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

his ideas as to a life according to “nature” in a book in which he described the education, from birth to manhood, of an imaginary boy, �mile, and his future wife, Sophie. In the first sentence of the book Rousseau sets forth his fundamental thesis:

 

All is good as it comes from the hand of the Creator; all degenerates under the hands of man. He forces one country to produce the fruits of another, one tree to bear that of another. He confounds climates, elements, and seasons; he mutilates his dog, his horse, his slave; turns everything topsy-turvy, disfigures everything. He will have nothing as nature made it, not even man himself; he must be trained like a managed horse, trimmed like a tree in a garden.

 

His book, published in 1762, in no sense outlined a workable system of education. Instead, in charming literary style, with much sophistry, many paradoxes, numerous irrelevant digressions upon topics having no relation to education, and in no systematic order, Rousseau presented his ideas as to the nature and purpose of education. Emphasizing the importance of the natural development of the child (R. 264 a), he contended that the three great teachers of man were nature, man, and experience, and that the second and third tended to destroy the value of the first (R. 264 b); that the child should be handled in a new way, and that the most important item in his training up to twelve years of age was to do nothing (R. 264 c, d) so that nature might develop his character properly (R. 264 e); and that from twelve to fifteen his education should be largely from things and nature, and not from books (R. 264 f). As the outcome of such an education Rousseau produced a boy who, from his point of view, would at eighteen still be natural (R. 264 g) and unspoiled by the social life about him, which, after all, he felt was soon to pass away (R. 264 i). The old religious instruction he would completely supersede (R. 264 h).

 

[Illustration: FIG. 163. THE ROUSSEAU MONUMENT AT GENEVA]

 

So depraved was the age, and so wretched were the educational practices of his time, that, in spite of the malevolent impulse which was his driving force, what he wrote actually contained many excellent ideas, pointed the way to better practices, and became an inspiration for others who, unlike Rousseau, were deeply interested in problems of education and child welfare. One cannot study Rousseau’s writings as a whole, see him in his eighteenth-century setting, know of his personal life, and not feel that the far-reaching reforms produced by his �mile are among the strangest facts in history.

 

THE VALUABLE ELEMENTS IN ROUSSEAU’S WORK. Amid his glittering generalities and striking paradoxes Rousseau did, however, set forth certain important ideas as to the proper education of children. Popularizing the best ideas of the Englishman, Locke (p. 433), Rousseau may be said to have given currency to certain conceptions as to the education of children which, in the hands of others, brought about great educational changes. Briefly stated, these were:

 

1. The replacement of authority by reason and investigation.

 

2. That education should be adapted to the gradually unfolding capacities of the child.

 

3. That each age in the life of a child has activities which are normal to that age, and that education should seek for and follow these.

 

4. That physical activity and health are of first importance.

 

5. That education, and especially elementary education, should take place through the senses, rather than through the memory.

 

6. That the emphasis placed on the memory in education is fundamentally wrong, dwarfing the judgment and reason of the child.

 

7. That catechetical and Jesuitical types of education should be abandoned.

 

8. That the study of theological subtleties is unsuited to child needs or child capacity.

 

9. That the natural interests, curiosity, and activities of children should be utilized in their education.

 

10. That the normal activities of children call for expression, and that the best means of utilizing these activities are conversation, writing, drawing, music, and play.

 

11. That education should no longer be exclusively literary and linguistic, but should be based on sense perception, expression, and reasoning.

 

12. That such education calls for instruction in the book of nature, with home geography and the investigation of elementary problems in science occupying a prominent place.

 

13. That the child be taught rather than the subject-matter; life here rather than hereafter; and the development of reason rather than the loading of the memory, were the proper objects of education.

 

14. That a many-sided education is necessary to reveal child possibilities; to correct the narrowing effect of specialized class education; and to prepare one for possible changes in fortune.

 

A new educational ideal presented. Rousseau’s �mile presented a new ideal in education. According to his conception it was debasing that man should be educated to behave correctly in an artificial society, to follow blindly the doctrines of a faith, or to be an obedient subject of a king.

Instead he conceived the function of education to be to evolve the natural powers, cultivate the human side, unfold the inborn capacities of every human being, and to develop a reasoning individual, capable of intelligently directing his life under diverse conditions and in any form of society. A book setting forth such ideas naturally was revolutionary [1] in matters of education. It deeply influenced thinkers along these lines during the remaining years of the eighteenth century, and became the inspiring source of nineteenth-century reforms. As Rousseau’s Social Contract became the political handbook of the French Revolutionists, so his �mile became the inspiration of a new theory as to the education of children.

 

Coming, as it did, at a time when political and ecclesiastical despotisms were fast breaking down in France, when new forces were striving for expression throughout Europe, and when new theories as to the functions of government were being set forth in the American Colonies and in France, it gave the needed inspiration for the evolution of a new theory of non-religious, universal, and democratic education which would prepare citizens for intelligent participation in the functions of a democratic State, and for a reorganization of the subject-matter of education itself.

A new theory as to the educational purpose was soon to arise, and the whole nature of the educational process, in the hands of others, was soon to be transformed as a result of the fortunate conjunction of the iconoclastic and impractical discussion of education by Rousseau and the more practical work of English, French, and American political theorists and statesmen. Out of the fusing of these, modern educational theory arose.

 

II. GERMAN ATTEMPTS TO WORK OUT A NEW THEORY

 

INFLUENCE OF THE �MILE IN GERMAN LANDS. The �mile was widely read, not only in France, but throughout the continent of Europe as well. In German lands its publication coincided with the rising tide of nationalism—the “Period of Enlightenment”—and the book was warmly welcomed by such (then young) men as Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Richter, Fichte, and Kant. It presented a new ideal of education and a new ideal for humanity, and its ideas harmonized well with those of the newly created aristocracy of worth which the young German enthusiasts were busily engaged in proclaiming for their native land. The ideal of the perfected individual, strong in the consciousness of his powers, now found expression in the new “classics of individualism” which marked the outburst of the best that German literature has ever produced. As Paulsen [2] well says: Rousseau exercised an immense influence on his times, and Germany was stirred perhaps even more deeply than France. In France Voltaire continued to be regarded as the great man of his time, whereas, in Germany, his place in the esteem of the younger generation had been taken by the enthusiast of Geneva. Kant, Herder, Goethe, Schiller, Fichte, all of them were roused by Rousseau to the inmost depths of their natures. He gave utterance to the passionate longing of their souls: to do away with the imitation of French courtly culture, by which Nature was suppressed and perverted in every way, to do away with the established political and social order, based on court society and class distinctions, which was felt to be lowering to man in his quality as a reasonable being, and to return to Nature, to simple and unsophisticated habits of life, or rather to find a way through Nature to a better civilisation, which would restore the natural values of life to their rightful place and would be compatible with truth and virtue, sincerity and probity of character.

 

The great German philosopher, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), was so deeply stirred by the �mile that the regularity of his daily walks and the clearness of his thinking were disturbed by it. Goethe called the book “the teacher’s Gospel.” Schiller praised Rousseau as “a new Socrates, who of Christians wished to make men.” Herder acclaimed Rousseau as a German, and his “divine work” as his guide. Jean-Paul Richter confessed himself indebted to Rousseau for the best ideas in his Levana. Lavater declared himself ready for a Reformation in education along the lines laid down by Rousseau.

 

[Illustration: FIG. 64. BASEDOW (1723-90)]

 

BASEDOW AND HIS WORK. Perhaps the most important practical influence exerted by the �mile in German lands came in the work of Johann Bernard Basedow and his followers. Basedow was a North German who had been educated in the Gymnasium at Hamburg, had studied in the theological faculty at Leipzig, had been a tutor in a nobleman’s family, and had been a teacher in a Ritterakademie in Denmark and the Gymnasium at Altona.

Deeply imbued with the new scientific spirit, in thorough revolt against the dominance of the Church in human lives, and incited to new efforts by his reading of the �mile, Basedow thought out a plan for a reform school which should put many of Rousseau’s ideas into practice. In 1768 he issued his Address to Philanthropists and Men of Property on Schools and Studies and their Influence on the Public Weal, in which he appealed for funds to enable him to open a school to try out his ideas, and to enable him to prepare a new type of textbooks for the use of schools. He proposed in this appeal to organize a school which should be non-sectarian, and also advocated the creation of a National Council of Education to have charge of all public instruction. These were essentially the ideas of the French political reformers of the time. The appeal was widely scattered, awakened much enthusiasm, and subscriptions to assist him poured in from many sources. [3]

 

In 1774 Basedow published two works of more than ordinary importance. The first, a Book of Method for Fathers and Mothers of Families and of Nations, was a book for adults, and outlined a plan of education for both boys and girls. The keynotes were “following nature,” “impartial religious instruction,” children to be dealt with as children, learning through the senses, language instruction by a natural method, and much study of natural objects. The ideas were a combination of those of Bacon, Comenius, and Rousseau. The second book, in four volumes, and containing one hundred copperplate illustrations, was the famous Elementary Work

(Elementarwerk mit Kupfern) (R. 266), the first illustrated school textbook since the Orbis Pictus (1654) of Comenius. This work of Basedow’s became, in German lands, the Orbis Pictus of the eighteenth century. By means of its “natural methods” (R. 265) children were to be taught to read, both the vernacular and Latin, more easily and in less time than had been done