Article 24 Review of Observations sur l'education
author: Elizabeth Moody
source date: August 1791

Elizabeth Moody Art. 24. Observations sur l'éducation des jeunes gens, depuis la fin de leur études, jusqu'à l'epoque de leur entrée dans le monde: ouvrage destiné uniquement à L'Angleterre. Par Mons. Routh, Maitre de Langue Françoise. 8vo. pp. 53. 1s. 6d. Hookham. 1791. [This book review originally appeared in The Monthly Review , second series, volume 5, August 1791, pages 462-463. Benjamin Nangle identifies Elizabeth Moody as the author of this review from an editor's marked copy of The Monthly Review . See Nangle, The Montly Review, Second Series, 1790-1815: Indexes of Contributors and Articles , Clarendon Press, 1955. Mary A. Waters and Sally Spina edited this essay for The Criticism Archive. M. Routh has not been identified beyond his authorship of this work.]

So much having been already written on the subject of education, we did not expect to meet with novelty in this little work; yet we think we have met with something that borders on this said novelty. Mr. Routh recommends a new method of teaching les langues étrangéres; il faut convenir, (he says,) que pour tout autre age que l'enfance, rien n'est plus fastidieux que l'étude seche et froide de la grammaire: ce seroit donc rendre un service réel aux jeunes gens qui defirent apprendre une langue vivante autre que la leur, de faire disparoitre de cette étude la secheresse des rudiments; c'est folie de vouloir s'entreter a escalader en droite ligne une montagne escarpée, quand par des sentiers adoucis on peut arriver plutot à son sommet.[^1]

[^1: Mr Routh recommends a new method of teaching foreign languages; we must agree (he says,) that for any age other than childhood, nothing is more tedious than the dry and cold study of grammar: it would therefore be a real service to young people who want to learn a living language other than their own to eliminate this study of the arid rudiments; it is madness to want to cross a steep mountain in a straight line when there are smoother trails to the summit.]

We differ from Mr. R. on this point; the grammarical mountain must be ascended; and the traveller had better exert himself, with all his strength, to reach the summit by the old rugged path, than waste his precious time by sauntering carelessly in a smoother one, toward which we think he will by no means find the shortest way. We are likewise of opinion, that if this intricate study of grammar were omitted till the pupil were able to apply its rules by his own understanding, he would make a more rapid progress in the knowledge of a language, than children can do by the ordinary method of instruction, by which they learn grammar by rote, and comprehend no more of it than the parrot does of the colloquial learning that he has been taught.

It has ever been allowed, that the docile mind of infancy receives and imbibes these rudiments with greater facility, than when they are obtained in a more advanced period; and it may be so: but as they must be laid by till they can be brought into practice, may not this premature knowlege be compared to the buying cloaths for a child, that are so much too large for his present size, that he must wait till he is a man before he can make any use of them?