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

in the order of their importance, [33] the leading activities and needs of life, and then measure the course of study by how fully it offers such a preparation. Doing so (R. 362), and applying such a test, he concluded that of all subjects a knowledge of science (R. 363) “was always most useful for preparation for life,” and therefore the type of knowledge of most worth. In three other essays [34] he recommended a complete change from the classical type of training which had dominated English secondary education since the days of the Renaissance. Still more, instead of a few being educated by a “cultural discipline” for a life of learning and leisure, he urged general instruction in science, that all might receive training and help for the daily duties of life.

 

These essays attracted wide attention, not only in England but in many other lands as well. They were a statement, in clear and forceful English, of the best ideas of the educational reformers for three centuries. In his statement of the principles upon which sound intellectual education should be based he merely enunciated theses for which educational reformers had stood since the days of Ratke and Comenius. In his treatment of moral and physical education he voiced the best ideas of John Locke. Spencer’s great service was in giving forceful expression to ideas which, by 1860, had become current, and in so doing he pushed to the front anew the question of educational values. The scientific and industrial revolutions had prepared the way for a redirection of national education, and the time was ripe in England, France, German lands, and the United States for such a discussion. As a result, though the questions he raised are still in part unsettled, a great change in assigned values has since been effected not only in these nations, but in most other nations and lands which have drawn the inspiration for their educational systems from them. Though his work was not specially original, we must nevertheless class Herbert Spencer as one of the great writers on educational aims and purposes, and his book as one of the great influences in reshaping educational practice.

He gave a new emphasis to the work of all who had preceded him, and out of the discussion which ensued came a new and a greatly enlarged estimate as to the importance of science study in all divisions of the school.

 

[Illustration: FIG. 230. THOMAS H. HUXLEY (1825-95)]

 

THE NEW EDUCATIONAL PURPOSE. It is perhaps not too much to say that out of Spencer’s gathering-up and forceful statement of the best ideas of his time, and the discussion which followed, a new conception of the educational purpose as adjustment to the life one is to live—physical, economic, social, moral, political—was clearly formulated, and a new definition of a liberal education was framed. The former found expression in a rather rapid introduction of science-study into the elementary school, the secondary school, and the college, after about 1865, in the school systems of all progressive nations, and the subsequent extension of the scientific method to such new fields as history, politics, government, and social welfare. The latter—the new definition of a liberal education —was wonderfully well stated in an address (1868) by the English scientist, Thomas Huxley, when he said: [35]

 

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 passions 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 interrelation 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 mass. 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 institution 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 principal world nations, from a disciplinary institution 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 participation 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.

 

[Illustration: 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 co�perative and mutually helpful living….

 

2. That the primary root of all educational activity is in the instinctive, impulsive attitudes 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 co�perative 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 participation in the activities of an institution of society, the school. The different parts of the school system thus become a unified institution, 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