeal to one or other of the growing faculties. The first stage is imaginative, the second calls not only upon the imagination and memory but upon the understanding, and the third, which is the beginning of a period of fruition, begins to exercise the judgment, and to give some ideas concerning principles of research and criticism.

The first is the period of romance, when by means of the best myths of many nations, from their heroic legends and later stories, the minds of children are turned to what is high and beautiful in the traditions of the past, and they learn those truths concerning human life and destiny which transcend the more limited truths of literal records of fact. In the beginning they are, to children, only stories, but we know ourselves that we can never exhaust the value of what came to us through the story of the wanderings of Ulysses, or the mysterious beauty of the Northern and Western myths, as the story of Balder or the children of Lir. The art of telling stories is beginning to be taught with wonderful power and beauty, the storyteller is turning into the pioneer of the historian, coming in advance to occupy the land, so that history may have "staked out a claim" before the examining bodies can arrive, in the dry season, to tread down the young growth.

The second period makes appeal to the intelligence, as well as to the imagination, and to this stage belongs particularly the study of the national history, the history of their own race and country; for English girls the history of England, not yet const.i.tutional history, but the history of the Const.i.tution with that of the kings and people, and further the history of the Empire. To this period of education belong the great lessons of loyalty and patriotism, that piety towards our own country which is so much on the decline as the home tie grows feebler.

We do not want to teach the narrow patriotism which only finds expression in antagonism to and disparagement of other countries, but that which is shown by self-denial and self-sacrifice for the good of our own. The time to teach it is in that unsettled "middle age" of childhood when its exuberant feeling is in search of an ideal, when large moral effects can be appreciated, when there is some opening understanding of the value of character.

If the first period of childhood delights in what is strange, this second period gives its allegiance to what is strong, by preference to primitive and simple strength, to uncomplex aims and marked characters; it appreciates courage and endurance, and can bear to hear of sufferings which daunt the fastidiousness of those who are a few years older; perhaps it can endure so much because it realizes so little, but the fact remains true. This age exults in the sufferings of the martyrs and cannot bear the suggestion that plain duties may be heroic before G.o.d.

There is a great deal that may be done for minds in this period of development by the teaching of history if it is not crippled in its programme. To make concrete their ideals of greatness in the right personalities--a work which is as easily spoiled by a word out of season as a fine porcelain vase is cracked in a furnace--to direct their ideas of the aims of life towards worthy and unselfish ends, to foster true loyalty because of G.o.d from whom all authority comes--and this lesson has its pathetic poignancy for us in the history of our English martyrs--to show the claims that our country has upon the devotion of its sons and daughters, and to inspire some feeling of responsibility for its honour, especially to show the supreme worth of character and self-sacrifice, all these things may and must be taught in this middle period of children's education if they are to have any strong hold upon them in after life. It is a stubborn age in which teaching has to be on strong lines and deep ones; when the evolution of character is in the critical period that is to make or mar its future, it needs a strong hand over it, with power both to control and to support, a strong mind to command its respect, strong convictions to impress it, and strong principles on which to test its own young strength; and all those who have the privilege of teaching history to children of this age have an incomparable opportunity of training mind and character. The strength of our own convictions, the brightness of our own ideals, the fibre of our patriotism and loyalty will tell in the measure of two endowments, our own spirit of self-sacrifice and our tact. Children will detect the least false note if self-sacrifice is preached without experimental knowledge; and as it is the most contradictory of all ages, it takes every resource of tact to pilot it through channels for which there is no chart. The masterpieces of educators are wrought in this difficult but most interesting material.

Those who come after them will see what they have done, they cannot see it themselves. With less difficulty perhaps, because reason is more developed and the hot-headed and irritable phase of character is pa.s.sing away, they will be able to apply the principles which have been laid down. With less difficulty, that is to say against less resistance, but not with less responsibility or even with less anxiety. For the nearer the work approaches to its completion and the more perfectly it has been begun, the more deeply must anyone approaching to lay hand upon it feel the need for great reverence, and self-restraint, and patience, and vigilance, not to spoil by careless interference that which is ready to receive and to give all that is best in youth, not to be unworthy of the confidence which a young mind is willing to place in its guidance.

For although so much stress is laid upon the impressionability of first childhood and the ineffaceable marks that are engraven on it, yet as to all that belongs to the mind and judgment this third period, in the early years of adolescence, is more sensitive still, because real criticism is just beginning to be possible and appreciation is in its spring-tide, now for the first time fully alive and awake. A transition line has been pa.s.sed, and the study of history, like everything else, enters upon a new phase. The elementary teaching which has been sufficient up to this, which has in fact been the only possible teaching, must widen out in the third period, and the relative importance of aims is the line on which the change to more advanced teaching is felt.

The exercise of judgment becomes the chief object, and to direct this aright is the princ.i.p.al duty of those who teach at this age. It is not easy to give a right discernment and true views. To begin with one must have them oneself, and be able to support them with facts and arguments, they must have the weight of patient work behind them, and have settled themselves deeply in the mind; opinions freshly gathered that very day from an article or an essay are attractive and interesting and they appeal very strongly to young minds looking out for theories and clues, but they only give superficial help; in general, essay-writers and journalists do not expect to be taken too seriously, they intend to be suggestive rather than convincing, and it is a great matter to have the principle understood by girls, that it is not to the journalists that they must look for the last word in a controversy, nor for a permanent presentment of contemporary history. Again, it is necessary to remember the waywardness of girls' minds, and that it is conviction, not submission of views that we must aim at. A show of authority is out of place, the tone that "you must think as I do," tends without any bad will on the part of children to exasperate them and rouse the spirit of opposition, whereas a patient and even deferential hearing of their views and admission of their difficulties ensures at least a mind free from irritation and impatience, to listen and to take into account what we have to say. They are not to be blamed for having difficulties in accepting what we put before them; on the contrary we must welcome their independent thought even if it seems aggressive and conceited; their positive a.s.surance that they see to the end of things is characteristic of their age, but it is better that they should show themselves thus, than through want of thought or courage fall in with everything that is set before them, or, worse still, take that pose of impartiality which allows no views at all, and in the end obliterates the line between right and wrong. The too submissive minds which give no trouble now, are laying it all up for the future. They accept what we tell them without opposition, others will come later on, telling them something different, and they will accept it in the same way, and correct their views day by day to the readings of the daily paper, or of the _vogue_ of their own particular set. These are the minds which in the end are absorbed by the world: the Church receives neither love nor service from them.

Judgment may be pa.s.sed upon actions as right or wrong in themselves, or as practically adapting means to end; the first is of great interest even to young children, but for them it is all black or white, and characters are to them entirely good or entirely bad, deserving of unmixed admiration or of their most excellent hatred, which they pour out simply and vehemently, rejoicing without qualms of pity when punishment overtakes the wrongdoer and retributive justice is done to the wicked. This is perhaps what makes them seem bloodthirsty in their vengeance; they feel that so it ought to be, and that the affirmation of principle is of more account than the individual. They detest half-measures and compromise. For the elder girls it is not so simple, and the nearer they come to our own times the more necessary is it to put before them that good is not always unaccompanied by evil nor evil by good.

In the last two or three years of a girl's education all the time that can be spared may be most profitably spent on the study of modern history, since it is there that the more complex problems are found, and there also that they will understand how contemporary questions have their springs in the past, and see the rise of the forces which are at work now, disintegrating the nations of Europe and shaking the foundations of every government. There are grave lessons to be learnt, not in gloomy or threatening forecasts but in showing the direction of cause and effect and the renewal of the same struggle which has been from the beginning, in ever fresh phases. The outcome of historical teaching to Catholics can never be discouragement or depression, whatever the forecast. The past gives confidence, and, when the glories of bygone ages are weighed against their troubles, and the Church's troubles now against her inward strength and her new horizons of hope, there is great reason for grat.i.tude that we live in our own much-abused time. In every age the Church has, with her roots in the past, some buds and blossoms in the present and some fruit coming on for the future.

Hailstorms may cut off both blossoms and fruit, but all will not be lost. We can always hold up our heads; there are buds on the fig-tree and we know in whom we have believed.

In bringing home to children these grounds for thankfulness, the quality of one's own mind and views tells very strongly, and this leads to the consideration of what is chiefly required in teaching history to children, and to girls growing up. The first and most essential point is that we ourselves should care about what we teach, not that we should merely like history as a school subject, but that it should be real to us, that we should feel something about it, joy or triumph or indignation, things which are not found in text-books, and we should believe that it all matters very much to the children and to ourselves.

Lessons of the text-book type, facts, dates, summaries, and synopses matter very little to children, but people are of great importance, and if they grasp what often they only half believe, that what they are repeating as a mere lesson really took place among people who saw and felt it as vividly as they would themselves, then their sympathies and understanding are carried beyond the bounds of their school-rooms and respond to the touch of the great doings and sufferings of the race.

It is above all in the history of the Church that this sympathetic understanding becomes real. The interest of olden times in secular history is more dramatic and picturesque than real to children; but in the history of the Church and especially of the personalities of the popes the continuity of her life is very keenly felt; the popes are all of to-day, they transcend the boundaries of their times because in a number of ways they did and had to do and bear the very same things that are done and have to be borne by the popes of our own day. If we give to girls some vivid realization, say, of the troubled Pontificate of Boniface VIII, with the violence and tragedy and pathos in which it ended, after the dust and jarring and weariness of battle in which it was spent; if they have entered into something of the anguish of Pius VII, they will more fully understand and feel deeper love and sympathy for the living, suffering successor now in the same chair, in another phase of the same conflict, with the Gentiles and peoples of the rising democracies taking counsel together against him, as kings and rulers did in the past, all imagining the same "vain thing," that they can overcome Christ and His Vicar.

Besides this living sympathy with what we teach, we must be able to speak truth without being afraid of its consequences. There was at one time a fear in the minds of Catholic teachers that by admitting that any of the popes had been unworthy of their charge, or that there had ever been abuses which called for reforms among clergy and religious and Catholic laity, they would be giving away the case for the Church and imperilling the faith and loyalty of children; that it was better they should only hear these things later, with the hope that they would never hear them at all. The real peril is in the course thus adopted.

Surrounded as we are by non-Catholics, and in a time when no Catholic escapes from questions and attacks, open or covert, upon what we believe, the greatest injustice to the girls themselves, and to the honour of the faith, was to send them out unarmed against what they must necessarily meet. The first challenge would be met with a flat denial of facts, loyal-heartedly and confidently given; then would come a suspicion that there might be something in it, the inquiry which would show that this was really the case; then a certain right indignation, "Why was I not told the truth?" and a sense of insecurity vaguely disturbing the foundations which ought to be on immovable bed-rock. At the best, such an experience produces what builders call a "settlement,"

not dangerous to the fabric but unsightly in its consequences; it may, however, go much further, first to shake and then to loosen the whole spiritual building by the insinuation of doubt everywhere. It is impossible to forewarn children against all the charges which they may hear against the Church, but two points well established in their minds will give them confidence.

1. That the evidence which is brought to light year after year from access to State papers and doc.u.ments tells on the side of the Church, as we say in England, of "the old religion," and not against it. Books by non-Catholics are more convincing than others in this matter, since they are free from the suspicion of partisanship; for instance, Gairdner's "Lollardy and the Reformation" which disposes of many mythical monsters of Protestant history.

2. That even if the facts were still more authentic to justify personal attacks on some of the popes, even if the abuses in the Church had not been grossly exaggerated, even putting facts at their worst, granting all that is a.s.sumed, it tends to strengthen faith rather than to undermine it, for the existence of the Church and the Papacy as they are to-day is a wonder only enhanced by every proof that it ought to have perished long ago according to all human probability. With that confidence and a.s.surance even our little girls may hold their heads high, with their faith and trust in the Church quite unabashed, and wait for an answer if they cannot give it to others or to themselves at the moment. "We have no occasion to answer thee concerning this matter,"

said the three holy children to Nabuchodonosor, and so may our own children say if they are hard pressed, "your charges do but confirm our faith, we have no occasion to answer."

It is impossible to leave so great a subject as history without saying a word on the manner of teaching it (for in this a manner is needed rather than a method), when it is emanc.i.p.ated from the fetters of prescribed periods and programmes which attach it entirely to text-books.

Text-books are not useless but they are very hard to find, and many Catholic text-books, much to be desired, are still unwritten, especially in England. America has made more effort in this direction than we. But the strength of historical teaching for children and girls at school lies in oral lessons, and of these it would seem that the most effective form is not the conversational lesson which is so valuable in other subjects, nor the formal lesson with "steps," but the form of a story for little ones; for older children the narrative leading up to a point of view, with conversational intervals, and encouragement for thoughtful questions, especially at the end of the lesson; and in the last years an informal kind of lecture, a transition from school-room methods to the style of formal lectures which maybe attended later.

Lessons in history are often spoiled by futile questions put in as it were for conscience' sake, to satisfy the obligation of questioning, or to rouse the flagging attention of a child, but this is too great a sacrifice. It is artistically a fault to jar the whole movement of a good narrative for the sake of running after one truant mind. It is also artistically wrong and jarring to go abruptly from the climax of a story, or narrative, or lecture which has stirred some deep thought or emotion, and call with a sudden change of tone for recapitulation, or summary, or discussion. Silence is best; the greater lessons of history ought to transcend the limits of mere lessons, they are part of life, and they tell more upon the mind if they are dissociated from the harness and trappings of school work. Written papers for younger students and essays for seniors are the best means of calling for their results, and of guiding the line of reading by which all oral teaching of history and study of text-books must be supplemented.

When school-room education is finished what we may look for is that girls should be ready and inclined to take up some further study of history, by private reading or following lectures with intelligence, and that they should be able to express themselves clearly in writing, either in the form of notes, papers, or essays, so as to give an account of their work and their opinions to those who may direct these later studies. We may hope that what they have learned of European history will enable them to travel with understanding and appreciation, that places with a history will mean something to them, and that the great impression of a living past may set a deep mark upon them with its discipline of proportion that makes them personally so small and yet so great, small in proportion to all that has been, great in their inheritance from the whole past and in expectation of all that is yet to be.

CHAPTER XI.

ART.