Practical Education

by Maria Edgeworth

"Practical Education" is an educational treatise written by Maria Edgeworth and her father Richard Lovell Edgeworth. It is a comprehensive theory of education that combines the ideas of philosophers John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau as well as of educational writers such as Thomas Day, William Godwin, Joseph Priestley, and Catharine Macaulay. The Edgeworths' theory of education was based on the premise that a child's early experiences are formative and that the associations they form early in life are long-lasting. They also encourage hands-on learning and include suggestions of "experiments" that children can perform and learn fun. In Edgeworths' work, the attention of the child appears as a key site for pedagogical work and interventions. Following Locke's emphasis on the importance of concrete language over abstract, the Edgeworths' argued that words should clearly indicate "distinct ideas". This contributed to what Romanticist Alan Richardson calls "their controversial positions", including their resistance to reading fairy tales to children or discussing religion with AttentionServantsAcquaintanceOn TemperOn ObedienceOn TruthOn Rewards and PunishmentsOn Sympathy and SensibilityOn Vanity, Pride, and AmbitionBooksOn Grammar and Classical LiteratureOn Geography and ChronologyOn ArithmeticGeometryOn MechanicsChemistryOn Public and Private EducationOn Female Accomplishments, &c.Memory and InventionTaste and ImaginationWit and JudgmentPrudence and EconomySummaryNotes, containing Conversations and Anecdotes of Children

Genres: Nonfiction, Irish Literature, Education

684 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Maria Edgeworth was an Anglo-Irish gentry-woman, a daughter of Richard Lovell Edgeworth, born in Oxfordshire and later resettling in County Longford. She eventually took over the management of her father's estate in Ireland and dedicated herself to writing novels that encouraged the kind treatment of Irish tenants and the poor by their landlords.