Virginia Argus

From The Aurora.
EDUCATION NEW METHOD.

The public have been much amused and interested in different cities of the union, by the display of arithmetical powers, in an unusual, and therefore a most surprising manner, by a child between 6 and 7 years old, young Zerah Colburn of Vermont. Having paid some attention to the surprising powers of that child, and having witnessed the truth of all that has been said of him in the public papers, we may be allowed offer some observations, not to disparage the faculties of the child. but to state a fact, that we saw that child, in the presence of twenty children, all nearly of his own age, saw and heard him and them, and that every one of these children, in whose company he was, were as much beyond him in knowledge, and in the knowledge of numbers, as the professor of a college is beyond a scholar of twelve months standing.

We say this without the least apprehension of contradiction, because every one may see and judge of those children, whom we have seen, and no one can presume to contradict upon mere incredulity or presumption; we repeat, every one who thinks fit to put the matter to the test, may see what we have said demonstrated every day in the school of Mr. Neef, near the Falls of Schuylkill, five miles from this.

It is sometimes said, that Zerah Colburn, has acquired his power of calculation, by what is sometimes called the force of genius, at other times instinct. These modes of accounting for the exercise of his faculties, are erroneous, and that they must be erroneous is demonstrable from a few simple facts.

What gives to this surprising child, the capacity which he possesses in the management of numbers, principally consists in the power of memory, which is in fact, the sole foundation of those extraordinary and rapid answers, which he gives to questions involving numbers, and in any of the four ordinary rules of arithmetic.

But let us consider these facts: numbers may be arranged to infinity by an order in the mind: the extent and bounds of the universe may be conceived by a comparison of one object with another, and by proportioning the thing of which we only conceive, because its magnitude and form forbid our embracing it in our view ; time short of eternity may be conceived and counted by a corresponding process, the revolutions of the heavenly bodies, or as our Indian neighbours calculated by sleeps meaning nights, or by moons meaning months. But even among the rude Indians there is a compact for terms, by which the idea conceived is embodied in an expression and the expression taken as the common term of the particular idea.

By considering this fact, we shall at once perceive that young Colburn must have had some instruction; it does not diminish the measure of his capacity, tho' it may take away from the admiration of those who are fond only of the marvellous; but it is very important to know it, because it aids in exhibiting to the world the general absurdity of the prevailing and universally debilitating methods of education.

For example, a mile is an arbitrary term; young Colburn could at once tell you how many yards feet or inches, in any number of miles. Now the word mile is a term subject to great varieties, our mile is 1760 yards, that of Russia 800, that of Italy 1467, that of Hungary 880 yards; it is very obvious that these proportions of the inferior parts of yards, feet, or inches, being mere matters of convention and agreement, must be acquired either by instruction or study; for it is not possible that a knowledge could be acquired by mere instinct, of matters perfectly arbitrary and conventional. Young Colburn must therefore have been taught not only the names and proportions of the measures of length, but of time also; for the day and the year, as well as the week and the month, are all terms expressing not an uniform and naturally apportioned period, but arbitrary and conventional times.

The computation of numbers by the decimal order, is perhaps the first aid of young Colburn's wonderful memory and a skilful management of the decimal ordination of numbers, with the knowledge of the proportions of measures, of length and time appear to constitute the extent of his surprising faculty.

Perhaps this might be questionable, and we are ready to confess that had we not seen the pupils of Neef, of the same age, resolve problems much more extraordinary, nay complex and requiring a vast force of reasoning, had we not seen children of the same age resolve, and not merely resolve but explain the principles of the solution of the most difficult questions we might have been induced to believe at only one child in an age is susceptible of adquiring such a faculty for arithmetical Calculation. But the pupils of Neef have put it beyond dispute, that any child in good health may be taught not only to Calculate as young Colburn does, but to understand and account for calculations immeasurably more extraordinary.

Indeed it is surprising that on the subject of education, the principles have been so well understood as general principles, while the practical application of those principles have remained undiscovered, until the venerable Pestalozzi of Switzerland, devised his admirably simple and effective method. In the writings of the celebrated lord Kames, we have an example of this knowledge of the principles of education ; but in his tract entitled the Art of Thinking, we have seen how much short his execution fell of his great conception. His words are these:

Nature, in her course, begins with particulars, and ascends gradually to what is general and abstract. But nature is ill seconded
in the ordinary course of education. We are first employed, it is true, in languages, geography, history, natural philosophy, subjects that deal in particulars. But at one bound, we are carried to the most abstract studies logics, for example, and metaphysics. These, indeed, give exercise to the reasoning faculty --but it will not be said, that they are the best qualified for initiating a young person in the art of reasoning. Their obscurity and intricacy unfit them for that office. Here there is evidently a void, which must be filled up, if we wish that education should be successful. To improve the faculty of abstracting, and gradually lead us from particular acts to general propositions, the tender mind ought at first to be exercised in observations of the simplest kind, such as may easily be comprehended. To that end, the subject ought, by all means, to be familiar, and it ought also to be agreeable and instructive.

Life, vol. 1, 259, 410.

This extract, in the last sentences, explains in a very striking manner, the system of Pestalozzi and Neef. But lord Kames, when he wrote his Art of Thinking, instead of beginning with things of the simplest kind, set about composing aphorisms and anecdotes for persons already educated, of which those who had not already considerable knowledge of human life, could not understand. It has been the general error of education to take for granted, that children either already have formed accurate ideas, or that it is only necessary to learn them words, and that ideas will follow in time ; whence, in fact, the greater part of the words are forgotten before natural incidents puts the grown man in possession of those ideas which it should have been the first business of education to define and render familiar in the simplest manner, and in the most agreeable and instructive way.

The natural capacity of Zerah Colburn, & the fortunate accidents by which that capacity has been unfolded, even slightly as it has been, for it is but slight compared with what a better method may effect upon every child of the same age ; and what is still more, it so happened that the very method by which young Colburn's faculties have been unfolded in the single branch of arithmetic but in an imperfect manner, corresponds with the general principle of the method by which the pupils of Neef, become masters of the elementary principles of anatomy, and a knowledge of their own faculties, their persons, members, and the causes and uses of every branch of the animal economy which their infant minds can embrace and which lays in their minds the foundation of accurate thought, and fortifies them against vulgar names and vulgar errors: which leads them to comprehend not only the active mechanical power of numbers, but the laws of proportion between unity and all its compounds to infinity; which teaches them to be geometricians and to comprehend the forms and properties of all visible figures, and to measure by the eye with more accuracy than the practised mathematician of the schools with his instruments and his load of apparatus; which leads the infant mind thro all the delightful mazes of natural history, and teaches the boy to discriminate and name with accuracy all the objects of mineralogy; chemistry, botany, and the sensible elements of things; which after acquiring these branches, leads him full of ideas and with reasoning powers and habits already prepared, to investigate the powers of his own organs, to analyse sounds, words, and language; to understand and to speak with understanding on grammar and rhetoric ; to lead him thro' the arcana of languages, and make him master of three languages without more labour than the ordinary recreations of innocent fancy, and converts education itself into an amusement which enlarges without fatiguing the mind ; and which invigorates the animal constitution instead of stupifying and oppressing it, as is the too common effect of the general modes of education where the animal system is not sufficiently vigorous to bear the oppression of rules never understood, but got by rote, and of lessons learned only to produce a stipend for some mercenary pedagogue, and forgotten by the victim of their torture as soon as they have escaped from the terrors of their barbarian ferula.

Such is the system which has already given evidence of its prodigious power in unfolding the natural faculties of human beings, and of which all we are competent to say, falls infinitely short.