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Whatever may have been the motive that prompted this author to seek out and include in the compass of one small volume the wisdom of the educational experts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, we tender her our most grateful thanks for the result. The book shows that, although we have taken to ourselves credit by imagining that it is an outcome of our latter-day enlightenment to have turned our attention to the important topic of the education of young children and have set ourselves the task of discovering what effects may be expected from this or that method and how mistakes that have been made lead to the most disastrous consequences, nevertheless we have done so falsely, for we have been by no means the pioneers of exploration in this region.
Most of us are inclined to believe that educational methods of the past were harsh, and that the only way of enforcing more diligent application to studies was the use of the rod. By Roger Ascham, however, we are assured of the contrary. 'Young children', we read, 'should rather be allured to learning by gentilnes and love, then compelled to learning by beating and force'. Again, he writes, 'Where love is present, labor is seldom absent'. One after another we find these worthies endorsing the opinion that beating tends to make the stubborn child more obstinate, and that the school where a too rigorous discipline is in force will make of the boy a rebel and he will run away, thus injuring his character in such a way that it will be 'hard to remedie'. Psycho-analytic experts writing of the same matters have given voice to the same sentiments, although the language in which they have been expressed may differ in detail and technical terms.