On Education

This chapter presents George Boole's lecture on education. He identifies three things to which the attention of the teacher must be chiefly directed: the imparting of knowledge, the production of a ready command and application of such knowledge by art and practice, and the formation of habits. In the accomplishment of each of these objects, he holds that the order of Nature is to be imitated and obeyed. The order of Nature as manifested both in the discovery and the acquisition of knowledge is an ascending and never a descending order. In imparting knowledge, we must not begin with words. As far as possible, we must acquaint the child with things, and it will then feel the want, and understand the use, of words as markers and tokens of the ideas which from things it has acquired.