Outline of the science of study

Front matter

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SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND

THE GIFT OF

Preface

To see an object is a simple act. To perceive its outlines accurately is an act of higher quality. But to behold a thing in the fullness of its manifold interrelations is a power partly inherited, partly acquired, whose rarity is not less than its priceless worth. Nowhere is this comparison more prominently forced upon our notice than in the field of educational work. With the average teacher the educational process has consisted chiefly in furnishing his students instruction per capita. With a rapidly increasing minority the student himself has been studied, and his interests, his limitations, and his status in general carefully marked out. But with only an exceedingly few has the problem of educational work been dealt with in full recognition of the organic interrelations of its physical, psychological, and sociological aspects and with a comprehensive grasp of the whole student period in its bearing upon the future life work of the student.

Instruction is necessary, of course, and fundamental. But the student himself must be underni

PREFACE

stood, and his instruction adapted to his natural conditions of development, both those conditions which apply to him in common with all students, and also those conditions peculiarly individual. Further, the social and industrial life surrounding him must be carefully studied, as determining to a considerable extent the whole character of his future life work. For education ought to prepare the student directly and organically, yet broadly and thoroughly, for a life work. There can be no other justification for our splendid array of educational institutions. In fact, there can be no other justification for our very existence. It is not enough for us to be. We must do — do something worthy, and do it well. Yet society is so organized that thorough preparation for a life work necessarily involves a preparation for usefulness in certain fields of correlated activities. This brings an obligation for trained social service. Besides, most persons feel an active interest in certain subjects not in any way connected with their professional interests, and oftentimes achieve valuable results along such lines. To provide for such training and to furnish general culture along those great lines of activity not included in the student's professional

IV

PREFACE

training becomes an essential part of a complete scheme of study.

It will not be expected that so comprehensive a subject can be dealt with, in this limited compass, in other than general outlines. In fact, the only apology offered for the existence of this volume is the prayer that it may aid in marking out more clearly the fundamental features of our educational work. At some future time it is hoped to take up each great stage more at length.

While a discussion of this character may, of right, be expected to be thoroughly awake to the best of recent pedagogical thought and experience, and fearless in criticism where occasion seems to demand, the writer has tried to keep before him that it is not less important to be catholic in spirit and conservative respecting the advocacy of radical departures from established usages and customs. It has been above all things else the endeavor to deal in an impartial and scholarly, yet simple and practical, spirit with these, the most profound principles of student life.

J. G. M.

Monmouth, 111., July, 1903.

Contents

CHAPTER

I. INTRODUCTORY.

A. Need of Comprehensive, Organic Conception

Chapter I. Introductory

Need of Comprehensive, Organic Conception of Educational Work. — In dealing with any problem it is necessary first to search out its fundamental principles, and then to niarshal these fundamental principles into a comprehensive, orgianic outline. It is not strange that one who does not understand the relation of the part to the whole should do his work wrongly. Much of the conflict in education to-day is due to the fact that the teacher, be he in whatever field, is apt to forget his relative position in the whole scheme of the student's career, and consequently to mistake the relative importance, and sometimes even the real function, of his own work. In this way we have built up a series of loosely connected educational systems, one above the other, rather than one 'organic system extending throughout the entire period of student life from the kindergarten to and through the professional

INTRODUCTORY

school and into active life-work. We need, if possible, to organize our educational work upon the basis of a science.

Is There a Science of Study ? — Is there a Science of Study ? If so, why all this conflict of curricula? If there is a Science of Study, upon what basis shall it be determined ? Why are our educational institutions divided off into their present classification, as primary, grammar, secondary, college, and professional schools? Is this classification an arbitrary creation of educators, or has it been based upon the natural principles of life unfoldment of the student? What underlying principle, or set of principles, determines the quantity and character of work required by each of these classes of institutions? Has this work been carefully and closely adjusted to the great conditions of life unfoldment during the student period? Or, previous to this last, has the normal period of life which can best be spent in study — no less, no more — been approximately determined, subject to physical, psychological, and sociological conditions; and, if so, upon what basis? Following this, has the period of student life been closely and scientifical-

INTRODUCTORY

ly observed, to notice what vital changes of attitude in the student occur during this period, and when, and their significance in determining courses of study ? Further, has the field of knowledge material been investigated and classified with direct reference to its value to the student, taking into consideration all the individual conditions of his development, as well as his sociological environments? Finally, has this classified study material been adjusted, in proportion to its relative value, into courses of study that were planned with direct reference to the conditions of student development and to the whole aim of study, so that the entire scheme of educational work from the kindergarten to the university shall be rational and organic; or, if this has not been done, are there any fundamental principles of education constituting a Science of Study by means of which such courses of study may be constructed ?

Need of Investigation. — Such, in substance, are the great questions that confront everyone who is called to exercise a directive influence over the education of our youth. That the character of the work done in many of our educational

INTRODUCTORY

institutions leaves much yet to be desired is generally recognized by leading educators, and it is also generally agreed that the interrelations between the different grades of our educational work are still far from being organic. Surely, there are clearly defined principles upon which a rational and organic scheme of study, flexible, adaptable, and extending through the entire period of student life, may be scientifically wrought out. Let us investigate.

Chapter II. The Defective Organization Of Our Educa- Tional Work

Present Spirit of Educational Investigation. —

Nothing at the present time is the subject of a profounder inquiry and discussion on the part of the educational public than the interrelationship of our various educational institutions and the kind of work to be done by each institution. We have made such wonderful advancement along a rapidly widening field of multiform activities in the past quarter of a century that many of the educational ideals of a few years ago are felt to be entirely inadequate now. This is not a mere meaningless reaction against the unpedagogical practices of the past. Rather, it is the expression of the new order of things. But a short time ago and he who dared to question the infallibility of our educational system — if the present arrangement may be rationally called a system — was denounced as an enemy of true education. With progress in other lines, however, has come the spirit of scholarly, dispassionate, thoroughgoing inquiry into our ways of preparing our youth for life work. Schools, colleges, and universities are being weighed in the balance of an exacting public opinion. Courses of study that were once considered satisfactory, because they bore the ear-marks of time-honored usage, have been put to the test from the standpoint of present-day ideals, and discarded. Formerly, when we attempted to determine the value of a course of study we looked back into the past and inquired what had been done. This inquiry seemed all-sufficient. Now, we are striving to adjust educational work to present conditions; still keeping an eye upon the best achievements of the past, it is true, but looking more intently into the future.

The Spirit of Combination and Organization. — We are beginning to realize that no scheme of education is rational and complete which is not closely organic from the time of entrance into the kindergarten to the end of the professional course.

EXISTING ARRANGEMENT

The spirit of combination and organization, which is becoming so powerful in the commercial world through the formation of gigantic business enterprises of a magnitude undreamed of by our fathers, is also making itself felt in the realm of pedagogical effort. This has brought to light many weaknesses in the current scheme of education, and we now see that the practice of some of our institutions of learning has, heretofore, been such as to make impossible a close, organic connection with the other related institutions. Steps have already been taken toward establishing an organic relationship between all grades of educational work, and a number of vital changes for the better have been inaugurated. But there yet remains much to be accomplished, and it may be worth. while, in passing, to note briefly a few of the features which are especially pertinent in this connection.

Existing Arrangement of Educational Institutions. — The existing arrangement or sequence of educational institutions comprises the kindergarten, the primary school, the secondary school, the college, and the professional school. Is this an ideal system? It has not proved such in the past. Our most eminent educators are agreed on that point. Yet, while the defects have been serious, and, in some cases, far-reaching, the scheme in itself is too valuable to be dispensed vsrith. Considerable re-adjustment is needed, however, to bring the system into full harmony with the present conditions of society in its relation to the various callings, trades, and professions.

Our Common Schools. — For generations an unceasing stream of animated and sometimes bitter controversy has been going on over the work of the common schools, and yet because of this very fact, it may be, the common schools have more nearly fulfilled their proper function than has any other class of institutions- in the whole field of pedagogical activity. This does not mean that the common schools have been free from serious faults or that they are now in no need of efforts for their betterment. The very democratic, cosmopolitan character of the common school system has rendered it liable to a multitude of weaknesses. But these have been weaknesses of method rather than of constitution and purpose. The avowed purpose for which the common

EARLIER SECONDARY STUDY

schools were established — to prepare our youth for good citizenship — has been clung to with admirable consistency. All efforts to bring them into the narrow, specializing sphere of mere training schools for the various trades and professions have signally failed. Common school training has been with us, as it should be, a general preparation in the fundamental features of intelligent citizenship. This has been the constant aim, but the results have been, in many schools, far from satisfactory. Insufficient compensation for teachers and the consequent inferiority of their preparation, resulting in a certain woodenness of methods, has done much to lower the grade of work that may of right be expected from so excellent a plan of providing for the general education of the great mass of the people.

Earlier Secondary Study.— Until recently it remained practically unquestioned that secondary instruction should not be begun before the ninth school year, or the first year of the present high school course. Of late the conviction has gradually been gaining ground that secondary studies should be taken up earlier. In many schools certain secondary studies, as algebra and a foreign language, have been introduced into the eighth grade with marked success ; and it is now being seriously discussed whether secondary studies may not be profitably commenced with the seventh school year. This, at least, has grown into a conviction with the leaders in public school work — that we have been giving too much time to elementary studies. We need a closer organization of our public school system with direct reference to this particular feature of school work.

Relations between High Schools and Colleges. — Whatever the lack of organization at other points, it is admitted on all sides that a great breach lies between the high schools and the colleges. The very origin of the two institutions has been the chief cause of this. The college has come down to the present as the representative of the classical learning of mediaeval times. The high school, on the other hand, sprang up as the people's college, the representative of modem educational ideas. Numerous attempts have been made to reconcile the antagonisms which lO have thus arisen, but in the main these efforts have not been successful.

It is interesting to look at ourselves through the eyes of an outsider, one of the most profound pedagogical thinkers of modern times :

* " Notwithstanding appearances and the intentions of the Americans themselves, who in their defective' definition assign only high schools and similar institutions to this grade of instruction, American secondary instruction comprises two parts and is divided into two periods — the high schools and the colleges The Americans themselves are the first to recognize the imperfections of their system of secondary instruction, but are not, perhaps, so sensible as we would be of the incoherence of an organization which intrusts to different institutions the successive development of one uninterrupted grade of instruction. One inconvenience which results from this arrangement is that a majority of the high school pupils do not pursue their

♦Gabriel Compayre, in U. S. Education Report for 1895-96, pp. 1168-1169.

II studies further. While in France nearly all the pupils of the quatrieme continue their studies until the end of the secondary grade, hardly a sixth of the population of the American high schools pass on into the colleges.

The evil from which American

secondary instruction suffers has an historical explanation. When their existence began in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, there was no intermediate grade between the primary schools and the colleges and universities. Later, the State, or, to speak more correctly, the States, took in hand the organization of the primary schools, which became the common schools, but they left the colleges and universities alone, as having independent life of their own. Then the directing powers proceeded to intercalate an intermediate class of institutions between the common schools and the private colleges which should unite the two and also be public schools. This was the origin of the high schools, and as they were established at the public expense, it was necessary to take into account both their adaptation to the wants of the majority of the citizens who do not wish their children to have a complete course of secondary instruction, and also the needs of a small number of scholars who desire to enter college."

Character of High Schools and Colleges Compared.

■ — And yet, when we look closely into the character of our high schools and colleges and compare their work with reference to its real value as a preparation for successful living, we are brought irresistibly to the conclusion that the high schools have been much nearer to their true educational position in an organic scheme than has been the case with the colleges. The high schools, while lacking in some essential respects, have been in touch with the people; the colleges have not. The high school courses, though perhaps not always the best, have been what the majority of the people wanted. On the other hand, the typical college course has been something apart from the real life of the mass of the people — a relic of days gone by, an ideal out of tune with the busy age in which it strove to keep alive.

There is no man in this country who stands higher in a comprehensive and profound grasp of educational work, from the quasi-classical standpoint, than does the newly chosen head of Columbia University. He said recently:

* " It is my belief that forces are now actively at work which will result in the destruction of the American college during the next generation, or, at least, in the destruction of its essential characteristics; first, perhaps, as it exists in the larger universities, and then elsewhere. These forces are: On the one hand, the rapid development of secondary schools — particularly public high schools — and the extension of their work upward into the field hitherto occupied by the freshmen and sophomore years of the college; and, on the other hand, the invasion of the junior and senior years of college work by professional and technical studies which are quite foreign in spirit, method, and purpose, to the studies which they are displacing

" The growth of the public high schools and the upward extension of their work into the

*Pres. Nicholas M. Butler, in A. M. Review of Reviews, Nov. 1902, pp. 589-590.

field formerly occupied by the early years of the college, seem to me to be an unmixed public blessing I 'accept this change,

therefore, as not only inevitable but beneficial. I recognize the ability of the best secondary schools to do not only as well as, but even better than, the colleges have been in the habit of doing the work of many of the studies of the freshmen and sophomore years. . . . College teaching has, at this point, failed to keep pace with the tremendous educational advances of the last generation; while the secondary schools have availed themselves of the new tendencies and opportunities to the utmost.

" On the other hand, I do not believe that the displacement of the remainder of the college course by professional and technical studies is either necessary, wise, or desirable."

President Harper, of the University of Chicago, is severe in denunciation of the attitude maintained by the conservative " classical " colleges :

* " A class of fifty men enter college,

♦William R. Harper, in U. S. Education Report, 1895-96, p. 1337- no two of them alike in equipment, natural taste, mental aptitude, or intellectual ability, and yet they have been required to take the same studies, within the same number of hours, in the same way and with a sameness throughout that makes college life for most of them a distasteful thing and an injury. I stand ready to assume the responsibility for the statement that many men are injured by college training, and that the cause of the injury in nine cases out of ten has been the inflexible, cast-iron routine of the college curriculum, which, let us congratulate ourselves, is fast becoming a thing of the past. Less harm has been done than would otherwise have been the case, because as a matter of fact only men of a certain disposition in days past have received an education. A great change has taken place among us today. Men of different t\"pes of mind, men who have no idea of becoming scholars, men who would be artists, mechanics, business men, as well as those who have in mind the ministry or the law, may receive an education adapted to their needs and capabilities. That

i6 the doctrine of individualism is beginning to be respected is evident from the establishment of scientific schools, technological schools, and from the high position which these schools occupy now side by side with the college, a position to which they could not lay claim even so short a time as ten years ago. But the same sin (for it is a sin against God and against man) is still committed in most of our institutions, even in those to which reference has been made. The individual is forgotten in the mass. In how many colleges is it the custom to take, as it were, a diagnosis of the mental constitution of each student similar to that which the physician makes of the body? It is not unusual in these days in connection with the work of the department of physical culture to have each man examined, the weak points of his body pointed out, and the principal exercises indicated that will help him. Is such a thing done for the mental constitution? The present college methods too often compel failures, and it is more or less accidental that a man receives real and genuine help in his development. Why is it that so many men achieve marked success in life, in their profession, and in every Hne of business, who have never seen the inside of college halls? Because contact with men does for them what technical education is supposed to do for those who avail themselves of its advantages. The feeling against higher education which has existed is not without some justification. A radical change is demanded — a change which shall shake to the foundations the educational structures that have been erected."

The distinguished head of the great institution at Chicago is, by no means, the only eminent university executive who voices the sentiments just expressed. President Jordan, of Leland Stanford University, and President James, of Northwestern University, have declared themselves in no uncertain manner. Says President Jordan, in terms somewhat milder, but not less decisive :

* " The ordinary college course which has

* David Starr Jordan, in U. S. Education Report, 1894-S, p. 1280.

been handed down from generation to generation is purely conventional. It is a result of a series of compromises in trying to fit the traditional education of clergymen and gentlemen to the needs of men of a different social era. The old college course met the special needs of nobody, and therefore was adapted to all alike. The great educational awakening of the last twenty years in America has come from breaking the bonds of this old system. The essence of the new education is individualism. Its purpose is to give to each young man that training which will make a man of him. Not the training which a century or two ago helped to civilize the masses of the boys of that time, but that which will civilize this particular boy. One reason why the college students of 1895 are ten to one in number as compared with those of 1875, is that the college training now given is valuable to ten times as many men as could be reached or helped by the narrow courses of twenty years ago. In the university of to-day the largest liberty of choice in study is given to the student. The professor advises, the student

DEFECTIVE ORGANtZATtOtt

chooses, and the flexibility of the courses makes it possible for every form of talent to receive, proper culture. Because the college of to-day, helps ten times as many men as that of yesterday could hope to reach it is ten times as valuable. The difference lies in the development of special lines of work and in the growth of the elective system. The power of choice carries with it the duty of choosing rightly. The ability to choose has made a man out of the college boy and transferred college work from an alternation of tasks and play to its proper relation to the business of life."

Relations between Colleges and Professional Schools. — No one acquainted with higher educational work would maintain, for a moment, that there has all along been any direct relation, organic or even orderly, between the " liberal " course of the average college and the professional courses. The student, on finishing his college course, has ordinarily found himself obliged to enter upon a professional course so entirely different from his college work that he has lost valuable time in adjusting himself to his new studies. Worse than

COLLEGES AND PROFESSIONAL SCHOOLS

that, he has found himself handicapped by his ignorance of elementary and correlative knowledge bearing upon his work in the professional course — knowledge which he should have acquired in his college course. Like the entrance of most other great truths upon the field of human action, it has taken the college authorities a long time to realize that the chief function of a college course is to fit the student, directly and organically, not in a general disciplinary way, to benefit to the utmost by the professional course in the university. It can hardly be said that the majority of our colleges, as yet, realize their proper function in the general scheme of student life. True, many are converting the last two years of the course into preparatory work for the professional course; but only a very few, as Harvard and Leland Stanford, are permitting their students to elect their work throughout the whole course with direct reference to a broad and thorough preparation for entrance upon the professional course, under the guidance and counsel of advisory committees from the faculty.

Character of Our Professional Schools.— On the other hand, many of our so-called professional schools are not worthy of the name. Our State normal schools are practically of high school grade, or, at best, may grade with the first years of college. The same may be said of many law schools, and, to some extent, of the medical schools. The general standard, however, of many of the best law schools and medical schools is being gradually raised by increased requirements for entrance, and by State requirements for admission to practice. Still, it must be admitted that the low standard of requirements permitted by a large number of the States is responsible for the numerous low-grade institutions of these two professions.

But it is in the business world that our professional training proves weakest. We have no commercial schools, in the professional sense, with the exception of the Wharton School of Finance and Economy, a part of the University of Pennsylvania ; the School of Commerce of the University of Wisconsin; and perhaps a few others in process of formation. President James, of Northwestern University, in his able report on commercial education in Europe, points out in

COLLEGES AND PROFESSIONAL SCHOOLS

strong contrast the inferior character of training given by our so-called business colleges :

* " There is at present little opportunity for a youth desiring to enter business life to get any systematic assistance in preparing himself for his future career, if he desires or expects to engage in anything but clerical work.

It may be said that the best

preparation is a good general education of the literary high school and college. This has always been the answer to every proposition to organize professional or technical education. It is essentially the mediaeval idea of education, and it dies only very slowly and very hard in the face of modern progress. The best practical answer to it is the fact that practical men as a class will have nothing to do with it. Opportunities for such education have been open to the business classes for three centuries, and they have availed themselves of them only to a very limited extent either in Europe or in America; while, when-

*Edmund J. James, report to the American Bankers' Association in 1893; U. S. Education Report, 1895-96. pp. 722-723.

ever a special education of high rank has been open to them they have shown their appreciation of it by patronizing the institutions which offered it.

" The fact seems to be that in every line of educational life the number of people who will take a very extensive course of study of a purely liberal character is very small indeed, while the number of those who will take an extensive special or professional education is large and continually growing. Indeed, if you were to cut out of our present so-called liberal courses those persons to whom the study of Latin, Greek, history, mathematics, science, etc., is not only a liberal but also a technical pursuit in the sense of preparing them directly for their future work — namely : teachers, preachers, lawyers, physicians — the number left in these courses would be astonishingly small.

" We can conquer the uneducated and half educated people of this country for secondary and higher education only by offering them courses of study which, while they are of a strictly educational character in the best sense

ORGANIC EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

of the word, shall also have some bearing on their future every-day life, shall have some direct relation to the work they are called

upon to do in the world

" A commercial training must be really educational in character. What this means, in the domain of secondary education, can be seen if one will take the six months' course of the average so-called commercial college in the United States, and compare it with the three years' course of the school in Vienna, or Prague, or Leipsic, or Antwerp, or of the two schools in Paris. It is work of this latter character which is at once practical and liberal; which educates for life while it trains for a livelihood, and which should be introduced into our scheme of public education."

Can an Organic Educationcd System be Constructed? — Look where we may among all classes of educational institutions we cannot help having forced upon our notice the injurious effects of our arbitrary, haphazard process of preparation for life work. Doubtless, there are many things in the nature of social conditions existing in so great and varied a country, that make the construction of a satisfactory educational system a matter of momentous difficulty. Among a people so widely scattered, of many different origins, of different social customs, and having widely different ideas of what constitute the demands of present civilization, there must, of necessity, be correspondingly wide differences of opinion regarding the kind and the quantity of educational training requisite to a satisfactory preparation for life work. But the difficulty of the undertaking, however great, is no argument against the eventual establishment of an organic scheme of education, if by such a scheme we can secure better results, and in a shorter period. As respects this, the only questions are, (i) will the establishment of an organic scheme of education better matters, and (2) under such conditions as exist in this country is it possible to establish such a system?