The Royal Game of the Goose.
A ‘Game of the Goose’ (Jeu d’Oie) board dating from 1820, at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. It is marked with various figures from classical mythology. Sir Walter appreciated that children needed their intellectual appetites whetted, but he believed that some teachers were now letting their pupils dictate terms, and consequently doing lasting harm to their young charges’ characters and prospects.
Part 1 of 2
I am aware I may be here reminded of the necessity of rendering instruction agreeable to youth, and of Tasso’s* infusion of honey into the medicine prepared for a child; but an age in which children are taught the driest doctrines by the insinuating method of instructive games has little reason to dread the consequences of study being rendered too serious or severe. The history of England is now reduced to a game at cards, the problems of mathematics to puzzles and riddles, and the doctrines of arithmetic may, we are assured, be sufficiently acquired by spending a few hours a week at a new and complicated edition of the Royal Game of the Goose.* There wants but one step further, and the Creed and Ten Commandments may be taught in the same manner, without the necessity of the grave face, deliberate tone of recital, and devout attention hitherto exacted from the well-governed childhood of this realm.
* Torquato Tasso (1544-1595), an Italian poet. Near the beginning of Jerusalem Delivered (1581), he wrote:
You know the world delights in lovely things,
for men have hearts sweet poetry will win,
and when the truth is seasoned in soft rhyme
it lures and leads the most reluctant in.
As we brush with honey the brim of a cup, to fool
a feverish child to take his medicine:
he drinks the bitter juice and cannot tell —
but it is a mistake that makes him well.
(Translation by Anthony Esolen)
One of the very first board games, developed in Italy during the 15th century, very much like snakes and ladders. The board is marked with a spiral racetrack chunked into numbered squares, and players advance along the track by rolling dice. The winner is the first to reach the end. There are various hazards, jumps and penalties. See a late 18th century French board at British Museum: Jeu de l’Oie (Game of the Goose).
Précis
Walter Scott took time out in his novel ‘Waverley’ to caution against gimmicky educational methods that do not inculcate habits of self-discipline. He recognised that the pill of learning may sometimes need to be sweetened, but he felt that the fashion was getting out of control, and that before long even religion would be treated with levity. (57 / 60 words)
Part Two
‘Chemical Lectures’ by Thomas Rowlandson.
‘Chemical Lectures’, by Thomas Rowlandson (1757-1827), drawn sometime after 1809. In 1812, a young Michael Faraday attended the inspirational lectures of celebrity chemist Humphry Davy (1778-1829), and in 1829 Faraday himself established the now world-famous Royal Institution Christmas Lectures. See Mr Faraday. Davy’s purpose, and Faraday’s, had been to stimulate an interest in science among the general public, and they were not too proud to use every art to make their audience wonder and gasp. Scott was anxious lest too much of this would produce a generation that would study chemistry only if there were lots of bangs and stinks along the way; or worse, would study chemistry only to make bangs and stinks.
It may, in the meantime, be subject of serious consideration whether those who are accustomed only to acquire instruction through the medium of amusement may not be brought to reject that which approaches under the aspect of study; whether those who learn history by the cards, may not be led to prefer the means to the end; and whether, were we to teach religion in the way of sport, our pupils may not thereby be gradually induced to make sport of their religion. To our young hero, who was permitted to seek his instruction only according to the bent of his own mind, and who, of consequence, only sought it so long as it afforded him amusement, the indulgence of his tutors was attended with evil consequences which long con tinued to influence his character, happiness, and utility.
Précis
The trouble with making education relentlessly entertaining, said Scott, was not only that pupils might refuse to study unless someone made it entertaining for them; it was that serious subjects might be turned into a standing joke. In Edward Waverley’s case, he said, an unwillingness to apply himself to the grind certainly had a most harmful effect. (57 / 60 words)
