Elementary principles of education

Front matter

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ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES _

Preface

THE authors of this book have endeavored, first, to select those general facts and principles which will be of most service to typical elementary and high school teachers. They have tried, secondly, to present these facts and principles in a form intelligible to students who have had few or no other courses in education and little or no professional experience. They have attempted, thirdly, to offer an account based, as far as possible, upon the findings of scientific study.

To satisfy the first two requirements, it was found advisable not to introduce as full discussions of certain philosophic, biological, and sociological speculations as are sometimes found in more advanced books on the subject. It was found advisable also to devote relatively little space to the history of educational theories and practices and to descriptive accounts of the financial, administrative, and legal aspects of the school, its teachers, and pupils. The book is devoted primarily to the purpose of establishing sound principles for guidance of teachers in their most important daily tasks. Its chief topics are, therefore, the major objectives of education, the most insistent needs of education at the present time, the special functions of the school, the characteristics of children from birth to maturity, and the principles which underlie the learning and teaching process and the selection and organization of materials and activities for the school curriculum.

Vv v1 PREFACE

Although the writers have sought to present views which the results of scientific study most fully justify, they have found it impossible, without making the volume too long and difficult, to present much detail concerning scientific methods and results. The account, although made more simple and straightforward by this policy, may seem dogmatic. It is expected, however, that the instructor will encourage the students to read additional materials and to take a critical attitude toward the text. To facilitate outside reading and thinking and class discussion, a list of references and a group of problems and questions are appended to each chapter.

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Contents

General Characteristics of Education . The Need of Education

Means of Making Education Better Questions and Exercises ‘ References .

Il. Tue Uutimate Aims or EDUCATION

Chapter I

Man, compared to other animals, is the foremost producer of change. His life may be viewed as a continuous and determined effort to change the world in which he lives. He changes the earth’s form, whether he merely scrapes out a hole in which to hide or removes mountains to join oceans. He changes its living beings when he destroys flies and breeds cows or when he exterminates weeds and cultivates corn. He changes his fellow men when he teaches or preaches, and he changes himself when he goes to school or joins the church. Whatever he may do, he brings about, directly or indirectly, changes in the world which includes his fellow men and himself.

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF EDUCATION

Education Concerned with Making Changes. — The art and hope of human life is to change the world for the better — to make all things, animals, plants, other men, and oneself, more serviceable for life’s ends. Rivers flow without regard to man’s intent, but he may change their courses and deepen their channels to make them more serviceable. Insects grow regardless of man’s welfare, but he may exterminate the mosquito which infects him with disease and cultivate the bee which provides him with food. Children, too, develop in part by inner impulses apart from man’s direction, but man tries to change their original natures into forms which better serve some human needs. Each man singly tries, by promoting certain changes and resisting others, to make the world of things and men better for himself; a group of men living together, so far as they possess wisdom, try to make things and men better for the group as a whole.

Education an Art and a Science. — All of the sciences, arts, and industries are concerned, directly or indirectly, with the production of changes in the world. Science is concerned with the accumulation of knowledge which may enable men to understand and thereby to control changes that are deemed desirable. Arts and industries are concerned with putting the desired changes into effect. Education, which includes both a science and an art, is likewise concerned with understanding, controlling, and effecting changes which promote the general welfare.

Classification of Arts and Sciences. — Sciences, arts, and industries are usually classified and defined on the basis of the objects which they seek to understand or in which they seek to effect changes. Thus astronomy is a sclence concerned with the nature and changes of the heavenly bodies; meteorology, with atmospheric conditions surrounding the earth; geology, with the earth’s crust; biology, with the plants and animals on the earth ; physiology, psychology, sociology, and others, with changes in animals, especially human beings. Education, as a science, is closely allied with the latter group. It is primarily concerned with the nature of changes in human beings. It is not, however, identical with other sciences which study human beings nor is it confined entirely to the study of mankind.

Relation of Education to Other Arts and Sciences. — Human beings possess many aspects worthy of study, and the changes going on in men are of many sorts. Thus a man is a mass of matter subject to the laws of gravitation, electrical conduction, and the like, so that some of the changes in him are for physics to study ; he is also a concretion of elements of nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and the like, so that some of the changes in him are for chemistry to study ; other changes in men belong under anatomy ; still others under physiology. While each of these sciences deals primarily with one aspect of man, each also overlaps and borrows from the others. Education is interested primarily in the general interrelation of man and his environment, in all the changes which make possible a better adjustment of human nature to its surroundings. While education is thus interested primarily in man’s instincts and native impulses, his capacity to learn, his intellect, skill, and character, it borrows heavily from all other sciences dealing with the nature of man and is also intimately concerned with the sciences, arts, and industries which deal with other things and events in the world.

Education as Adjustment to the Environment. — It is often said that a man’s life consists in continual efforts to adjust himself to his environment. Education is often said to be concerned with the process of an individual’s adjustment to his surroundings. According to this definition, education would be limited to the study of the human individual who is to conform himself to fit external conditions as well as he may. Such a definition would be correct as far as it goes, but it would be incomplete and misleading. It is true that education involves efforts to change human nature in such a way as to bring man into more harmonious relations with his surroundings. He must learn to live under conditions that exist. But this is only part of the truth. Education is not merely the process of changing human nature to fit into an unchangeable world ; it is quite as fully concerned with changing the world to harmonize with human nature. Man is most conspicuously the animal that refuses to be dominated by the environment. The human will rebels against mere passive adjustment toastable world. If welook about us, it may appear that more of life is spent in changing the world than is expended in changing human nature. And, as we said in the opening paragraphs, man is not busied with changing the world for the world’s sake, but to improve his own condition in it. He is interested and active not only in changing his nature to fit his surroundings, but also in modifying the environment to suit his nature.

Education Concerned Both with Changing Human Nature and Changing the World. — There are, then, three ways in which man may improve his intercourse with or adjustment to his environment. He may change himself, or the external world, or both. The task of the science of education is to discover which of these changes should be made and how to make them. The art of education is the technique of bringing about the changes in human nature when they are found to be desirable. Other arts and industries, such as painting, agriculture, engineering, transportation, are concerned with changing the environment when this is found to be preferable. Education is concerned with any change which influences the interaction of aman and his world. It is concerned with every question of choice between changing nature and changing the environment. If the fruits are poisonous, shall we teach the children to avoid them, or shall we destroy the plants? If the children are by nature disposed to theft, shall we change the world and its institutions or teach the child to adjust himself differently to the world as it is? Sometimes we elect to change the environment, sometimes to change human nature, sometimes each in some degree. In any case, the problem should be considered by the | science of education.

The Educationist Must Know the World as Well as Human Nature. — ‘To solve such problems, what facts must education take into account’? First of all, education must know human nature as it is and the limits within which it may be changed. It would be unwise to simplify all commercial and industrial operations to the point where they required no reading of directions and no skill beyond a simple twist of one hand, and equally foolish to have all tasks so complicated as to require knowledge of calculus, or the skill of a juggler, which few could acquire. Secondly, education must take into account the external world —its industries, institutions, nations, customs, resources — as it is and the limits within which it can and may be changed. It would be as unwise to neglect education concerning infectious diseases, if many of these are unlikely to be completely abolished in a generation, as to instruct children in methods of defending themselves against packs of wolves that no longer invade their world. The fact that education is charged with taking into account both the individual and his world as it is and as it may be is responsible for the extreme difficulty and complexity — yet, at the same time, the attractiveness — of the science.

Education Requires Broadest Information. — Education, then, is concerned with far more than mere methods of teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic. It is concerned with the interaction of human individuals and their entire world. Education must survey and understand the world as it is — its physical features, its climate, its useful and dangerous products, its peoples, its governments, its institutions, its customs, its moral codes — since it is charged with assisting people to adjust themselves to the world as it is now. Education should be concerned with proposed changes in any phase of the world, as well as in human beings themselves, since it should be able to offer valid opinions concerning the possibility and advisability of changing human nature to conform to new conditions. Education must be alert to all changes in the world, however caused, whether deliberately with or without its approval, or by war, calamity, invention, or what not, since it is charged with assisting people to adjust themselves properly to new conditions. Noscience requires a broader range of information; no science is in a position to contribute more to human welfare than education. Distinction between Education as Art and as Science. — Education, as a science, is concerned with the discovery of the most satisfactory adjustments of an individual to the people, things, and conditions in the world. As an art, education is concerned with bringing about those changes in human nature, as distinguished from changes in the outside world, which result in the desired adjustment. Even as an art, education is concerned with far more than teaching school subjects. It is concerned with producing changes in human knowledge, skills, feelings, emotions, morals, in habits of every type. But before elaborating this fact, let us inquire why the art of education is needed.

Tort NEED oF EDUCATION

Education as an art, as a technique of changing human conduct, is needed for three reasons. It is needed, first, because the human being is born and grows up with an

THE PROVINCE OF EDUCATION i inherited, or unlearned, equipment that provides an incomplete and unsatisfactory ability to adjust to any — even the simplest — environment. It is needed, secondly, because natural, unguided learning (as distinguished from education by means of guidance) is slow, wasteful, and often misleading. It is needed, thirdly, because the modern world is so exceedingly complex and changeable that rapid learning is required as long as man takes an actively serviceable part in it.

The Limitations of Original Nature. — Each new generation is born with the germs of a native equipment of intellect, skills, and interests which differ but slightly from that possessed by mankind before the dawn of recorded history. Of the products of a lifetime of learning, the masses of information, the multitude of habits, skills, attitudes, convictions, and ideals possessed by parents, nothing is transmitted to the offspring. ‘They enter the world with the same meager equipment as infants born a thousand years ago.

Need of Utilizing the Gifts of Civilization. — If all human beings save newborn infants vanished to another planet, and if by a miracle the babies were kept alive for a score of years, preserving whatever knowledge and skill came from natural inner growth, and lacking only the influence of the educational activities of other men, they would, at the age of twenty-one, resemble a horde of animals. They would get a precarious living from fruits, berries, and small animals, would easily become victims of malaria, yellow fever, smallpox, and plague, and would know little more of language, mechanical arts, or provision for the future than the monkeys. They would be distinguishable from other mammalian species chiefly by a much greater variety of bodily movements, especially of the hands, mouth parts, and face, a much quicker rate of learning, and a very much keener satisfaction in mental life for its own sake. But even under the simple conditions of a primitive environment, the life of the jungle, the learning of a lifetime would be limited largely to the simplest type of food getting and protective skills with scarcely any real understanding of themselves or the natural world in which they lived.

If these infants grew up in a deserted modern city, they would advance little if any further without education. They would be engaged mainly in the search of food, mates, and organic comforts like other animals. They would use the books, tools, engines, and other innumerable products of civilization as toys somewhat more intelligently than would apes, but they would not learn to read the books, to bake bread, repair the tools, or make of engines more than spectacles for amusement, wonder, and fear.

Limitations of Unguided Learning. — Should these infants grow up in a modern community in which men and women went about their business with no attempt to advise, guide, correct, or otherwise educate them, they would learn considerable by means of observation. Their development would consist mainly in learning to do what they could see others do. Much of what they could see others do they would not learn because of inability to understand its significance. Even the simpler activities closely related to primitive wants they would learn uneconomically and often in an inefficient manner by observation alone. At most, they would merely acquire some of the forms of civilized life; they would learn little of its meaning. They would learn to ape us, without learning to live our life. Without some education, the spoken word, the typewriter, the newspaper, the electric light, — the medicine bottle would remain mysterious to them all their lives. |

The surprise is not that we learn so little and slowly without tuition, but that with it we can learn so much and so rapidly even as infants. Our capacity to learn as adults is largely due to our education as infants. Our development depends more than we realize on acquiring early the most essential tools for learning.

Whatever charms the life of a man left to his own original nature would have, it is certain that no wise man would choose that life for his children. Indeed, the energies of men, as far back as we can trace them, have been spent in preventing that life by education. Even primitive man, in his few-sided existence, recognized the need of educating the young. Because it was so obvious, the value of education was one of the earliest discoveries. So it is not enough to change the face of the world with cities, mines, farms, and factories. Man must be taught to use them. Advantageous changes in the world’s things produce their benefits only when accompanied by changes vn the human beings who are to live with them.

Modern Life Requires Continuous Learning. — As civilization has advanced and as life has become more complex, knowledge more extensive, implements more numerous and complicated, social relations more rich and varied, the need of education has increased rather than decreased. Merely to participate with reasonable fullness in the life of a modern city — and the proportion of urban dwellers is constantly increasing — merely to react with understanding and propriety to the contacts of everyday life requires many skills of body and mind, much information, and millions of modifications of the primitive animals which we are by birth. The need for education, merely to adjust ourselves to conditions to our own satisfaction, does not cease at any time from the cradle to the grave. The motor helplessness of infancy, the emotional unrest of adolescence, the mental and vocational demands of young adulthood, the development of the family and preparations for the future of the adult, the deprivations and weakness of old age require equally new, equally great, and equally difficult adjustments.

Since the traits — the knowledge, skill, habits, attitudes, beliefs, ideals — which we acquire during life are not transmitted to our offspring, who enter the world poorly adjusted even to the simplest environment, education must begin early and be administered effectively to provide a happy adjustment to our complex world as it is. But, as suggested earlier, education is concerned not merely with adjustment to things as they are or even to changes that result from uncontrollable forces of nature or the momentum of human action already under way, but also with the deliberate production of further changes which may make human life more satisfying and fruitful. In a democracy, where the masses control in a large degree the nature and amount of changes that may be made, wider and fuller education is especially essential.

More and better education is needed to reduce the still appalling sum of error, injustice, misery, and ignorance which blocks progress toward better living.

Education to Promote National Welfare. — Even the most civilized nations have not yet learned to settle international disputes by a court of expert judges, or to prevent national violence and lawbreaking by an international police. Theft, arson, and murder are still honored, provided they be done wholesale by a nation. And the wise opinion is that the only sure preventive of war is to educate men to think of it as a futile crime.

Even the most civilized nations also commit, year after year, the blunder of not letting men work who wish to work and are able to work to the advantage of the common good. A president of this country is reported to have said, when asked what should be done for the million unemployed, ‘‘ God knows.”’ Butmanmustlearn. Until man knows how to arrange national affairs so that no willing, capable worker shall be miserable in enforced idleness, education is incomplete.

Education to Promote Personal Happiness. — In even the most civilized nations the majority of men are not rational even about their own welfare. They do not value absolute goods, taking satisfaction in proportion to the beauty, property, leisure, friends, and the like which are theirs. On the contrary, many of their satisfactions and discomforts are caused by purely relative conditions — being better looking than Jones, not owning so large a house as Smith’s, having to work more than other men. It is pitifully true that many a man would object to being twice as well off as he now is, if the conditions were attached that everyone else should be ten times as well off. There is perhaps no greater barrier to human happiness than this irrational bookkeeping of welfare in terms of relative status alone. For it, too, better education is the preventive and cure.

Education to Advance the Control of Nature. — Education, too, is the necessary basis of all the arts and industries whereby man changes his outside conditions for the better. To so change them he must in each generation change himself. He must acquire the knowledge and skill, or the crops will not grow, the bacilli which cause disease will not be killed, the houses will not be built, the poems, paintings, and operas will not be composed, humane national laws and institutions will not be established, and international exploratory, commercial, and scientitic enterprises will not be pursued.

Means or Maxine Epucation BETTER

Man improves education as he improves any other human activity — by open-minded thought about it, by learning the results of existing forms of it, by experimenting with other forms, and by clearing up and making reasonable our notions of what changes we should make in human beings and of how we should make them. Such impartial scientific study of man’s efforts to change himself for the better has been receiving more and more attention within the last twenty years. In the case of school education, for instance, the actual changes wrought in boys and girls by this or that form of education are being measured, old and new methods are being tested by experiment in the same spirit of zeal and care for the truth that animates the man of science, and the educational customs which have been accepted unthinkingly by ‘use and wont”’ are being required to justify themselves to reason.

Such scientific study faces five problems or groups of problems, namely, those of :

1. The Aims of Education. What changes should be made in human beings by schools and other educating forces?

2. The Material or Subjects of Education. What is the original nature of the human beings whom we have to change? What are the principles or laws of human nature and behavior that we need to know in order to change men for the better?

3. The Means and Agents of Education. What forces are at our command in the task of producing and preventing changes in human beings?

4. The Methods of, Education. How should these means and agents be brought to bear upon the subjects of education so as best to realize its aims?

5. The Results of Education. What have been the actual effects of different methods, means, and agents acting upon different kinds of human beings?

1. Is the engineer, the farmer, or the woodsman concerned with making changes in the world? How do the functions of these workers differ from those of the educator?

2. Give some illustrations of the statement that the educationist should be concerned with changes wrought in the world by the architect, the engineer, or the doctor.

3. What is the distinction suggested by the two terms educator and educationist? Think of the educator in connection with the functions of the doctor, the engineer, the farmer, etc., and the educationist in connection with the functions of the biologist, physicist, chemist, botanist, etc.

4, What is the distinction between an art and a science, in general? In education? Criticize or defend the use of the term educator as implying one who practices the art of educating and educationist as one who pursues study of the science of education.

5. Why should a teacher know as much as possible about the science of education? Why should the teacher know as much as possible about the contemporary world at large?

6. Summarize the main reasons for the need of education at the present time. Which of these needs are likely to become greater in the future? Which are likely to become less pronounced?

7. Who requires the greater amount of education, the children of savages living on a South Sea island or the children of parents living in New York City? Explain.

8. Among the children in New York City, which probably needs the greater amount of education, the very dull child or the extremely bright? Explain.

9. Which will probably repay society at large most fully, the extensive education of the dull or of the bright children?

10. As the term education is used in this chapter, does it imply that a child left to play by himself in the back yard is being educated? What is the dictionary definition of the word educate? Is it possible to learn at all without being educated? Is this substantially the meaning implied in this chapter? |

The following books contain discussions of the topics of this chapter and of most of the chapters which follow. Appended to each later chapter will be given other references which treat in greater detail the topics of that chapter. A larger number of questions and exercises and an extensive bibliography will be found in O. M. Clem’s Work Book Syllabus in Principles of Education. Warwick and York.

Baciey, W. C., The Educative Process. Macmillan.

Baauey, W. C., and Keitu, J. A. H., An Introduction to Teaching. Macmillan.

Bossitt, F., The Curriculum. Houghton Mifflin.

Bong, B. H., Fundamentals of Education. Macmillan.

Bope, B. H., Modern Educational Theortes. Macmillan.

CoursauLt, J. H., Principles of Education. Silver, Burdett.

CuBBERLEY, E. P., An Introduction to the Study of Education. Houghton Mifflin.

Dewey, J., Democracy and Education. Macmillan.

Dewey, J., Human Nature and Conduct. Henry Holt.

Dewey, J., School and Society. University of Chicago Press.

Frasier, G. W., and Armentrout, W. D., An Introduction to Education. Scott, Foresman.

GRizzELL, E. D., Education: Principles and Practices. Macmillan.

Henverson, E. N., A Textbook in the Principles of Education. Macmillan,

Horne, H. H., Philosophy of Education. Macmillan.

Howerta, I. W., The Theory of Education. Century.

KANDEL, I. L., Twenty-five Years of American Education. Macmillan.

Kiiparrick, W. H., Education for a Changing Civilization. Macmillan.

Kitpatrick, W. H., Foundations of Method. Macmillan.

Kitparrick, W. H., Source Book in the Philosophy of Education. Macmillan.

Monroz, P., Brief Course in the History of Education. Macmillan.

Moors, E. C., What Is Education? Ginn.

Nunn, T. P., Hducation: Its Data and First Principles. Arnold (London).

Ruepicer, W. C., Principles of Education. Houghton Mifflin.

Spencer, H., Education. Burt.

Trow, W. C., Scientific Method in Education. Houghton Mifflin.

Chapter II Aims Of Education In Terms Of Human Wants

Need of Definite Formulation of Aims. — In the preceding chapter it was said that the effect of education is to produce changes in human nature and in other things in the world. It was said furthermore that by educating himself and others, man aims to produce those changes which result in improving his condition, in achieving a better relation between himself and the rest of the world, in increasing his welfare, or in making his life better and richer. Such statements obviously leave the purpose of education rather vague. The acute reader will at once inquire: ‘‘ What do you mean by an improved condition, a better relation, an increase in welfare, or a richer life? ”’ “On what basis are we to decide what is a bad, indifferent, or good condition of life?’’ These are very pertinent questions, which have long engaged the attention of thoughtful men. They are pertinent because every person interested or active in education should have some idea of its aims or objectives. Statements of these aims or objectives should express the ultimate purposes of education in such a way that they may be used as definite, intelligible principles of guidance by those who seek to educate effectively. They should be so stated as to be helpful in deciding on particular steps in education such as the desirability of teaching this fact, establishing that habit, encouraging the other skill, inculcating another ideal.

What Determines Values. — Education seeks to secure for men things that are good instead of bad, conditions that satisfy instead of annoy, activities that are right and beneficial instead of wrong and harmful. Things are not good or bad in and of themselves ; a man’s acts are neither right nor wrong apart from their effects; no condition is either satisfying or annoying in isolation. ‘Things, conditions, and acts can be classified as good or bad, beneficial or harmful, satisfying or annoying, or as otherwise possessing value and significance only when viewed from some point of view. In the last analysis, decisions as to the value and significance of things with which education is concerned are based on desires, wants, cravings, or urges. To justify and explain this statement, we must take a short excursion into the field of psychology, the science which undertakes to explain human conduct as it is.

The Roéle of Human Wants. — According to modern psychology, all human activity is initiated and sustained by some urge, craving, desire, or want. The young infant is largely immobile until it experiences the craving for food, or the urge of thirst, or the desire for physical activity, or some other want. It then becomes active and the activity continues until the infant’s craving is satisfied, until it secures what it wants, unless the desire subsides or 1s overcome by some other urge such as the craving to rest from the effects of its own exertions. Unless the infant wants something, there is no occasion for striving. When it is actively seeking to satisfy one urge, such as hunger, the object of that urge, food, is supremely important, valuable, good, whereas other things such as noises, movements, toys are at the time relatively unimportant and undesired. To the infant, then, things take on value and importance as they serve to satisfy some childish want.