The History of Education Part 74

The above represent but a few of the more important of the many great scientific advances of the nineteenth century. What the thinkers of the eighteenth century had sowed broadcast through a general interest in science, their successors in the nineteenth reaped as an abundant harvest.

The three great master keys of science--the higher mathematics, the principle of the conservation of energy, and the principle of orderly evolution of life according to law--so long unknown to man, had at last been discovered, and, with these in their possession, men have since opened up many of the long-hidden secrets of cause and growth and form and function, both in the heavens and on the earth, and have revealed to a wondering world the prodigious and eternal forces of an orderly universe.

The fruitfulness of the Baconian method (p. 390) in the hands of his successors has far surpa.s.sed his most sanguine expectations.

THE APPLICATIONS OF SCIENCE AND THE RESULT. All this work, as has been frequently pointed out (R. 338), had of necessity to precede the applications of science to the arts and to the advancement of the comforts and happiness of mankind. The new studies soon caught the attention of younger scholars; special schools for their study began to be established by the middle of the nineteenth century; [17] enthusiastic students of science began forcefully to challenge the centuries-long supremacy of cla.s.sical studies; funds for scientific research began to be provided; the printing-press disseminated the new ideas; and thousands of applications of science to trade and industry and human welfare began to attract public attention and create a new demand for schools and for a new extension of learning. During the past century the applications of this new learning to matters that intimately touch the life of man have been so numerous and so far-reaching in their effects that they have produced a revolution in life conditions unlike anything the world ever experienced before. In all the days from the time of the Crusades to the end of the Napoleonic Wars the changes in living effected were less, both in scope and importance, than have taken place in the century since Napoleon was sent to Saint Helena.

THIS TRANSFORMATION WE CALL THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION. This, as we pointed out earlier (p. 492), began in England in the late eighteenth century.

France did not experience its beginnings until after the Napoleonic Wars, though after about 1820 the transformations there were rapid and far- reaching. In the United States it began about 1810-15, and between 1820 and 1860 the industrial methods of the people of the northeastern quarter of the United States were revolutionized. Between 1860 and 1900 they were revolutionized again. In the German States the transformation began about 1840, though it did not reach its great development until after the establishment of the Empire, in 1871. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, with the development of factories, the building of railroads, and the extension of steamship lines, even the most remote countries have been affected by the new forces. Nations long primitive and secluded have been modernized and industrialized; century-old trades and skills have been destroyed by machinery; the old home and village industries have been replaced by the factory system; cities for manufacturing and trade have everywhere experienced a rapid development; and even on the farm the agricultural methods of bygone days have been replaced by the discoveries of science and the products of invention. Almost nothing is done to-day as it was a century ago, and only in remote places do people live as they used to live. The nature and extent of the change which has been wrought, and some estimate as to its effect upon educational procedure, may perhaps be better comprehended if we first contrast living conditions before and after this industrial transformation.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 218. MAN POWER BEFORE THE DAYS OF STEAM Foot power a century ago. (From a cut by Anderson, America's first important engraver)]

LIVING CONDITIONS A CENTURY AGO. A century ago people everywhere lived comparatively simple lives. The steam engine, while beginning to be put to use (p. 493), had not as yet been extensively applied and made the willing and obedient slave of man. The lightning had not as yet been harnessed, and the now omnipresent electric motor was then still unknown. Only in England had manufacturing reached any large proportions, and even there the methods were somewhat primitive. Thousands of processes which we now perform simply and effectively by the use of steam or electric power, a century ago were done slowly and painfully by human labor. The chief sources of power were then man and horse power. The home was a center in which most of the arts and trades were practiced, and in the long winter evenings the old crafts and skills were turned to commercial account. What every family used and wore was largely made in the home, the village, or the neighborhood.

Travel was slow and expensive and something only the well-to-do could afford. To go fifty miles a day by stage-coach, or one hundred by sailing packet on the water, was extraordinarily rapid. "One could not travel faster by sea or by land," as Huxley remarked, "than at any previous time in the world's history, and King George could send a message from London to York no faster than King John might have done." The steam train was not developed until about 1825, and through railway lines not for a quarter- century longer. It took four days by coach from London to York (188 miles); six weeks by sailing vessel from Southampton to Boston; and six months from England to India. People moved about but little. A journey of fifty miles was an event--for many something not experienced in a lifetime. To travel to a foreign land made a man a marked individual.

Benjamin Franklin tells us that he was frequently pointed out on the streets of Philadelphia, then the largest city in the United States, as a man who had been to Europe. George Ticknor has left us an interesting record (R. 339) of his difficulties, in finding anything in print in the libraries of the time, about 1815, or any one who could tell him about the work of the German universities, which he, as a result of reading Madame de Stael's book on Germany, was desirous of attending. [18]

Everywhere it was a time of hard work and simple living. Every youngster had to become useful at an early age. The work of life, in town or on the farm, required hard and continual labor from all. Farm machinery had not been perfected, and hand labor performed all the operations of ploughing and sowing, reaping and harvesting. With the introduction of the factory system, men, women, and children were used to operate machinery, children being apprenticed to the mills at about eight years of age and working ten to twelve hours a day. This soon worked the life out of human beings, and in consequence sickness, wretchedness, juvenile delinquency, ignorance, drunkenness, pauperism, and crime increased greatly as cities grew and the factory system drew thousands from the farms to the towns. When Queen Victoria came to the throne (1837) one person in twelve in England was a pauper, and the lot of the poor was wretched in the extreme. In cities they lived in cellars and bas.e.m.e.nts and hovels. There was practically no sanitation or drainage. Streets and alleys were filthy. Graveyards were commonly located in the heart of a town. A pure water-supply through water-mains was unknown. Pumps and water-carriers supplied nearly all the needs. There was in consequence much sickness, and such diseases as typhoid and malaria ran rampant.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 219. THRESHING WHEAT A CENTURY AGO (After a woodcut by Jacque, in _L'Ill.u.s.tration_)]

CHANGE IN LIVING CONDITIONS TO-DAY. In a century all has been changed.

Steam and electricity and sanitary science have transformed the world; the railway, steamship, telegraph, cable, and printing-press have made the world one. The output of the factory system has transformed living and labor conditions, even to the remote corners of the world; sanitary science and sanitary legislation have changed the primitive conditions of the home and made of it a clean and comfortable modern abode; men and women have been freed from an almost incalculable amount of drudgery and toil, and the human effort and time saved may now be devoted to other types of work or to enjoyment and learning. Thousands who once were needed for menial toil on farm or in shop and home are now freed for employment in satisfying new wants and new pleasures that mankind has come to know, [19] or may devote their time and energies to forms of service that advance the welfare of mankind or minister to the needs of the human spirit.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 220. A CITY WATER-SUPPLY ABOUT 1830 (After a lithograph by Bellange)]

Labor-saving devices and the applications of scientific work have touched all phases of life and labor of men and women, and under modern methods of transportation go everywhere. The American self-binding reaper is found in the grain-fields of Russia and the Argentine; one may buy cans of kerosene and tinned meats and vegetables almost anywhere in the world today; sewing machines and phonographs add to the comfort and pleasure of the African native and the dweller on the Yukon; "milady" in Siam uses cosmetics manufactured for the devotees of fashion in Paris; the Sultan of Sulu wears an elegant American wrist-watch; the Dahomeny tribesman has a safety razor, and a mirror of French plate; the Persian dandy wears shoes and haberdashery made in the United States; old Chinamen up the Yellow River Valley read their Confucius by the light of an Edison Mazda; the steam train wends its way up from Jaffa to Jerusalem; the gasoline power boat chugs its course up the Nile the Pharaohs sailed; and modern surgical methods and instruments are used in the hospitals of Manila and Singapore, Cairo and Cape Town. A rupee spent for thread at Calcutta starts the spindles going in Manchester; a new calico dress for a Mandalay belle helps the cotton-print mills of Leeds; a new carving set for a Fiji Islander means more labor for some cutlery works in Sheffield; a half- dollar for a new undershirt in Panama means increased work for a cotton mill in New England; a new blanket called for against the winter's cold of Siberia moves the looms of some Rhode Island town; a dime spent for a box of matches in Alaska means added labor and profit for a match factory in California; a new bath tub in Paraguay spells increased output for a factory at Milan or Turin; and the Christmas wishes of the children in Brazil give work to the toy factories of Nuremberg.

Trains and huge steamers move today along the great trade routes of the modern world, exchanging both the people and their products. The holds of the ships are filled with coal and grain and manufactured implements and commodities of every description, while their steerage s.p.a.ce is crowded with modern Marco Polos and Magellans going forth to see the world. The Hindoo walks the streets of Cape Town, London, Sydney, New York, San Francisco, and Valparaiso; the Russian Jew is found in all the Old and New World cities; the Englishman and the American travel everywhere; the j.a.panese are fringing the Pacific with their laboring cla.s.ses; toiling Italians and Greeks are found all over the world; peasants from the Balkans gather the prune and orange crops of California; the moujic from the Russian Caucasus tills the wheat-fields of the Dakotas; while the Irish, Scandinavians, and Teutons form the political, farming, and commercial cla.s.ses in many far-distant lands. In the recent World War Serbs from Montana and Colorado fought side by side with Serbs from Belgrade and Nisch; Greeks from New York and San Francisco helped their brothers from Athens drive the Bulgars back up the Vardar Valley; Italians from New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro helped their kinsmen from the valley of the Po hold back the Hun from the Venetian plain; Chinese from the valleys of the Tong-long and the Yang-tse-Kiang backed up the Allied armies by tilling the fields of France; and Algerian and Senegalese natives helped the French hold back the Teutonic hordes from the ravishment of Paris. So completely has the old isolation been broken down!

So completely is the world in flux! So small has the world become!

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 221. THE GREAT TRADE ROUTES OF THE MODERN WORLD Broken lines, on land, indicate gaps soon to be closed. Compare this with the maps on pages 161 and 258, and note the progress in discovery and intercommunication. Ships and trains are constantly pa.s.sing over these routes, bearing both freight and peoples.]

It was almost a century from the time instruction in Greek was revived in Florence (1396) until Linacre first lectured on Greek at Oxford (c. 1492); six months after the X-ray was perfected in Germany it was in use in the hospitals of San Francisco. In the Middle Ages thousands might have died of starvation in Persia or Egypt, a famous city in Asia Minor might have been destroyed by an earthquake and many people killed, or war might have raged for years in the Orient without a citizen of western Europe knowing of it all his life. Today any important event anywhere within the range of the telegraph or the cable would be reported in tomorrow morning's paper, and carefully described and ill.u.s.trated in the magazines at an early date.

Man is no longer a citizen of a town or a state, but of a nation and of the world. How intelligently he can use this larger citizenship depends today largely upon the character and the extent of the education he has received.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 222. AN EXAMPLE OF THE SHIFTING OF OCCUPATIONS.

Sawing boards by hand, before the introduction of steam power.]

EFFECT OF THESE CHANGES ON THE LABORING-CLa.s.sES. At first the effect of the introduction of factory-made goods and labor-saving devices was to upset the old established inst.i.tutions. Trades practiced by the guilds since the Middle Ages were destroyed, because factories could turn out goods faster and cheaper than guild workmen could make them. The age-old apprenticeship system began to break down. Everywhere people were thrown out of employment, and a vast shifting of occupations took place. There was much discontent, and laborers began to unite, where allowed to do so, [20] with a view to improving their economic and political condition by concerted action. The political revolutions of 1848 throughout Europe were in part a manifestation of this discontent, and the right to organize was everywhere demanded and in time generally obtained. Among the planks in their platform were equality of all before the law; the limitation of child and woman labor; better working conditions and wages; the provision of schools for their children at public expense; and the extension of the right of suffrage.

Despite certain unfortunate results following the change from age-old working conditions, the century of transition has seen the laboring man making gains unknown before in history, and the peasant has seen the abolition of serfdom [21] and feudal dues. Homes have gained tremendously.

The drudgery and wasteful toil have been greatly mitigated. To-day there is a standard of comfort and sanitation, even for those in the humblest circ.u.mstances, beyond all previous conceptions. The poorest workman to-day can enjoy in his home lighting undreamed of in the days of tallow candles; warmth beyond the power of the old smoky soft-coal grate; food of a variety and quality his ancestors never knew; kitchen conveniences and an ease in kitchen work wholly unknown until recently; and sanitary conveniences and conditions beyond the reach of the wealthiest half a century ago. The caste system in industry has been broken down, and men and their children may now choose their occupations freely, [22] and move about at will. Wages have greatly increased, both actually and relatively to the greatly improved standard of living. The work of women and children is easier, and all work for shorter hours. Child labor is fast being eliminated in all progressive nations. In consequence of all these changes for the better, people to-day have a leisure for reading and thinking and personal enjoyment entirely unknown before the middle of the nineteenth century, and governments everywhere have found it both desirable and necessary to provide means for the utilization of this leisure and the gratification of the new desires. Along with these changes has gone the development of the greatest single agent for spreading liberalizing ideas --the modern newspaper--"the most inveterate enemy of absolutism and reaction." Despite censorships, suppressions, and confiscations, the press has by now established its freedom in all enlightened lands, and the cylinder press, the telegraph, and the cable have become "indispensable adjuncts to the development of that power which every absolutist has come to dread, and with which every prime minister must daily reckon."

III. EFFECT OF THESE CHANGES ON EDUCATION

GENERAL RESULT OF THESE CHANGES. The general result of the vast and far- reaching changes which we have just described is that the intellectual and political horizon of the working cla.s.ses has been tremendously broadened; the home has been completely altered; children now have much leisure and do little labor; and the common man at last is rapidly coming into his own. Still more, the common man seems destined to be the dominant force in government in the future. To this end he and his children must be educated, his wife and children cared for, his home protected, and governments must do for him the things which satisfy his needs and advance his welfare. The days of the rule of a small intellectual cla.s.s and of government in the interests of such a cla.s.s have largely pa.s.sed, and the political equality which the Athenian Greeks first in the western world gave to the "citizens" of little Athens, the Industrial Revolution has forced modern and enlightened governments to give to all their people. In consequence, real democracy in government, education, justice, and social welfare is now in process of being attained generally, for the first time in the history of the world.

The effect of all these changes in the mode of living of peoples is written large on the national life. The political and industrial revolutions which have marked the ushering-in of the modern age have been far-reaching in their consequences. The old home life and home industries of an earlier period are pa.s.sing, or have pa.s.sed, never to return. Peoples in all advanced nations are rapidly swinging into the stream of a new and vastly more complex world civilization, which brings them into contact and compet.i.tion with the best brains of all mankind. At the same time a great and ever-increasing specialization of human effort is taking place on all sides, and with new and ever more difficult social, political, educational, industrial, commercial, and human-life problems constantly presenting themselves for solution. The world has become both larger and smaller than it used to be, and even its remote parts are now being linked up, to a degree that a century ago would not have been deemed possible, with the future welfare of the nations which so long bore the brunt of the struggle for the preservation and advancement of civilization.

THESE CHANGES AND THE SCHOOL. It is these vast and far-reaching political, industrial, and social changes which have been the great actuating forces behind the evolution and expansion of the state school systems which we have so far described. The American and French political revolutions, with their new philosophy of political equality and state control of education, clearly inaugurated the movement for taking over the school from the Church and the making of it an important instrument of the State. The extension of the suffrage to new cla.s.ses gave a clear political motive for the school, and to train young people to read and write and know the const.i.tutional bases of liberty became a political necessity. The industrial revolution which followed, bringing in its train such extensive changes in labor and in the conditions surrounding home and child life, has since completely altered the face of the earlier educational problem.

What was simple once has since become complex, and the complexity has increased with time. Once the ability to read and write and cipher distinguished the educated man from the uneducated; to-day the man or woman who knows only these simple arts is an uneducated person, hardly fit to cope with the struggle for existence in a modern world, and certainly not fitted to partic.i.p.ate in the complex political and industrial life of which, in all advanced nations, he or she [23] to-day forms a part.

It is the attempt to remould the school and to make of it a more potent instrument of the State for promoting national consciousness (R. 340) and political, social, and industrial welfare that has been behind the many changes and expansions and extensions of education which have marked the past half-century in all the leading world nations, and which underlie the most pressing problems in educational readjustment to-day. These changes and expansions and problems we shall consider more in detail in the chapters which follow. Suffice it here to say that from mere teaching inst.i.tutions, engaged in imparting a little religious instruction and some knowledge of the tools of learning, the school, in all the leading nations, has to-day been transformed into an inst.i.tution for advancing national welfare. The leading purpose now is to train for political and social efficiency in the more democratic types of governments being inst.i.tuted among peoples, and to impart to the young those industrial and social experiences once taught in the home, the trades, and on the farm, but which the coming of the factory system and city life have deprived them otherwise of knowing.

NEW PROBLEMS TO BE MET BY EDUCATION. As partic.i.p.ation in the political life of nations has been extended to larger and larger groups of the people, and as the problems of government have become more and more complex, the schools have found it necessary to add instruction in geography, history, government, and national ideals and culture to the earlier instruction. In the less democratic nations which have evolved national school systems, this new instruction has often been utilized to give strength to the type of government and social conditions which the ruling cla.s.s desired to have perpetuated. This has been the evident purpose in j.a.pan (R. 334), though the government of Imperial Germany formed perhaps the best ill.u.s.tration of such perversion. This was seen and pointed out long ago by Horace Mann (R. 281). There the idea of nationality through education (R. 342) was carried to such an extreme as made the government oppressive to subject peoples and a menace to neighboring States. [24] On the other hand, the French have used their schools for national ends (R. 341) in a manner that has been highly commendable.

As the social life of nations has become broader and more complex, a longer period of guidance has become necessary to prepare the future citizens of the State for intelligent partic.i.p.ation in it. As a result, child life everywhere has and is still experiencing a new lengthening of the period of dependence and training, and all national interests now indicate that the period devoted to preparing for life's work will need to be further lengthened. All recent thinking and legislation, as well as the interests of organized labor and the public welfare, have in recent decades set strongly against child labor. Economically unprofitable under modern industrial conditions, and morally indefensible, it has at last come to be accepted as a principle, by progressive nations, that it is better for children and for society that they remain under some form of instruction until they are at least sixteen years of age. To this end the common primary school has been continued upward, part-time continuation schools of various types have been organized for those who must go to labor earlier, and people's high schools or middle schools have been added (see Figure 210, p. 713) to give the equivalent of a high-school education to the children of the cla.s.ses not patronizing the exclusive and limited tuition secondary school.

As large numbers of immigrants from distant lands have entered some of the leading nations, notably England and the United States, and particularly immigrants from less advanced nations where general education is not as yet common, and where far different political, social, judicial, and hygienic conditions prevail, a new duty has been thrust upon the school of giving to such incoming peoples, and their children, some conception of the meaning and method and purpose of the national life of the people they have come among. The national schools have accordingly been compelled to give attention to the needs of these new elements in the population, and to direct their attention less exclusively to satisfying the needs of the well-to-do cla.s.ses of society. Educational systems have in consequence tended more and more to become democratic in character, and to serve in part as instruments for the a.s.similation of the stranger within the nation's gates and for the perpetuation and improvement of the national life.

EDUCATION A CONSTRUCTIVE NATIONAL TOOL. One result of the many political, social, and industrial changes of a century has been to evolve education into the great constructive tool of modern political society. For ages a church and private affair, and of no great importance for more than a few, it has to-day become the prime essential to good government and national progress, and is so recognized by the leading nations of the world. As people are freed from autocratic rule and take upon themselves the functions of government, and as they break loose from their age-old political, social, and industrial moorings and swing out into the current of the stream of modern world-civilization, the need for the education of the ma.s.ses to enable them to steer safely their ship of state, and take their places among the stable governments of a modern world, becomes painfully evident. In the hands of an uneducated people a democratic form of government is a dangerous instrument, while the proper development of natural resources and the utilization of trade opportunities by backward peoples, without being exploited, is almost impossible. In Russia, Mexico, and the Central American "republics" we see the results of a democracy in the hands of an uneducated people. There, too often, the revolver instead of the ballot box is used to settle public issues, and instead of orderly government under law we find injustice and anarchy. A general system of education that will teach the fundamental principles of const.i.tutional liberty, and apply science to production in agriculture and manufacturing, is almost the only solution for such conditions. By contrast with the surrounding "republics" one finds in Guatemala [25] a country that has used education intelligently as a tool to advance the interests of its people.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 223. THE PHILIPPINE SCHOOL SYSTEM A teacher-training course is given as one of the vocational courses in the Intermediate School, and the Normal School at Manila represents one of the secondary school courses. The University, besides the combined five-year college course, has eight professional courses of from three to five years in length.]

When the United States freed Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines from Spanish rule, a general system of public education, modeled after the American educational ladder, was created as a safeguard to the liberty just brought to these islands, and to education the United States added courts of justice and bureaus of sanitation as important auxiliary agencies. As a result the peoples of these islands have made a degree of progress in self-government and industry in three decades not made in three centuries under Spanish rule. The good results of the work done in these islands in establishing schools, building roads and bridges, introducing police courts, establishing good sanitary conditions, building hospitals and training nurses, applying science to agriculture, developing tropical medicine, and training the people in the difficult art of self- government, will for long be a monument to the political foresight and intelligent conceptions of government held by the American people. In a similar way the French have opened schools in Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, Senegal, Madagascar, and French Indo-China, as have the English in Egypt, India, Hong Kong, [26] the West Indies, and elsewhere. With the freeing of Palestine from the rule of the Turk, the English at once began the establishment of schools and a national university there, and doubtless they will do the same in time in Persia and Mesopotamia.

Germany, too, before the World War, but with less benevolent purposes than the Americans, the French, or the English, was also busily engaged in extending her influence through education. Her universities were thrown open to students from the whole world, and excellent instruction did they offer. The "Society for the Extension of Germanism in Foreign Countries"

rendered an important service. Professors were "exchanged"; the introduction of instruction in the German language into the schools of other nations was promoted; and German schools were founded and encouraged abroad. Especially were _Realschulen_ promoted to teach the wonders of German science, pure and applied. In southern Brazil and the Argentine, and in Roumania, Bulgaria, and Turkey, particular efforts were made to extend German influence and pave the way for German commercial and perhaps political expansion. Primary schools, girls' schools, and _Real_-schools in numbers were founded and aided abroad, and their progress reported to the colonial minister at home. All through the Near East the German was busily building, through trade and education, a new empire for himself.

Had he been content to follow the slower paths of peaceful commercial and intellectual conquest, with his wonderful organization he would have been irresistible. With one gambler's throw he dashed his future to the ground, and unmasked himself before the world!

EXPANSION OF THE EDUCATIONAL IDEA. In all lands to-day where there is an intelligent government, the education of the people through a system of state-controlled schools is regarded as of the first importance in moulding and shaping the destinies of the nation and promoting the country's welfare. Beginning with education to impart the ability to read and write and cipher, and as an aid to the political side of government, the education of the ma.s.ses has been so expanded in scope during the century that today it includes aims, cla.s.ses, types of schools, and forms of service scarcely dreamed of at the time the State began to take over the school from the Church, with a view to extending elementary educational advantages and promoting literacy and citizenship. What some of the more important of these expansions have been we shall state in a following chapter, but before doing so let us return to another phase of the problem--that of the progress of educational theory--and see what have been the main lines of this progress in the theory as to the educational purpose since the time when Pestalozzi formulated a theory for the secular school.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. What does the emphasis on the People's High Schools in Denmark indicate as to the political status of the common people there?

2. Explain the educational prominence of Finland, compared with its neighbor Russia.

3. Show the close relation between the character of the school system developed in j.a.pan and the character of its government. In China.

4. Show why the state-function conception of education is destined to be the ruling plan everywhere.

5. Show the close connection between the Industrial Revolution and a somewhat general diffusion of the fundamental principles revealed by the study of science.

6. Show how the Industrial Revolution has created entirely new problems in education, and what some of these are.

7. Show the connection between the Industrial Revolution and political enfranchis.e.m.e.nt.

8. Enumerate some of the educational problems we now face that we should not have had to deal with had the Industrial Revolution not taken place.

9. Why has the result of these changes been to extend the period of dependence and tutelage of children?

10. Outline an educational solution of the problem of Mexico. Of Russia.

Of Persia.

11. Show how Germany found it profitable to establish _Realschulen_ in such distant countries as Turkey, Mesopotamia, and the Argentine.

12. Describe the expansion of the educational idea since the days when Pestalozzi formulated the theory for the secular school.