Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education Part 2

The examples of adjustment taken from school-room practice, are found, however, to differ in one important respect from the previous example taken from practical life. This difference consists in the fact that in the recovery of the coin the modification of experience took place wholly without control or direction other than that furnished by the problem itself. Here the problem--the recovery of the coin--presents itself to the child and is seized upon as a motive by his attention solely on account of its own value; secondly, this problem of itself directs a flow of relative images which finally bring about the necessary adjustment. In the examples taken from the school, on the other hand, the processes of adjustment are, to a greater or less extent, directed and regulated through the presence of some type of educative agent. For instance, when a student goes through the process of learning the relation of the exterior angle to the two interior and opposite angles, the control of the process appears in the fact that the problem is directly presented to the student as an essential step in a sequence of geometric problems, or adjustments. The same direction or control of the process is seen again in the fact that the student is not left wholly to himself, as in the first example, to devise a solution, but is aided and directed thereto, first, in that the ideas bearing upon the problem have previously been made known to the student through instruction, and secondly, in that the selecting and adjusting of these former ideas to the solution of the new problem is also directed through the agency of either a text-book or a teacher. A conscious adjustment, therefore, which is brought about without direction from another, implies only a process of learning on the part of the child, while a controlled adjustment implies both a process of learning on the part of the child and a process of teaching on the part of an instructor. For scientific treatment, therefore, it is possible to limit formal education, so far as it deals with conscious adjustment, to those modifications of experience which are directed or controlled through an educative agent, or, in other words, are brought about by means of instruction.

REQUIREMENTS OF THE INSTRUCTOR

Formal education being an attempt to direct the development of the child by controlling his stimulations and responses through the agency of an instructor, we may now understand in general the necessary qualifications and offices of the teacher in directing the educative process.

1. The teacher must understand what const.i.tutes the worthy life; that is, he must have a definite aim in directing the development of the child.

2. He must know what stimulations, or problems, are to be presented to the child in order to have him grow, or develop, into this life of worth.

3. He must know how the physical, intellectual, and moral nature of the child reacts upon these appropriate stimulations.

4. He must have skill in presenting the stimuli, or problems, to the child and in bringing its mind to react appropriately thereon.

5. He must, in the case of conscious reactions, see that the child not only acquires the new experience, but that he is also able to apply it effectively. In other words, he must see that the child acquires not only knowledge, but also skill in the use of knowledge.

CHAPTER IV

THE SCHOOL CURRICULUM

=Valuable Experience: Race Knowledge.=--Since education aims largely to increase the effectiveness of the moral conduct of the child by adding to the value of his experience, the science of education must decide the basis on which the educator is to select experiences that possess such a value in directing conduct. Now a study of the progress of a nation's civilization will show that this advancement is brought about through the gradual interpretation of the resources at the nation's command, and the turning of these resources to the attainment of human ends. Thus there is gradually built up a community, or race, experience, in which the materials of the physical, economic, political, moral, and religious life are organized and brought under control. By this means is const.i.tuted a body of race experience, the value of which has been tested in its direct application to the needs of the social life of the community. It is from the more typical forms of this social, or race, experience that education draws the experience, or problems, for the educative process. In other words, through education the experiences of the child are so reconstructed that he is put in possession of the more typical and more valuable forms of race experience, and thus rendered more efficient in his conduct, or action.

PURPOSES OF CURRICULUM

=Represents Race Experiences.=--So far as education aims to have the child enter into typical valuable race experiences, this can be accomplished only by placing these experiences before him as problems in such form that he may realize them through a regular process of learning. The purpose of the school curriculum is, therefore, to provide such problems as may, under the direction of the instructor, control the conscious reactions of the child, and enable him to partic.i.p.ate in these more valuable race experiences. In this sense arithmetic becomes a means for providing the child with a series of problems which may give him the experiences which the race has found valuable in securing commercial accuracy and precision. In like manner, constructive work provides a series of problems in which the child experiences how the race has turned the materials of nature to human service. History provides problems whose solution gives the experience which enables the pupil to meet the political and social conditions of his own time. Physics shows how the forces of nature have become instruments for the service of man.

Geography shows how the world is used as a background for social life; and grammar, what principles control the use of the race language as a medium for the communication of thought.

=Cla.s.sifies Race Experience.=--Without such control of the presentation of these racial experiences as is made possible through the school and the school curriculum, the child would be likely to meet them only as they came to him in the actual processes of social life. These processes are, however, so complex in modern society, that, in any attempt to secure experience directly, the child is likely to be overwhelmed by their complex and unorganized character. The message boy in the dye-works, for example, may have presented to him innumerable problems in number, language, physics, chemistry, etc., but owing to the confused, disorganized, and mingled character of the presentation, these are not likely to be seized upon by him as direct problems calling for adjustment. In the school curriculum, on the other hand, the different phases of this seemingly unorganized ma.s.s of experiences are abstracted and presented to the child in an organized manner, the different phases being cla.s.sified as facts of number, reading, spelling, writing, geography, physics, chemistry, etc. Thus the school curriculum cla.s.sifies for the child the various phases of this race experience and provides him with a comprehensive representation of his environment.

=Systematizes Race Experience.=--The school curriculum further presents each type of experience, or each subject, in such a systematic order that the various experiences may develop out of one another in a natural way. If the child were compelled to meet his number facts altogether in actual life, the impressions would be received without system or order, now a discount experience, next a problem in fractions, at another time one in interest or mensuration. In the school curriculum, on the other hand, the child is in each subject first presented with the simple, near, and familiar, these in turn forming basic experiences for learning the complex, the remote, and the unknown. Thus he is able in geography, for example, on the basis of his simple and known local experiences, to proceed to a realization of the whole world as the background for human life.

=Clarifies Race Experience.=--Finally, when a child is given problems by means of the school curriculum, the experiences come to him in a pure form. That is, the trivial, accidental, and distracting elements which are necessarily bound up with these experiences when they are met in the ordinary walks of life are eliminated, and the single type is presented.

For instance, the child may every day meet accidentally examples of reflection and refraction of light. But these not being separated from the ma.s.s of accompanying impressions, his mind may never seize as distinct problems the important relations in these experiences, and may thus fail to acquire the essential principles involved. In the school curriculum, on the other hand, under the head of physics, he has the essential aspects presented to him in such an unmixed, or pure, form that he finds relatively little difficulty in grasping their significance. Thus the school curriculum renders possible an effective control of the experiencing of the child by presenting in a comprehensive form a cla.s.sified, systematized, and pure representation of the more valuable features of the race experience. In other words, it provides suitable problems which may lead the child to partic.i.p.ate more fully in the life about him. Through the subjects of the school curriculum, therefore, the child may acquire much useful knowledge which would not otherwise be met, and much which, if met in ordinary life, could not be apprehended to an equal degree.

DANGERS IN USE OF CURRICULUM

While recognizing the educational value of the school curriculum, it should be noticed that certain dangers attach to its use as a means of providing problems for developing the experiences of the child. It is frequently argued against the school that the experiences gained therein too often prove of little value to the child in the affairs of practical life. The world of knowledge within the school, it is claimed, is so different from the world of action outside the school, that the pupil can find no connection between them. If, however, as claimed above, the value of experience consists in its use as a means of efficient control of conduct, it is evident that the experiences acquired through the school should find direct application in the affairs of life, or in other words, the school should influence the conduct, or behaviour, of the child both within and without the school.

=A. Child may not see Connection with Life.=--Now the school curriculum, as has been seen, in representing the actual social life, so cla.s.sifies and simplifies this life that only one type of experience--number, language, chemistry, geography, etc., is presented to the child at one time. It is evident, however, that when the child faces the problems of actual life, they will not appear in the simple form in which he meets them as represented in the school curriculum. Thus, when he leaves the school and enters society, he frequently sees no connection between the complex social life outside the school and the simplified and systematized representation of that life, as previously met in the school studies. For example, when the boy, after leaving school, is set to fill an order in a wholesale drug store, he will in the one experience be compelled to use various phases of his chemical, arithmetical, writing, and bookkeeping knowledge, and that perhaps in the midst of a ma.s.s of other accidental impressions. In like manner, the girl in her home cooking might meet in a single experience a situation requiring mathematical, chemical, and physical knowledge for its successful adjustment, as in the subst.i.tution of soda and cream of tartar for baking-powder. This complex character of the problems of actual life may prove so bewildering that the person is unable to see any connection between the outside problem and his school experiences.

Thus school knowledge frequently fails to function to an adequate degree in the practical affairs of life.

=How to Avoid This Danger.=--To meet this difficulty, school work must be related as closely as possible to the practical experiences of the child. This would cause the teacher, for example, to draw his problems in arithmetic, his subjects in composition, or his materials for nature study from the actual life about the child, while his lessons in hygiene would bear directly on the care of the school-room and the home, and the health of the pupils. Moreover, that the work of the school may represent more fully the conditions of actual life, pupils should acquire facility in correlating different types of experience upon the same problem. In this way the child may use in conjunction his knowledge of arithmetic, language, geography, drawing, nature study, etc., in school gardening; and his arithmetic, language, drawing, art, etc., in conjunction with constructive occupations.

=Value of Typical Forms of Expression.=--A chief cause in the past for the lack of connection between school knowledge and practical life was the comparative absence from the curriculum of any types of human activity. In other words, though the ideas controlling human activity were experienced by the child within the school, the materials and tools involved in the physical expression of such ideas were almost entirely absent. The result was that the physical habits connected with the practical use of knowledge were wanting. Thus, in addition to the lack of any proper co-ordinating of different types of knowledge in suitable forms of activity, the knowledge itself became theoretic and abstract.

This danger will, however, be discussed more fully at a later stage.

=B. Curriculum May Become Fossilized.=--A second danger in the use of the school curriculum consists in the fact that, as a representation of social life, it may not keep pace with the social changes taking place outside the school. This may result in the school giving its pupils forms of knowledge which at the time have little functional value, or little relation to present life about the child. An example of this was seen some years ago in the habit of having pupils spend considerable time and energy in working intricate problems in connection with British currency. This currency having no practical place in life outside the school, the child could see no connection between that part of his school work and any actual need. Another marked example of this tendency will be met in the History of Education in connection with the educational practice of the last two centuries in continuing the emphasis placed on the study of the ancient languages, although the functional relation of these languages to everyday life was on the decline, and scientific knowledge was beginning to play a much more important part therein. While the school curriculum may justly represent the life of past periods of civilization so far as these reflect on, and aid in the interpreting of, the present, it is evident that in so far as the child experiences the past without any reference to present needs, the connection which should exist between the school and life outside the school must tend to be destroyed.

=C. May be Non-progressive.=--As a corollary to the above, is the fact that the school, when not watchful of the changes going on without the school, may fail to represent in its curriculum new and important phases of the community life. At the present time, for example, it is a debatable question whether the school curriculum is, in the matter of our industrial life, keeping pace with the changes taking place in the community. It is in this connection that one of the chief dangers of the school text-book is to be found. The text is too often looked upon as a final authority upon the particular subject-matter, rather than being treated as a mode of representing what is held valuable and true in relation to present-day interests and activities. The position of authority which the text-book thus secures, may serve as a check against even necessary changes in the att.i.tude of the school toward any particular subject.

=D. May Present Experience in too Technical Form.=--Lastly, the school curriculum, even when representing present life, may introduce it in a too highly technical form. So far at least as elementary education is concerned, each type of knowledge, or each subject, should find a place on the curriculum from a consideration of its influence upon the conduct and, therefore, upon the present life of the child. There is always a danger, however, that the teacher, who may be a specialist in the subject, will wish to stress its more intellectual and abstract phases, and thus force upon the child forms of knowledge which he is not able to refer to his life needs in any practical way. This tendency is ill.u.s.trated in the desire of some teachers to subst.i.tute with young children a technical study of botany and zoology, in place of more concrete work in nature study. Now when the child approaches these phases of his surroundings in the form of nature study, he is able to see their influence upon his own community life. When, on the other hand, these are introduced to him in too technical a form, he is not able, in his present stage of learning, to discover this connection, and the so-called knowledge remains in his experience, if it remains at all, as uninteresting, non-significant, and non-digested information. In the elementary school at least, therefore, knowledge should not be presented to the child in such a technical and abstract way that it will seem to have no contact with daily life.

CHAPTER V

EDUCATIONAL INSt.i.tUTIONS

THE SCHOOL

As man, in the progress of civilization, became more fully conscious of the worth of human life and of the possibilities of its development through educational effort, the providing of special instruction for the young naturally began to be recognized as a duty. As this duty became more and more apparent, it gave rise, on the principle of the division of labour, to corporate, or inst.i.tutional, effort in this direction. By this means there has been finally developed the modern school as a fully organized corporate inst.i.tution devoted to educational work, and supported as an integral part of our civil or public obligations.

=Origin of the School.=--To trace the origin of the school, it will be necessary to look briefly at certain marked stages of the development of civilization. The earliest and simplest forms of primitive life suggest a time when the family const.i.tuted the only type of social organization.

In such a mode of life, the principle of the division of labour would be absent, the father or patriarch being the family carpenter, butcher, doctor, judge, priest, and teacher. In the two latter capacities, he would give whatever theoretic or practical instruction was received by the child. As soon, however, as a tribal form of life is met, we find the tribe or race collecting a body of experience which can be retained only by entrusting it to a selected body. This experience, or knowledge, is at first mainly of a religious character, and is possessed and handed on by a body of men forming a priesthood. Such priestly bodies, or colleges, may be considered the earliest special organizations devoted to the office of teaching. As civilization gradually advanced, a ma.s.s of valuable practical knowledge relative to man's environment was secured and added to the more theoretic forms. As this practical knowledge became more complex, there was felt a greater need that the child should be made acquainted with it in some systematic manner during his early years. Thus developed the conception of the school as an instrument by which such educative work might be carried on more effectively. On account of the constant increase of practical knowledge and its added importance in directing the political and economic life of the people, the civil authorities began in time to a.s.sume control of secular education. Thus the government of the school as an inst.i.tution gradually pa.s.sed to the state, the teacher taking the place of the priest as the controlling agent in the education of the young.

OTHER EDUCATIVE AGENTS

=The Church.=--But notwithstanding the organization of the present school as a civic inst.i.tution, it is to be noticed that the church still continues to act as an educative agent. In many communities, in fact, the church is still found to retain a large control of education even of a secular type. Even in communities where the church no longer exercises control over the school, she still does much, though in a more indirect way, to mould the thought and character of the community life; and is still the chief educational agent concerned in the direct attempt to enrich the religious experiences of the race.

=The Home.=--While much of the knowledge obtained by the child within his own home necessarily comes through self, or informal, education, yet in most homes the parent still performs in many ways the function of a teacher, both by giving special instruction to the child and by directing the formation of his habits. In certain forms of experience indeed, it is claimed by the school that the instruction should be given by the parent rather than by the teacher. In questions of morals and manners, the natural tie which unites child and parent will undoubtedly enable much of the necessary instruction to be given more effectively in the home. It is often claimed, in fact, that parents now leave too much to the school and the teacher in relation to the education of the child.

=The Vocation.=--Another agent which may directly control the experiences of the young is found in the various vocations to which they devote themselves. This phase of education was very important in the days of apprenticeship. One essential condition in the form of agreement was that the master should instruct the apprentice in the art, or craft, to which he was apprenticed. Owing to the introduction of machinery and the consequent more complex division of labour, this type of formal education has been largely eliminated. It may be noted in pa.s.sing that it is through these changed conditions that night cla.s.ses for mechanics, which are now being provided by our technical schools, have become an important factor in our educational system.

=Other Educational Inst.i.tutions.=--Finally, many clubs, inst.i.tutes, and societies attempt, in a more accidental way, to convey definite instruction, and therefore serve in a sense as educational inst.i.tutions.

Prominent among such inst.i.tutions is the modern Public Library, which affords opportunity for independent study in practically every department of knowledge. Our Farmers' Inst.i.tutes also attempt to convey definite instruction in connection with such subjects as dairying, horticulture, agriculture, etc. Many Women's Clubs seek to provide instruction for young women, both of a practical and also of a moral and religious character. Various societies of a scientific character have also done much to spread a knowledge of nature and her laws and are likewise to be cla.s.sed as educational inst.i.tutions. Such movements as these, while taking place without the limits of the school, may not unreasonably claim a certain recognition as educational factors in the community and should receive the sympathetic co-operation of the teacher.

CHAPTER VI

THE PURPOSE OF THE SCHOOL

CIVIC VIEWS

Since the school of to-day is organized and supported by the state as a special corporate body designed to carry on the work of education, it becomes of public interest to know the particular purpose served through the maintenance of such a state inst.i.tution. We have already seen that the school seeks to interpret the civilized life of the community, to abstract out of it certain elements, and to arrange them in systematic or scientific order as a curriculum of study, and finally to give the child control of this experience, or knowledge. We have attempted to show further that by this means education so increases the effectiveness of the conscious reactions of the child and so modifies his instincts and his habits as to add to his social efficiency. As, however, many divergent and incomplete views are held by educators and others as to the real purpose of public instruction, it will be well at this stage to consider briefly some of the most important types of these theories.

=Aristocratic View.=--It may be noted that the experience, or knowledge, represented in the curriculum cannot exist outside of the knowing mind.