My Schools And Schoolmasters (e-book) (used book) | bookbook.eu

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Excerpt from My Schools and Schoolmasters: Or the Story of My Education
It is now nearly a hundred years since Goldsmith remarked, in his little educational treatise, that "few subjects have been more frequently written upon than the education of youth." And during the century which has well-nigh elapsed since he said so, there have been so many more additional works given to the world on this fertile topic, that their number has been at least doubled. Almost all the men who ever taught a few pupils, with a great many more who never taught any, deem themselves qualified to say something original on education; and perhaps few books of the kind have yet appeared, however mediocre their general tone, in which something worthy of being attended to has not actually been said. And yet, though I have read not a few volumes on the subject, and have dipped into a great many more, I never yet found in them the sort of direction or encouragement which, in working out my own education, I most needed. They insisted much on the various modes of teaching others, but said nothing - or, what amounted to the same thing, nothing to the purpose - on the best mode of teaching one's-self. And as my circumstances and position, at the time when I had most occasion to consult them, were those of by much the largest class of the people of this and every other civilized country - for I was one of the many millions who need to learn, and yet have no one to teach them - I could not help deeming the omission a serious one.