The History Of Education by Ellwood P. Cubberley (epub e reader .txt) 📖

the difficulties in the way, nor my own limitations in skill and insight, shall hinder me from giving my mite for a purpose which Europe needs so much… The most essential point from which I start is this:—Sense-impression of Nature is the only true foundation of human knowledge. All that follows is the result of this sense-impression, and the process of abstraction from it….

 

Then the problem I have to solve is this:—How to bring the elements of every art into harmony with the very nature of mind, by following the psychological mechanical laws by which mind rises from physical sense-impressions to clear ideas.

 

Largely out of these ideas and the new direction he gave to instruction the modern normal school for training teachers for the elementary schools arose.

 

ORAL AND OBJECTIVE TEACHING DEVELOPED. Up to the time of Pestalozzi, and for years after he had done his work, in many lands and places the instruction of children continued to be of the memorization of textbook matter and of the recitation type. The children learned what was down in the book, and recited the answers to the teacher. Many of the early textbooks were constructed on the plan of the older Catechism—that is, on a question and answer plan (R. 351 a). There was nothing for children to do but to memorize such textbook material, or for the teacher but to see that the pupils knew the answers to the questions. It was school-keeping, not teaching, that teachers were engaged in.

 

The form of instruction worked out by Pestalozzi, based on sense-perception, reasoning, and individual judgment, called for a complete change in classroom procedure. What Pestalozzi tried most of all to do was to get children to use their senses and their minds, to look carefully, to count, to observe forms, to get, by means of their five important senses, clear impressions and ideas as to objects and life in the world about them, and then to think over what they had seen and be able to answer his questions, because they had observed carefully and reasoned clearly.

Pestalozzi thus clearly subordinated the printed book to the use of the child’s senses, and the repetition of mere words to clear ideas about things. Pestalozzi thus became one of the first real teachers.

 

This was an entirely new process, and for the first time in history a real “technique of instruction” was now called for. Dependence on the words of the text could no longer be relied upon. The oral instruction of a class group, using real objects, called for teaching skill. The class must be kept naturally interested and under control; the essential elements to be taught must be kept clearly in the mind of the teacher; the teacher must raise the right kind of questions, in the right order, to carry the class thinking along to the right conclusions; and, since so much of this type of instruction was not down in books, it called for a much more extended knowledge of the subject on the part of the teacher than the old type of school-keeping had done. The teacher must now both know and be able to organize and direct. Class lessons must be thought out in advance, and teacher-preparation in itself meant a great change in teaching procedure.

Emancipated from dependence on the words of a text, and able to stand before a class full of a subject and able to question freely, teachers became conscious of a new strength and a professional skill unknown in the days of textbook reciting. Out of such teaching came oral language lessons, drill in speech usage, elementary science instruction, observational geography, mental arithmetic, music, and drawing, to add to the old instruction in the Catechism, reading, writing, and ciphering, and all these new subjects, taught according to Pestalozzian ideas as to purpose, called for an individual technique of instruction.

 

[Illustration: FIG. 224. THE FIRST MODERN NORMAL SCHOOL

The old castle at Yverdon, where Pestalozzi’s Institute was conducted and his greatest success achieved.]

 

THE NORMAL SCHOOL FINDS ITS PLACE. These new ideas of Pestalozzi proved so important that during the first five or six decades of the nineteenth century the elementary school was made over. The new conception of the child as a slowly developing personality, demanding subject-matter and method suited to his stage of development, and the new conception of teaching as that of directing mental development instead of hearing recitations and “keeping school,” now replaced the earlier knowledge-conception of school work. Where before the ability to organize and discipline a school had constituted the chief art of instruction, now the ability to teach scientifically took its place as the prime professional requisite. A “science and art” of teaching now arose; methodology soon became a great subject; the new subject of pedagogy began to take form and secure recognition; and psychology became the guiding science of the school.

 

As these changes took place, the normal school began to come into favor in the leading countries of Europe and in the United States, and in time has established itself everywhere as an important educational institution.

Pestalozzi had himself conducted the first really modern teacher-training school, and his work was soon copied in a number of the Swiss cantons.

Other cantons, on the contrary, for a time would have nothing to do with the new idea.

 

1. The German States. The first nation, though, to take up the teacher-training idea and establish it as an important part of its state school system was Prussia. Beginning in 1809 with the work of Zeller (p. 569), by 1840 there were thirty-eight Teachers’ Seminaries, as the normal schools in German lands have been called, in Prussia alone. The idea was also quickly taken up by the other German States, and from the first decade of the nineteenth century on no nation has done more with the normal school, or used it, ends desired considered, to better advantage than have the Germans. One of the features of the Prussian schools which most impressed Professor Bache, when he visited the schools of the German States in 1838, was the excellence of the Seminaries for Teachers (R. 344), and these he described (R. 345) in some detail in his Report. Horace Mann, similarly, on his visit to Europe, in 1843, was impressed with the thoroughness of the training given prospective teachers in the Teachers’ Seminaries of the German States (R. 278). University pedagogical seminars were also established early (c. 1810) [3] in the universities, for the training of secondary teachers, and this training was continued with increasing thoroughness up to 1914. Every teacher in the German States, elementary or secondary, before that date, was a carefully-trained teacher. This was a feature of the German state school systems of the pre-War period of which no other nation could boast.

 

2. France. After the German States, France probably comes next as the nation in which the normal school has been most used for training teachers. The Superior Normal School had been recreated in 1808 (R. 283), and after the downfall of Napoleon the creation of normal schools for elementary-school teachers was begun. Twelve had been established by 1830, and between 1830 and 1833 thirty additional schools for training these teachers were begun (R. 285). These rendered a service for France (R. 346) quite similar to that rendered by the Teachers’ Seminaries in German lands. During the period of reaction, from 1848 to 1870, the normal school did not prosper in France, but since 1870 a normal school to train elementary teachers has been established for men and one for women in each of the eighty-seven departments into which France, for administrative purposes, has been divided. Satisfactory provision has also been made for the training of teachers for the secondary schools.

 

3. The United States. The United States has also been prominent, especially since about 1870, in the development of normal schools for the training of elementary teachers. The Lancastrian schools had trained monitors for their work, but the first teacher-training school in the United States to give training to individual teachers was opened privately, [4] in 1823, and the second in a similar manner, [5] in 1827.

These were almost entirely academic institutions, being in the nature of tuition high schools, with a little practice teaching and some lectures on the “Art of Teaching” added in the last year of the course. In 1826

Governor Clinton recommended to the legislature of New York the establishment by the State of “a seminary for the education of teachers in the monitorial system of instruction.” Nothing coming of this, in 1827 he recommended the creation of “a central school in each county for the education of teachers” (R. 349). That year (1827) the New York legislature appropriated money to aid the academies “to promote the education of teachers”—the first state aid in the United States for teacher-training.

 

The publication of an English edition of Cousin’s Report (p. 597; R.

284) in New York, in 1835; Calvin E. Stowe’s Report on Elementary Education in Europe, [6] in 1837; and Alexander D. Bache’s Report on Education in Europe (Rs. 344, 345), in 1838, with their strong commendations of the German teacher-training system, awakened new interest in the United States, in the matter of teacher-training. Finally, in 1839, the legislature of Massachusetts duplicated a gift of $10,000, and placed the money in the hands of the newly created State Board of Education (p.

689) to be used “in qualifying teachers for the common schools of Massachusetts” (R. 350 a). After careful consideration it was decided to create special state institutions, after the German and French plans, in which to give the desired training, and the French term of Normal School was adopted and has since become general in the United States.

 

[Illustration: TEACHER-TRAINING IN THE UNITED STATES BY 1860.

A few private training-schools also existed, though less than half a dozen in all.]

 

On July 3, 1839, the first state normal school in the United States opened in the town hall at Lexington, Massachusetts, with one teacher and three students. Later that same year a second state normal school was opened at Barre, and early the next year a third at Bridgewater, both in Massachusetts. For these the State Board of Education adopted a statement as to entrance requirements and a course of instruction (R. 350 b) which shows well the academic character of these early teaching institutions.

Their success was largely due to the enthusiastic support given the new idea by Horace Mann. In an address at the dedication of the first building erected in America for normal-school purposes, in 1846, he expressed his deep belief as to the fundamental importance of such institutions (R. 350

c). By 1860 eleven state normal schools had been established in eight of the States of the American Union, and six private schools were also rendering similar services. Closely related was the Teachers’ Institute, first definitely organized by Henry Barnard in Connecticut, in 1839, to offer four-to six-weeks summer courses for teachers in service, and these had been organized in fifteen of the American States by 1860. Since 1870

the establishment of state normal schools has been rapid in the United States, two hundred having been established by 1910, and many since. The United States, though, is as yet far from having a trained body of teachers for its elementary schools. For the high schools, it is only since about 1890 that the professional training of teachers for such service has really been begun.

 

4. England. In England the beginnings of teacher-training came with the introduction of monitorial instruction, both the Bell and the Lancaster Societies (p. 625) finding it necessary to train pupils for positions as monitors, and to designate certain schools as model and training schools.

In 1833, it will be remembered (p. 638), Parliament