The History of Education Part 78

That man, I think, has had a liberal education who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with all its parts of equal strength, and in smooth working order; ready, like a steam engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of Nature and of the laws of her operations; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose pa.s.sions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of Nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself.

Such an one and no other, I conceive, has had a liberal education; for he is, as completely as a man can be, in harmony with Nature. He will make the best of her, and she of him. They will get on together rarely: she as his ever-beneficent mother; he as her mouthpiece, her conscious self, her minister and interpreter.

The inter-relation between the movement for the study of the sciences and the other movements for the improvement of instruction which we have so far described in this chapter, was close. Pestalozzi had emphasized instruction in geography and the study of nature; Froebel had given a prominent place to nature study and school gardening; the manual-arts work tended to exhibit industrial processes and relationships; and the scientific emphasis on content rather than drill was in harmony with the theories of all the modern reformers. Still more, the scientific movement was in close harmony with the new individualistic tendency of the early part of the nineteenth century, and with the movements for the improvement of individual and national welfare which have been so prominent a characteristic of the latter half of the century.

V. SOCIAL MEANING OF THESE CHANGES

A CENTURY OF PROGRESS. Pestalozzi, true to the individualistic spirit of the age in which he lived and worked, had seen education as an individual development, and the ends of education as individual ends. The spirit of the French Revolutionary period was the spirit of individualism. With the progress of the Industrial Revolution and the consequent rise of new social problems, the emphasis was gradually shifted from the individual to society--from the single man to the man in the ma.s.s. The first educational thinker of importance to see and clearly state this new conception in terms of the school was Herbart. Seeing the educational purpose in far clearer perspective than had those who had gone before him, he showed that education must have for its function the preparation of man to live in organized society, and that character and social morality, rather than individual development, must in consequence be the larger aims. Froebel, possessed of something of the same insight, and seeing clearly the educational importance of activity and expression, had opened up for children a wealth of new contacts with the world about them in the new type of educational inst.i.tution which he created. His principles, he said, when thoroughly worked out and applied to education "would revolutionize the world." He did not complete the full educational organization he had planned, but in the hands of the Swedes and Finns similar ideas were worked out in practical form and made a part of school work. Applying Froebel's idea to instruction in the old trades and industries, declining in importance in the face of the rise of the factory system, they evolved the manual-training activities, and these have since been made important tools for giving to young people some intelligent ideas as to the industrial relationships and economic problems of our complex modern life.

Since this early pioneer work changes in school work have been numerous and of far-reaching importance. The methods and purpose of instruction in the older subjects have been revised; new studies, which would serve to interpret to the young the industrial and social revolutions of the nineteenth century, have been introduced; the expression-subjects--the domestic arts, music, drawing, clay-modeling, color work, the manual arts, nature study, gardening--have given a new direction to school work; and the study of science and the vocations has attained to a place of importance previously unknown. During the past half-century the school has been transformed, in the princ.i.p.al world nations, from a disciplinary inst.i.tution where drill in mastering the rudiments of knowledge was given, into an instrument of democracy calculated to train young people for living, for useful service in the office and shop and home, and to prepare them for intelligent partic.i.p.ation in the increasingly complex social and political and industrial life of a modern world. This transformation of the school has not always been easy (R. 365), but the vastly changed conditions of modern life have demanded such a transformation in all progressive nations.

THE CONTRIBUTION OF JOHN DEWEY. The foremost American interpreter, in terms of the school, of the vast social and industrial changes which have marked the nineteenth century, is John Dewey [36] (1859- ). Better perhaps than anyone else he has thought out and stated a new educational philosophy, suited to the changed and changing conditions of human living.

His work, both experimental and theoretical, has tended both to re- psychologize (R. 364) and socialize education; to give to it a practical content, along scientific and industrial lines; and to interpret to the child the new social and industrial conditions of modern society by connecting the activities of the school closely with those of real life.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 231. A REORGANIZED KINDERGARTEN Drawn from a photograph showing the reconstruction of the kindergarten activities, as worked out by Dewey at Chicago.]

Starting with the premises that "the school cannot be a preparation for social life except as it reproduces the typical conditions of social life"; that "industrial activities are the most influential factors in determining the thought, the ideals, and the social organization of a people"; and that "the school should be life, not a preparation for living"; Dewey for a time conducted an experimental school, for children from four to thirteen years of age, to give concrete expression to his educational ideas. These, first consciously set forth by Froebel, were: [37]

1. That the primary business of the school is to train in cooperative and mutually helpful living....

2. That the primary root of all educational activity is in the instinctive, impulsive att.i.tudes and activities of the child, and not in the presentation and application of external material.

3. That these individual tendencies and activities are organized and directed through the uses made of them in keeping up the cooperative living ... taking advantage of them to reproduce, on the child's plane, the typical doings and occupations of the larger, maturer society into which he is finally to go forth; and that it is through production and creative use that valuable knowledge is clinched.

The work of this school [38] was of fundamental importance in directing the reorganization of the work of the kindergarten along different and larger lines, and also has been of significance in redirecting the instruction in both the social subjects--history (R. 366), literature, etc.--and the manual, domestic, and artistic activities of the school. In his subsequent writings he may be said to have stated an important new philosophy for the school in terms of modern social, political, and industrial needs.

THE DEWEY EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY. Believing that the public school is the chief remedy for the ills of organized society, Professor Dewey has tried to show how to change the work of the school so as to make it a miniature of society itself. Social efficiency, and not mere knowledge, he has conceived to be the end, and this social efficiency is to be produced through partic.i.p.ation in the activities of an inst.i.tution of society, the school. The different parts of the school system thus become a unified inst.i.tution, in which children are taught how to live amid the constantly increasing complexities of modern social and industrial life.

Education, therefore, in Dewey's conception, involves not merely learning, but play, construction, use of tools, contact with nature, expression, and activity; and the school should be a place where children are working rather than listening, learning life by living life, and becoming acquainted with social inst.i.tutions and industrial processes by studying them. The work of the school is in large part to reduce the complexity of modern life to such terms as children can understand, and to introduce the child to modern life through simplified experiences. Its primary business may be said to be to train children in cooperative and mutually helpful living. The virtues of a school, as Dewey points out, are learning by doing; the use of muscles, sight and feeling, as well as hearing; and the employment of energy, originality, and initiative. The virtues of the school in the past were the colorless, negative virtues of obedience, docility, and submission. Mere obedience and the careful performance of imposed tasks he holds to be not only a poor preparation for social and industrial efficiency, but a poor preparation for democratic society and government as well. Responsibility for good government, under any democratic form of organization, rests with all, and the school should prepare for the political life of to-morrow by training its pupils to meet responsibilities, developing initiative, awakening social insight, and causing each to shoulder a fair share of the work of government in the school.

We have now before us the great contributions to a philosophy for the educational process made since the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Many other workers in different lands, but more particularly in German lands, France, Italy, England, and the United States, have added their labors to the expansion and redirection of the school. They are too numerous to mention and, though often nationally important, need not be included here. Still more, the contributions of Pestalozzi, Herbart, Froebel, Spencer, Dewey, and their followers and disciples are so interwoven in the educational theory and practice of to-day that it is in most cases impossible to separate them from one another. [39]

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. How do you explain the long-continued objection to teacher-training?

2. Contrast "oral and objective teaching" with the former "individual instruction."

3. Show how complete a change in cla.s.sroom procedure this involved.

4. Show how Pestalozzian ideas necessitated a "technique of instruction."

5. Why is it that Pestalozzian ideas as to language and arithmetic instruction have so slowly influenced the teaching of grammar, language, and arithmetic?

6. How do you explain the decline in importance of the once-popular mental arithmetic?

7. Show how child study was a natural development from the Pestalozzian psychology and methodology.

8. Explain what is meant by the statements that Herbart rejected: (a) The conventional-social ideal of Locke.

(b) The unsocial ideal of Rousseau.

(c) The "faculty-psychology" conception of Pestalozzi.

9. Explain what is meant by saying that Herbart conceived of education as broadly social, rather than personal.

10. Show in what ways and to what extent Herbart: (a) Enlarged our conception of the educational process.

(b) Improved the instruction content and process.

11. Explain why Herbartian ideas took so much more quickly in the United States than did Pestalozzianism.

12. State the essentials of the kindergarten idea, and the psychology behind it.

13. State the contribution of the kindergarten idea to education.

14. Show the connection between the sense impression ideas of Pestalozzi, the self-activity of Froebel, and the manual activities of the modern elementary school.

15. Explain why scientific studies came into the schools so slowly, up to about 1860, and so very rapidly after about that time.

16. Explain the particularly long resistance to the introduction of scientific studies by industrial England.

17. State the comparative importance of content and drill in education.

18. Does the reasoning of Herbert Spencer appeal to you as sound? If not, why not?

19. Show how the argument of Spencer for the study of science was also an argument for a more general diffusion of educational advantages.

20. Would schools have advanced in importance as they have done had the industrial revolution not taken place? Why?

21. Why is more extended education called for as "industrial life becomes more diversified, its parts narrower, and its processes more concealed"?

22. Point out the social significance of the educational work of John Dewey.

23. Point out the value, in the new order of society, of each group of school subjects listed in footnote 1 on page 763.

24. Contrast the virtues of a school before Pestalozzi's time and those of a modern school.

SELECTED READINGS

In the accompanying _Book of Readings_ the following selections ill.u.s.trative of the contents of this chapter are reproduced:

344. Bache: The German Seminaries for Teachers.

345. Bache: A German Teachers' Seminary Described.

346. Bache: A French Normal School Described.

347. Barnard: Beginnings of Teacher-Training in England.

348. Barnard: The Pupil-Teacher System Described.

349. Clinton: Recommendation for Teacher-Training Schools.