Chapter XXVIII: New Conceptions of the Educational Process (2)

CONTRIBUTION OF THE MANUAL-ACTIVITIES IDEA. These new forms of school work were at first advocated on the grounds of formal discipline--that they trained the reasoning, exercised the powers of observation, and strengthened the will. The "exercises," true to such a conception, were quite formal and uniform for all. With the breakdown of the "faculty psychology," and the abandonment in large part of the doctrine of formal discipline in the training of the mind, the whole manual-training and household-arts work has had to be reshaped. As the writings of Pestalozzi, Herbart, and Froebel were studied more closely, and with the new light on child development gained from child-study and the newer psychology, these new subjects came to be conceived of in their proper light as means of individual expression, and to be extended to new forms, materials, colors, and new practical and artistic ends. To-day the instruction in manual work and the household arts in all their forms has been further changed to make of them educational instruments for interpreting the fields of art and industry and home-life in terms of their social significance and usefulness. Through these two new forms of education, also, the pupils in the elementary schools have been given training in expression and an insight into the practical work of life impossible in the old textbook type of elementary school. In the kindergarten, manual work, and the household arts, Froebel's principle of education through directed self- activity and self-expression has borne abundant fruit.

In the hands of French, English, and American educators the original manual-arts idea has been greatly expanded. In France some form of expression has been worked out for all grades of the primary school, and the work has been closely connected with art and industry on the one hand and with the home-life of the people on the other. In England the project system as applied to industry, and the household arts with reference to home-life, have been emphasized. In the United States the work has been individualized perhaps more than anywhere else, applied in many new directions--clay, leather, cement, metal--and used as a very important instrument for self-expression and the development of individual thinking.

IV. THE ADDITION OF SCIENCE STUDY

THE GRADUAL EXTENSION OF THE INTEREST IN SCIENCE. A very prominent feature of world educational development, since about the middle of the nineteenth century, has been the general introduction into the schools of the study of science. It is no exaggeration of the importance of this to say that no addition of new subject-matter and no change in the direction and purpose of education, since that time, has been of greater importance for the welfare of mankind, or more significant of new world conditions, than has been the emphasis recently placed, in all divisions of state school systems, on instruction in the principles and the applications of science.

From the days of Francis Bacon (p. 390) on, the study of science has been making slow but steady progress. The early history of modern science we traced in chapter XVII. During the seventeenth century English scholars were most prominent in the further development, due largely to the greater tolerance of new ideas there, and the University of Cambridge early attained to some reputation (p. 423) as a place where instruction in the new scientific studies might be found. After the middle of the eighteenth century, in large part due to the illuminating work of Voltaire (p. 485), a great interest in science arose among the French. In the Revolutionary days we accordingly find the French creating important scientific institutions (p. 518), and Napoleon gave frequent evidence of his deep interest in scientific studies. [24] This interest the French have since retained.

From France this new interest in science passed quickly to the Germans. The new mathematical and physical studies had early found a home at the new University of Göttingen (p. 555), and largely under French influences scientific studies were later introduced into all the German universities. Early in the nineteenth century the German universities took the lead as centers for the new scientific studies (p. 576)--a lead they retained throughout the century. In England the universities had, by the nineteenth century, lost much of their seventeenth-century prominence in science, and had settled down into teaching colleges, instead of developing, as had the German universities, into institutions for scientific research. Compared with the reformed German universities, actuated by the new scientific spirit, the English universities of the mid-nineteenth century presented a very unfavorable [25] aspect (R. 359). In the United States, book instruction in the sciences came in near the close of the eighteenth century, but the first laboratory instruction in our colleges was not begun until 1846, and our real interest in science teaching dates from an even later period. Until the coming of German influences, after the middle of the century, the American college [26] largely followed English models and practices.

Yet, as we pointed out earlier, the early nineteenth century witnessed a vast expansion of scientific knowledge, and by 1860 the main keys of modern science (p. 727) were in the hands of scholars everywhere. The great early development of scientific study had been carried on in a few universities or had been done by independent scholars, and had influenced but little instruction in the colleges or the schools below.

SCIENCE INSTRUCTION REACHES THE SCHOOLS BUT SLOWLY. The textbook organization of this new scientific knowledge, for teaching purposes, and its incorporation into the instruction of the schools, took place but slowly.

1. _The elementary schools._ The greatest and the earliest success was made in German lands. There the pioneer work of Basedow (p. 534) and the Philanthropinists had awakened a widespread interest in scientific studies. In Switzerland, too, Pestalozzi had developed elementary science study and home geography, and, when Pestalozzian methods were introduced into the schools of Prussia, the study of elementary science (_Realien_) soon became a feature of the _Volksschule_ instruction. From Prussia it spread to all German lands. In England the Pestalozzian idea was introduced into the Infant Schools, [27] though in a very formal fashion, under the heading of object lessons. In this form elementary science study reached the United States, about 1860, though a decade later well- organized courses in elementary science instruction began to be introduced into the American elementary schools. [28]

After the political reaction following the Napoleonic wars had set in, on the continent of Europe, all thought-provoking studies were greatly curtailed in the people's schools. In England, for other reasons, object lessons did not make any marked headway, and as late as 1865 practically nothing relating to the great new world of scientific knowledge had as yet been introduced into the private and religious elementary schools (R. 360) which, up to that time, constituted England's chief dependence for the elementary instruction of her people.

2. _The secondary schools._ In the secondary schools the earliest work of importance in introducing the new scientific subjects was done by the Germans and the French. In German lands the _Realschule_ obtained an early start (1747; p. 420), and the instruction in mathematics and science it included [29] had begun to be adopted by the German secondary schools, especially in the South German States, before the period of reaction set in. During the reign of Napoleon the scientific course in the French _Lycées_ was given special prominence. After about 1815, and continuing until after 1848, practical and thought-provoking studies were under an official ban in both countries, and classical studies were specially favored. [30] Finally, in 1852 in France and in 1859 in Prussia, responding to changed political conditions and new economic demands, both the scientific course in the _Lycées_ and the _Realschulen_ were given official recognition, and thereafter received increasing state favor and support. The scientific idea also took deep root in Denmark. There the secondary schools were modernized, in 1809, when the sciences were given an important place, and again in 1850, when many of the Latin schools were transformed into _Realskoler_.

In the United States the academies and the early high schools both had introduced quite an amount of mathematics and book-science, [31] and, after about 1875, the development of laboratory instruction in science in the growing high schools took place rather rapidly. Fellenberg's work in Switzerland (p. 546) had also awakened much interest in the United States, and by 1830 a number of Schools of Industry and Science had begun to appear. [32] These made instruction in mathematics and science prominent features of their work. After the Napoleonic wars, England attained to the first place as an industrial and commercial nation. This led to a continual agitation on the part of manufacturers for some science and art instruction. In 1853, Parliament created a State Department of Science and Art (p. 638), and the promotion of science and art education by government grants was now begun. Though the nation had been the first to be transformed by the industrial revolution, and its foreign trade by 1850 reached all parts of the world, the secondary schools of England had remained largely untouched by the change. They were still mainly the Renaissance Latin grammar schools they had been ever since Dean Colet (1510) marked out the lines for such instruction by founding his reformed grammar school at St. Pauls (p. 275). Their courses of instruction contained little that was modern, and in their aims and purposes they went back to the days of the Revival of Learning for their inspiration (R. 361).

THE CHALLENGE OF HERBERT SPENCER. By the middle of the nineteenth century the scientific and industrial revolutions had produced important changes in the conditions of living in all the then important world nations. Particularly in the German States, France, England, and the United States had the effects of the revolutions in manufacturing and living been felt. In consequence there had been, for some time, a growing controversy between the partisans of the older classical training and the newer scientific studies as to their relative worth and importance, both for intellectual discipline and as preparation for intelligent living, and by the middle of the nineteenth century this had become quite sharp. The "faculty psychology," upon which the theory of the discipline of the powers of the mind by the classics was largely based, was attacked, and the contention was advanced that the content of studies was of more importance in education than was method and drill. The advocates of the newer studies contended that a study of the classics no longer provided a suitable preparation for intelligent living, and the question of the relative worth of the older and newer studies elicited more and more discussion as the century advanced.

In 1859 one of England's greatest scholars, Herbert Spencer, brought the whole question to a sharp issue by the publication of a remarkably incisive essay on "What Knowledge is of Most Worth?" In this he declared that the purpose of education was to "prepare us for complete living," and that the only way to judge of the value of an educational course was first to classify, 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.

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 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 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.

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 coöperative
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 coöperative
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 social institutions 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 coöperative 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 classroom 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 illustrative 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.
350. Massachusetts: Organizing the First Normal Schools.
(a) The Organizing Law.
(b) Admission and Instruction in.
(c) Mann: Importance of the Normal School.
351. Early Textbooks: Examples of Instruction from
(a) Davenport: History of the United States.
(b) Morse: Elements of Geography--Map.
(c) Morse Elements of Geography.
352. Murray: A Typical Teacher's Contract.
353. Bache: The Elementary Schools of Berlin in 1838.
354. Providence: Grading the Schools of.
355. Felkin: Herbart's Educational Ideas.
356. Felkin: Herbart's Educational Ideas Applied.
357. Titchener: Herbart and Modern Psychology.
358. Marenholtz-Bülow: Froebel's Educational Views.
359. Huxley: English and German Universities Contrasted.
360. Huxley: Mid-nineteenth-Century Elementary Education in England.
361. Huxley: Mid-nineteenth-Century Secondary Education in England.
362. Spencer: What Knowledge is of Most Worth?
363. Spencer: Conclusions as to the Importance of Science.
364. Dewey: The Old and New Psychology Contrasted.
365. Ping: Difficulties in Transforming the School.
(a) Relating Education to Life.
(b) The Old Teacher and the New System.
366. Dewey: Socialization of School Work illustrated by History.

QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS

1. Contrast the instruction in a German Teachers' Seminary (345) or a French normal school (346) of 1838, as described by Bache, with that of an American normal school of to-day.

2. What do the beginnings of teacher training in England (347, 348) indicate as to conceptions then existing as to the educational process?

3. Show, by comparison, that the beginnings of the American normal school were German, rather than English in origin.

4. Just what educational conditions does Governor Clinton (349) indicate as existing in New York State, in 1827?

5. Contrast the instruction in the early Massachusetts normal schools (350) with that in the German (345) and French (346) of about the same time.

6. What do the three professional courses reproduced (345, 346, 350 b) indicate as to the development of pedagogical work by about 1840?

7. Compare the textbook types, given in 351, with modern textbooks in equivalent subjects.

8. Just what light on school teaching, in 1841, does the teacher's contract given (352) throw?

9. State the steps in the evolution of a graded system of schools (353, 354).

10. State the essentials of Herbart's educational ideas (355,356), and the nature of the advances made over his predecessors.

11. State the essentials of Froebel's educational ideas, as explained by the Baroness von Marenholtz-Bülow (358).

12. Explain the difference between the universities of the two nations (359).

13. Contrast elementary education in England (360) with that in the United States at the same period.

14. Would you add anything else to Spencer's requirements to prepare for complete living? What? Why?

15. How do you explain science being "written against in our theologies and frowned upon from our pulpits" (363) when it is of such importance as Spencer concludes?

16. Contrast the old and the new psychology (357, 364).

17. Have the difficulties experienced in the transformation of instruction in China (365) been essentially different than with us? How?

18. Apply Dewey's idea as to the socialization of history (366) to instruction in geography.

SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES

Barnard, Henry. _National Education in Europe_.
* Bowen, H. C. _Froebel and Education through Self-Activity_.
Compayré, G. _Herbart and Education by Instruction_.
* De Garmo, Chas. _Herbart and the Herbartians_.
Dewey, John. _The School and Social Progress_. (Nine numbers.)
* Dewey, John. _The School and Society_.
Gordy, J. P. _Rise and Growth of the Normal School Idea in the United
States_. Circular of Information, United States Bureau of
Education, No. 8, 1891.
Hollis, A. P. _The Oswego Movement_.
* Jordan, D. S. "Spencer's Essay on Education"; in _Cosmopolitan
Magazine_, vol. xxix, pp. 135-49. (Sept. 1902.)
Judd, C. H. _The Training of Teachers in England, Scotland, and
Germany_. (Bulletin 35, 1914, United States Bureau of Education.)
Monroe, Will S. _History of the Pestalozzian Movement in the United
States_.
* Parker, S. C. _History of Modern Elementary Education_.
Ping Wen Kuo. _The Chinese System of Public Education_.
Spencer, Herbert. _Education: Intellectual, Moral, and Physical_.
Vanderwalker, N. C. _The Kindergarten in American Education_.