The training of teachers and methods of instruction; selected papers

Front matter

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Prefatory Note

T^vURING the last twenty years I have published three small volumes of Essays and Addresses on Educational topics. These having been for some time out of print 1 , I hope I am not wrong in thinking that a selection of those papers which seem to me to treat of subjects of permanent interest may be acceptable to some. Two papers, one on Universities and the other on History in the school, have not before been published in book-form.

S. S. L.

University of Edinburgh, i 901.

1 With the exception of one volume which has ceased to command a sale.

Contents

1. The Teaching Profession and Chairs of Education

Inaugural Address ......

2. On Professorships and Lectureships on Education

I. The Teaching Profession And Chairs Of Education

INAUGURAL ADDRESS. {Bell Chair of the Theory, History, and Art of Education 1 .)

The first occupant of a Chair new to the Universities of Great Britain is placed in a somewhat peculiar position. It may be fairly expected of him not merely to correlate the new subject with the other studies of a University, but to vindicate for it a right to the promotion which it has obtained, to explain its bearing on the educational interests of the country at large, and to satisfy the sceptical as to its direct utility. Were I, however, to undertake to maintain a thesis so large, I should weary even the well-disposed listener, and probably fail, after all, to convince or convert the unfriendly. A broad treatment of the subject would involve me in a range of argument, fact, and illustration, so wide and varied, that I think it better to assume very much on the general question. I am entitled indeed to make large assumptions, if the educational movement of the last thirty-five years has had any genuineness and honesty in it ; if education has been anything more than a pretext for

1 Inaugural Address, 1876.

L. L. I political and ecclesiastical contention. It is not improbable, moreover, that by limiting my range of observation, and confining myself to the objections taken to the foundation of this particular Chair, while at the same time giving some indication of my own point of view with respect to the question of education, I may do more than could be accomplished by a general treatment, to reconcile the hostile and the sceptical to this new event in educational history. But, first, a few words as to the foundation.

Dr Andrew Bell was born in St Andrews, in 1 753- At the ancient University of that town he was distinguished in most subjects of study, but especially in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy. After spending some years as a tutor in the Southern States of America, he returned to this country, took orders in the Church of England, and sailed for Madras. There, he was appointed to an army chaplaincy, and undertook, along with his other duties, the superintendence of the Military Male Orphan Asylum, which was instituted after his arrival in the Presidency. It was while devoting himself with singular earnestness and assiduity to the work of education in this hospital that he was driven, almost by the necessity of his position, to invent the system of mutual tuition with which his name will be ever associated. After Dr Bell's return to this country he devoted himself to the dissemination of his system, being sustained in his unceasing activity not a little by the rivalry of Joseph Lancaster. Out of the labours of the latter grew the British and Foreign School Society, and out of the labours of the former the National Society in connection with the Church of England.

The principle of mutual instruction of boys by boys was the discovery by which Dr Bell hoped to regenerate the world. But in truth the invention and application of this method was not his sole merit. He was a genuine teacher, having quick sympathy with the nature of. boys, and great readiness of resource in the schoolroom. Many of our established practices were first introduced by him, and some of his improvements are only now being adopted. My impression is that prior to his undertaking the charge of the Madras Orphan Asylum in 1789 it was not usual strictly to classify the pupils of a primary school ; and we are all aware that it was only the other day that the leading schools of Scotland began to arrange their pupils in classes according to their progress, and that in some schools of high reputation (incredible as it may seem) classification on this basis has not even yet been attempted ! I shall not on this occasion enter further into Dr Bell's educational reforms, but content myself with saying that at present, and until better informed, I am disposed to regard him as the founder of the Art of Primary Education in this country, as a conscious art 1 .

Dr Bell destined his large fortune mainly for the foundation of specific Educational Institutions, the residue to be applied to educational purposes, according to the discretion of his Trustees, enjoining on them always to have due regard to the promotion of his system. The interest of this money was for many years paid away in small grants to various schools throughout the country in connection with the Church of Scotland ; but after the passing of the Education (Scotland) Act, in 1872, which made universal provision for schools, the Trustees, who at present are the Earl of Leven and Melville, Lord Kirkcaldie, and Mr John Cook, W.S., resolved to employ a portion of the funds in their keeping for the purpose of instituting Chairs of Education in Edinburgh and St Andrews, to be called the " Bell Chairs of the Theory, History, and Art of Education," imposing on the occupants the duty of expounding, in the course of their prelections, Bell's principles and system. They thereby fulfilled in the most effectual way, under existing circumstances, the objects which Dr Bell had

1 Anyone who doubts this will have his doubts removed by reading Southey's Life of Bell, and above all BelPs Collected Works in one vol., published by Oliver and Boyd, Edinburgh, in 1832 — now a very rare book.

in view in originally constituting the trust. Certainly no one who has read the Life of Dr Bell, by Southey, will doubt that this resolution of the Trustees would have been in the highest degree pleasing to him. Almost with one voice the teaching profession have hailed the action of the Trustees as a great educational advance. It has been felt that the three gentlemen above named have conferred honour on a department of work which Dr Bell delighted to honour. They have unquestionably done very much to promote education in Scotland, not only by raising the work of the schoolmaster in public estimation, but also by attracting public attention to education as being not merely a question of national machinery for the planting of schools but a question of principles and methods — in brief, of the philosophy of man and of political constitutions.

I can do no more on this occasion than make a merely passing allusion to the zealous, but futile, efforts of the late Professor Pillans to do what the Bell Trustees have now accomplished.

A Chair of the Theory, History, and Art of Education having been instituted, we have now to ask what the objects of such a Chair are. There has been much misunderstanding with regard to these. Some are at a loss to know what there is to say on education within the walls of a University, and what the principles and history of that subject have to do with the schoolmaster's work. Others, who have not to be instructed on these points, dread the competition of an Education Chair with the existing Training Colleges. The latter class of objectors is the more important. They are at least aware that the necessity of training teachers in methods and in school organization is not a question to be now for the first time debated. They know that the question has been settled these thirty years by the combined intelligence of the Government of the country and of the Education Committees of the various Churches. The former class of objectors has nothing to urge against the University training of teachers in the philosophy and methods of education, which they would not have been prepared with equal readiness and confidence to urge against the institution of the existing Training Colleges thirty years ago. Indeed, I am disposed to think that, had the desirableness of training teachers to their professional work been propounded thirty years ago for discussion on its own merits as a general question, it would not yet be settled in the affirmative. The Parliamentary Philistine, the " Church in danger " men, and above all (strange to say) a large proportion of those engaged in the work of teaching, would have been opposed to the introduction of any such novel idea in practical form. Many as are the evils of centralization, it is unquestionably to the centralizing action of the Committee of Privy Council that we owe the full recognition of the efforts which were being made thirty-five or forty years ago in London and Edinburgh to train teachers, and the consequent growth of the Training College system. The work was done through the Churches, and accordingly called forth no Church opposition, and as money was freely offered to all who desired training, the rest of the world readily acquiesced.

The effect of this action on the part of the Privy Council has been most beneficial. Almost all now recognize that there is an art of teaching and of school-keeping, and that primary teachers should be trained in that art. It is only among that class of teachers and professors who have never come into close contact with the existing system of training that doubts and objections survive. Quietly, and almost unnoticed, a great new Institution has established itself in the United Kingdom, and has overpowered every possible theoretical objection to its existence by the practical benefits it has conferred on the country. It is therefore too late now to discuss the general question. The practical result is before us, and the occupation of teacher has been finally raised into a profession by requiring, as the condition of entering it, a professional discipline. If method in the work of the primary school is now regarded as indispensable, may we not conclude that Plato, Quintilian, and Ascham have something to say to the teacher of the secondary school which may be worthy of his attention ?

Notwithstanding many defects — and defects are incident to all organizations— the Training College system has been a success. The kind of work done in these institutions, and the extent to which they have taken their place as seminaries second only to the Universities themselves, would, if inquired into, astonish the few who have hitherto ignored their existence. I am also satisfied that the improvements which have taken place even in secondary instruction have been due largely, if not chiefly, to the indirect influence of the Training Colleges, although these exist for the training of primary teachers alone. Every man connected with education must be so well informed on this the most important modern movement in educational history that to dwell longer on it would be superfluous. My purpose in referring to it at all is to limit the range of any argument which might naturally be expected from me on this occasion.

For. the necessity of training the future teacher not only in the subjects which he is afterwards to teach, but in the art which he is to profess, being once for all a settled matter, -I am at liberty to confine my remarks to the narrower question of the training of those aspirants to the scholastic profession who pass through the Universities. Those aspirants are either self-supporting or partly dependent on small bursaries gained in open competition, and their purpose is to prepare themselves for the higher class of Public Schools (which, in their upper departments, are in truth lower secondary schools), and for purely Secondary or Grammar Schools either in Scotland or other parts of the Empire. As it is at once evident that attending university classes instead of the classes of a Training College has no such great virtue in it as to enable university men to dispense with professional training any more than their fellow-teachers (of a so-called lower grade), it is superfluous to argue the point. It may be at once assumed that, as the schools for which they are preparing themselves, at least those in Scotland and the Colonies, comprehend within them at once primary and secondary instruction, the need of professional training, in the case of university students, is peculiarly great. Where are they to get this? They might be required to combine attendance at a Training College with attendance at a University for a degree ; but this, though it might serve as a provisional arrangement, would not secure the end we seek. And it would not secure it because a specialist Training College does not answer the same purposes as a University. The broader culture, the freer air, the higher aims of the latter, give to it an educational influence which specialist Colleges can never exercise.

It is impossible within my present limits to elaborate this view of the question : it is familiar to all educated men. It would appear however that the moment we substitute a distinct practical purpose, such as the production of engineers, officers of the army, physicians, ministers of the Church, as the sole aim of education, and arrange the whole machinery of an institution to attain any one of these ends exclusively, the mental life of the student becomes at once narrowed, and education in the higher sense disappears altogether. We all acknowledge this truth when it is supported by our antipathies and we are called upon for an opinion on such seminaries as Jesuit Colleges. But the objections to be taken to these specialist seminaries are, from an educational point of view, substantially the same in kind as may be taken to Colleges which have other, and merely secular, aims. It is desirable, therefore, to maintain the position of the Universities as the legitimate trainers of all those aspirants to the teaching profession who are fitted by their previous education to enter on a university curriculum. This is all that is demanded by those who desire a university training for schoolmasters. Is it an unreasonable demand? The preliminary training of all female student-teachers, and of the great majority of the other sex, makes, and will continue in perpetuity to make, Training Colleges a necessity ; but there are some youths whose greater local advantages or greater native energy of mind is such as to have secured for them a better early training in languages and mathematics and to have inspired them with a higher ambition than these seminaries can satisfy. Those better trained intellects, those more ambitious natures, ought to have the University open to them not only, as at present, for instruction but for professional training.

It may be urged, — it is urged by some, — that the students of Training Colleges are welcome to the discipline which the University can give in classics, science, and philosophy, but that the Training Colleges themselves should furnish the purely professional instruction. But the answer to this is, that if the Training Colleges are competent to handle the question of education as a science and art equally well with the Universities, they are also competent to teach classics, science, and philosophy equally well with the Universities. Latin, I fancy, can be taught quite as well in one street of a town as another. What we want is that the student-teacher shall live in the university atmosphere, and enjoy all those subtle intellectual and moral advantages which belong to that serener air. If this be desirable as regards Latin, Literature and Mathematics, how much more is it desirable in the case of the principles of education ! Here the student enters into the precincts of Philosophy itself: he has to find the psychological basis and relations of methods of instruction, he has to think about Education, and try to ascertain what Education precisely is, and what kind of public duty it is which he has before him as a schoolmaster. He has to investigate the principles of his art, and to expand his thought by studying its history. Is it not at once apparent that whatever advantage belongs to the study of classics and science in a University belongs pre-eminently to studies which ally themselves to philosophy and history ? Doubtless there are some minds whose education is so defective and whose imagination is so weak that they are unable to conceive in what respect a university curriculum should differ from a similar curriculum in a specialist College in which a practical limitation of aim vitiates the whole process of education in the higher sense of that term and makes it essentially illiberal. To such minds I do not address myself.

Far be it from me to say one word in depreciation of Training Colleges. I know them too well not to respect their work. I have already shown their importance as a part of the educational machinery of the country, their necessity as a permanent part of that machinery, and the debt the country owes to them. But they are not Universities — this is all I desire to say — any more than Sandhurst or Woolwich is a University. It is true that certain picked students are now sent from the Training Colleges to certain Universities to attend two of the classes there, and thus sniff the academic air ; but this device can never supply the place of a university curriculum and of university life.

When, further, we consider that for two hundred years all the leading teachers of the parochial schools of Scotland have been supplied by the Universities, and have carried with them into the most remote parishes some university culture, is it too much to ask that a system which has been so beneficial in the past shall be continued and even more fully developed under the new Statute 1 ? At this moment no man can be appointed to a Public School in Scotland — and the term " Public School " includes all schools, with about a dozen exceptions — who does not possess a Government certificate. A raw lad from the Hebrides is, after nine or ten months' training, and while yet barely able to write an ordinary letter, while wholly ignorant of Latin, and acquainted with the merest 1 The Act of 1872.

IO THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS elements of other subjects, technically qualified for any Public School, while a graduate of the Universities is disqualified until he undergoes a further examination. This seems hardly credible. I have taken opportunities of bringing this fact before authorities in the Universities from time to time since 1872, but it is difficult to believe that they have yet fairly realized the actual state of things. All the new machinery for education will fail to produce the effect expected of it if this evil be not quickly remedied 1 . The Education Department is quite entitled to hold that a university curriculum shall be incomplete, so far as the teacher is concerned, if it do not include a knowledge of the principles and practice of education, but to go further than this is an insult to the Universities of Scotland, which these bodies, however, seem slow to feel. The Universities are being gradually dissociated from the teaching profession. The evil might be faced, and we might reconcile ourselves to the infliction of this blow on the university system of Scotland, especially as the Universities themselves seem to accept their position with the silence which indicates acquiescence, were it not that the education of the country is imperilled, and all that has been distinctive of Scottish school-life is threatened. It is to be hoped that we shall have ere long a recognized university curriculum for teachers, and that the impending danger may thus far be obviated.

Do not imagine that the education of the country can be maintained by Codes, with an array of " specific subjects " to be paid for at so much a head. The higher instruction has been given in the past, not for money, but for love. Teachers, having formed their standard at the Universities, carried that standard down with them into the country, and were proud of the opportunity of forming classes in Mathematics and Latin. They felt that they kept themselves up to a higher level by connecting themselves with university work, and they saw that this higher instruction told on the 1 The evil has now (1882) been substantially remedied.

THE TRAINING OF THE TEACHER II

intelligence, and above all on the morale, of the whole school. It is by sending out able and ambitious men, not by the manipulation of a Code (although this too has importance), that true education is promoted. Nor is it only for those who are competent to go direct from the school to the University that a curriculum is demanded, but also for those Training College students of one or two years' standing, who desire to carry their education further, and to qualify for the higher primary, and for secondary, schools.

In brief, a Faculty of Education is, in a restricted sense, already constituted in the Training Colleges of the Empire : we desire to lift this up, and to constitute such a Faculty in the Universities, because we believe that there is a national work to be done which the Universities are alone competent to do. It is true that, if the curriculum which we contemplate is carried out, a certain small proportion of Training College students will pass over the Training Colleges altogether. Is this a matter for regret or alarm ? Are the Scottish Universities, which have always been institutions that maintained a close connection with the people, and endeavoured to supply the wants of the various professions, to be excluded now and permanently from all connection with the profession of education, because Training Colleges will lose a certain percentage of their students? The heads of the Training Colleges do not, I am satisfied, share the fear which some have expressed, and the finances of these institutions are placed far above the reach of injury by any such slight innovation. Those who imagine that Training Colleges will be materially affected, except for good, by this new movement, speak in ignorance of those seminaries, and the sources of their strength.

Further, the institution of this Chair, by providing professional instruction for teachers, not only directly benefits the schools of the country, but it increases the importance of the teaching profession. It gives it an academic standing. It makes it possible to institute for the first time in our

Universities a Faculty of Education, just as we may be said already to have a Faculty of Law, of Theology, and of Engineering. It thereby raises the whole question of the Theory and Art of Education, as such, to a higher level, and may, perchance, serve, more than almost any other external influence, to attract into the occupation of schoolmaster men who might otherwise pass it by for occupations which have hitherto ranked higher in the conventional estimate of the world. It promotes the movement, which has been steadily progressing for twenty years, for the recognition of the large body of teachers as a great national institution — an organized profession, looking, as other professions do, to the University as its source and head, and drawing strength and self-respect from that connection.

Difficulties have been thrown in the way by a few, who are at a loss to know what the movement precisely means. Timid and distrustful, and accustomed to follow precedent as the sole safe guide, they have been groping about to find what other people are thinking. What would they say at Oxford and Cambridge ? What do they do at Paris and Berlin ? Now, for myself, I should certainly be glad to find that any educational movement here was supported by the concurrent approval of other learned centres, but I venture to submit that it is to Scotland that other nations may fairly look for guidance on this question. We in Scotland have been the true pioneers in popular education : and do we now lag so far behind that we must be sending out scouts to see what they are doing in the front ? The traditions and accumulated wisdom of three hundred years are behind us, and with all its defects our present educational system is, as a whole, still worthy of our past history. In this matter, as in others, we claim to lead Europe and America. Still I must so far consider the weak brother as to tell him that in England some of the most cultivated minds of the two Universities, being met together at Winchester in the Headmasters' Conference of 1873, discussed the question of instituting Chairs of Education in Oxford and Cambridge. The mere fact that the question was seriously discussed by such a conclave, in a country whose whole training and habit of mind are alien to philosophy, is itself most significant. And although there was no very practical issue to the Conference, opinions of weight were recorded. While desiderating, as was to be expected, arrangements for practical training, as well as for theoretical and historical instruction, the Bishop of Exeter 1 wrote as follows : —

"...It would be well worth while to provide that men should have the opportunity of seeing something of their business, and of reflecting on what they have seen, before they begin to teach. For this purpose the ideal system would be this : to have a Professor of Education, either in London, or in Oxford, or in Cambridge, or to have one in each ; to require the Professor or Professors to give certificates to such B.A. as attended their lectures and passed a good examination in them."

Then Dr Kennedy of Cambridge, the eminent (Emeritus) Headmaster of Shrewsbury, says : —

"...Professional lectures supported by examinations and certificates, which should be essential to the function of public-school teaching, though too much must not be expected from them, seem to promise some important good. Especially this, they would give to Education the status of a faculty and profession : they would oblige every master to regard his work as professional, as work to be done on definite principles and with high public responsibility. They would enhance the personal and social dignity of masters, and thereby promote their efficiency, their usefulness, and their happiness. Such professional lectures would, I suppose, be directed to the theory and history of Education, and also to the art and method of teaching : in all which moral and mental science without being directly taught would be assumed and used as principial and regulative." This is well said, and I willingly adopt the words as my own programme.

1 Now Archbishop of Canterbury.

Having heard all this, do you think that I push my argument too far when I maintain that the subject of education, as such, demands, as of right, a place in the university curriculum, with a view to the constituting of a Faculty of Education ? The philosophy of education is, in fact, now, in the world of letters, a distinct subject, and the importance and intimate relation of it to the future welfare of the nation require that it shall be held in academic honour, and provided with academic standing-room. Its relation to the Universities, moreover, as a means of bringing them, through some recognized functionary, a functionary controlled by the responsibilities of his position, into close connection with the whole scholastic machinery of the country, thereby extending their just influence, is sufficiently obvious.

We have, however, still other objections to the founding of an Education Chair to face, proceeding mainly from those who take what might be called a purely academic view of the question. Education (they say) is an important subject, we admit, but it is too closely allied with practice to be a fit subject for university teaching. It is a subject rather for the laboratory of the schoolmaster than for the theoretical and historical prelections of a Professor. Now it is to be at once admitted that this is a fair subject for debate ; but I am entitled to insist that it shall be discussed as part of a larger question — this question, namely, Is a University to train for professions at all ? My answer to this is, that the business of a University is, mainly, to train for the professions, and that there ought to be within a University as many Faculties as there are recognized professions. It is not because of the claims which the Theory and History of Education can make to be regarded as a subject of general university discipline (though not a little might be said on this aspect of the question, beginning from Plato), that it seeks admission to a university curriculum. It is as a complement to the Faculties of Arts, and Science, as completing the preparation of the teachers of the country for their profession, that it rests its claim. That future educators who are receiving their general instruction in a University should there also study the subject of education, is to my mind of the nature of a truism. Nor does it seem possible for any to hold another view without including in their condemnation all university studies which have a direct bearing on special professional preparation for active life.