Practical Education: Complete Edition

by Maria Edgeworth, Richard Lovell 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 them. Toys Tasks On Attention Servants Acquaintance On Temper On Obedience On Truth On Rewards and Punishments On Sympathy and Sensibility On Vanity, Pride, and Ambition Books On Grammar and Classical Literature On Geography and Chronology On Arithmetic Geometry On Mechanics Chemistry On Public and Private Education On Female Accomplishments, &c. Memory and Invention Taste and Imagination Wit and Judgment Prudence and Economy Summary Notes, containing Conversations and Anecdotes of Children

Genres: Nonfiction, Irish Literature, Education

683 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.