Читать книгу The Educational Writings of Richard Mulcaster онлайн

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It is not enough to say that children are always stirring of their own accord, and therefore need no special attention in regard to bodily exercise. If it were not that we make them keep absolutely still when they are learning in school, and thus restrain their natural stirring, then we might leave it to their own inclinations to serve their turn without more ado. But a more than ordinary stillness requires more than ordinary exercise, and the one must be regulated as much as the other. And as sitting quiet helps ill-humours to breed and burden the body, relief must be sought in exercise under the direction of parents and teachers.

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The soul and the body, being co-partners in good and ill, in sweet and sour, in mirth and mourning, and having generally a common sympathy and mutual feeling, how can they be, or rather why should they be, severed in education? I assign both the framing of the mind and the training of the body to one man’s charge. For how can that man judge well of the soul, whose work has to do with the body alone? And how shall he perceive what is best for the body, who having the soul only committed to his care, hands over the body to some other man’s treatment? Where there is too much distraction and separation of functions, each specialist tends to make the most of his own subject, to the sacrifice of others that may be more important. Wherefore in order to have the care which is due to each part equally distributed, I would appoint, I say, only one teacher to deal with both. For I see no great difficulty either in regard to the necessary knowledge, or to the amount of work. Moreover, as the disposition of the soul will resemble that of the body, if the soul be influenced for good, it will affect the body also.