A modern school

Preface

This book is published with the hope that it may interest the general reader as well as the professional student and teacher. The book endeavors to set forth the scope and aims of a modern school, more particularly of a secondary school, and the conditions essential to its highest efficiency. The last chapter offers some testimony on the working of the elective system, — a contemporary question of great importance to both schools and colleges, — but the testimony offered pertains only to the college.

The first chapter, which gives its name to the whole book, deals specifically with the central theme; and in it I have endeavored to extend and strengthen conceptions already set forth in certain portions of an earlier book, " Educational Aims and Educational Values." Where it has served my present purpose, I have occasionally used the language of the earlier presentation.

VI PREFACE

The next seven chapters contain a fuller treatment of certain topics than was appropriate or expedient in the first chapter, and discuss also the internal and external conditions which seem to me essential to a high degree of success in the work of any school.

Thus, Chapter II, by means of a brief historical survey of the development of American secondary schools, supports the contention that no public school can survive and prosper that does not offer equal opportunities to all who contribute to its support; Chapter III similarly contends that, next to adequately comprehensive instruction, the elective system, and complete articulation of the secondary school with the lower grades are natural and rational means for making the secondary school serve impartially the needs of all; Chapter IV describes a strong contemporary tendency toward a six-year programme (" course ") for all public high schools, and toward regarding that programme as a part of a well-articulated scheme from the primary school through the college, — a tendency which has already been approved in the preceding chapters; Chapters V and VI set forth the

PREFACE Vll

responsibilities of the individual home and of the community as well as of teachers and administrative officers in the practical endeavor to make the school serve the ends for which it exists ; Chapter VII urges the necessity of organizing contemporary educational experience in order to bring the testimony of experience to bear in effective fashion on the solution of educational problems, and Chapter VIII emphasizes the help the university can give in the training of teachers, — both matters of serious import to all who are interested in making the school a progressively efficient instrument of education.

Here and there the reader will find occasional repetitions. These are due mainly to the fact that the several chapters were written (and all but two of them published, although not in their present form) as independent articles in the periodicals named below^; but the repetitions have been allowed to remain because they seemed to me to serve a distinct purpose in their present context.

My thanks are due the Educational Review, the Popular Science Monthly, the International Monthly (now Quarterly), the Forum, the Harviii PREFACE

vard Monthly, and the Harvard Graduates Magazine for permission to print as chapters of this book the articles or portions of articles referred to above, which appeared in their columns at various times from 1899 to October, 1903.

PAUL H. HANUS.

January, 1904.

CONTENTS I

PAGE

II The Academy and the Public High School ... 43

III Two Contemporary Problems in Education ... 71

IV A Six-year High School Programme .... 99

V

VI Our Faith in Education 155

VII ix

X CONTENTS

VIII

PAGE

Education as a University Study and the Professional Training of College-bred Teachers . .251

IX Graduate Testimony on the Elective System . . 287

The education demanded by a democratic society to-day is an education that prepares a youth to overcome the inevitable difficulties that stand in the way of his material and spiritual advancement ; an education that, from the beginning, promotes his normal physical development through the most salutary environment and appropriate physical training; that opens his mind and lets the world in through every natural power of observation and assimilation; that cultivates handpower as well as head-power ; that inculcates the appreciation of beauty in nature and in art, and insists on the performance of duty to self and to others ; an education that in youth and early manhood, while continuing the work already done, enables the youth to discover his own powers and limitations, and that impels him through oft-repeated intellectual conquests or other forms of productive effort to look forward to a life of habitual achievement with his head or his hands, or both ; that enables him to analyze for himself the intellectual, economic, and political problems of his time, and that gives the insight, the interest, and the power to deal with them as successfully as possible for his own advancement and for social service ; and, finally, that causes him to realize that the only way to win and to retain the prizes of life, namely, wealth, culture, leisure, honor, is an ever-increasing usefulness, and thus makes him feel that a life without growth and without service is not worth living.

That is to say, the education demanded by democratic society in modern times must be a preparation for an active life. Now, the only real preparation for life's duties, opportunities, and privileges is participatioii in them, so far as they can be rendered intelligible, interesting, and accessible to children and youth of school age ; and hence the first duty of all education is to provide this participation as fully and as freely as possible. From the beginning, such an education cannot be limited to the school arts — reading, writing, ciphering. It must acquaint the pupil with his material and social environment, in order that every avenue to knowledge may be opened to him, and every incipient power receive appropriate cultivation. Any other course is a postpone^neiit of education, not education. Such a postponement is a permanent loss to the individual and to society. It is a perversion of opportunity, and an economic waste.

We have but lately learned this lesson. We have learned that reading, writing, arithmetic, and English grammar — the school arts — constitute only the instruments of an elementary education and not education itself. To concentrate a child's attention on the school arts during eight or nine years is to exaggerate their importance, is to regard them as an end in themselves, instead of a means to an end. It is true the school arts must be learned : the pupil's later progress will depend largely on his command over oral, written, and printed speech, but it does not require eight or nine years of almost exclusive devotion to the school arts to acquire this command. Such exclusive devotion to the school arts cuts the pupil off from the very education we are aiming at, namely, preparation for life interests through participation in them. Eight or nine years spent on the school arts together with book geography and a little United States history have usually left the pupil at about fourteen years of age without a permanent interest in nature, or in human institutions and human achievements, whether in the field of literature, science, and art, or in the industrial, commercial, and political life of his time ; and, what is worse, without much inclination to acquire such interest by further study.

This is the natural result of an attempt to prepare for life without using life's opportunities as the source and means of such preparation. Accordingly we have changed our plan. Through elementary natural science we are bringing nature into the schoolroom and we go out to meet it ; we bring literature, history, civics, art, manual training, and an elementary study of industry and commerce into the school as * a means of preparation for life, instead of " preparing " our pupils for contact with these sources of inspiration, guidance, and training, in an indefinite future. We have learned that a child should know how to read and write by the end of the third school year, ue, at about nine years of age; that in about five years (by eleven years of age) he can learn all the arithmetic he needs for the ordinary affairs of life and for further progress in mathematics ; and that during the rest of his elementary school training the pupil's progress in the school arts should be incidental to his pursuit of other subjects.

That is to say, we have learned that elementary or pre-secondary education, should provide the most salutary environment for the pupil, and promote his normal physical development through appropriate training ; it should stimulate and gratify curiosity in every field of worthy human activity, and utilize this curiosity both for the acquisition of knowledge, and for the development of permanent interest in and power over this knowledge; it should acquaint the pupil with his duties and his privileges as a temporarily dependent member of society, and promote the development of habits of thought and conduct in harmony with his growing insight. At about the age of twelve or thirteen, the period of secondary education should begin. This brings me to the question I am to discuss, namely, What is the function of a modern secondary school, and how should it be organized and administered to discharge this function satisfactorily ?

This question must be answered both for the individual and for society ; i,e, we are to ask what should a modern secondary school do for the individual as an individual; and at the same time, how can it meet the legitimate demands of society ? It is clear that the needs of the individual and of society are but different aspects of the same fundamental need. Individuals are to be made responsive to the varied interests of life, and to acquire a command over them. But society demands that the knowledge and power of individuals shall conduce to the general welfare ; that each individual shall not only be wise and good, but that he shall be wise to some purpose, be good for something; that a man's knowledge, power, and character shall not only afford him personal satisfaction, but that they shall be available for social service. In the following discussion, these two aspects of the function of the modern school will be kept in mind throughout, and, in general, no attempt will be made to keep them distinct. But it may conduce to clearness if we consider them separately, at the outset.

First, then, how may the school meet the legitimate demands of society ? The school is the institution set apart by society for the education of children and youth. Remembering that education means preparation for life's worthy interests and activities through participation in them., I answer that a modern school can meet the legitimate demands of society only by adapting its aimxS, means, and methods to the changing needs of a progressive civilization. This is true whether the school is supported by public funds or by private generosity and fees. Such adaptation is, indeed, the only condition on which any human institution can survive and prosper. No human institution, and, in particular, no school can flourish in any age unless it conspicuously promotes the material or the spiritual interests of men as then understood — and it does not deserve to. The proof of this statement is afforded, if proof is needed, by the history of secondary schools in the United States.

I have pointed out elsewhere that our secondary schools originated in Massachusetts, as college preparatory schools ; that, as such, they served, from the beginning, the educational needs of only a limited portion of the community, since their aims and the scope of their work were technical — designed to provide the necessary pre-collegiate training of clergymen ; that this technical character of the schools, in spite of the fact that the narrow curriculum, consisting only of the elements of Latin and Greek and later a little mathematics, comprised the elements of liberal culture, as then understood, could not, alone, permanently hold the support of the majority of the community; that even as preparatory training for clergymen, it gradually possessed a diminishing value to the whole community, since the growth of liberality in religion pointed to the possibility of many roads to salvation and to the real service of God, to say nothing of the gradually diminishing lustre of the clergyman's calling, and his declining influence in secular even more than in spiritual affairs; that, meanwhile, the whole community necessarily felt the steadily increasing pressure of comprehensive and imperative secular interests for which the school made no

A MODERN SCHOOL II

direct provision whatever, and, also, the harassing burdens laid upon it by poverty, struggles with the wilderness, and conflicts and wars with the Indians, and, later, the great struggle for independence ; and that, owing chiefly to these causes, together with the rise of the academies and the establishment of the district system, the town grammar school — the public secondary school — declined, until it seemed likely to die out, save in a few of the largest towns of the Commonwealth.^

At the same time, I tried to show that when, through private initiative and private generosity, the New England academies arose to take up the work of preparation for college which the Latin grammar schools had failed to perform, they clearly demonstrated the possibility and the wisdom of providing also, at the same time, a secondary education adapted to the special needs and the briefer educational careers of non-collegiate pupils of both sexes ; that this demonstration gradually enabled secondary education to win widespread recognition, as possessing distinct functions of its own, whatever

1 Chapter II. -The Academy and the Public Hio;h School."

the future career or future educational opportunities of the pupils might be ; and that the interest in public secondary education, thus extended and enriched, gradually gathered the necessary strength to overcome the indifference and most of the opposition on the part of the general public, and ultimately brought about, during the years from 1826 to the present time, the enthusiastic support of our public high schools as we know them to-day.

In other words, I have tried to show that although this country, through the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, was early committed to the duty of maintaining secondary schools supported partly or wholly by local taxes, it took nearly tw^o hundred years for the communities of Massachusetts to really accept the duty they had recognized from the very beginning ; and this duty was accepted then only because, meanwhile, a new conception of the scope and meaning of public secondary education had been gradually evolved.

So much for the influence of conformity or want of conformity to the contemporary demands of society on the permanence and prosperity of

A MODERN SCliOOL 1 3

the school. It is equally true that unless the school meets the needs of the individual, unless it promotes conspicuously his development as an individual he Vv-ill turn from it with dissatisfaction as soon as he becomes avv^are of the discrepancy betvreen his needs and the opportunities which the school affords for meeting them. And this is particularly true of the secondary school and the college, because the pupil is then old enough to measure their influence on his expanding and developing interests, needs, powers, and duties.

It need hardly be pointed out, therefore, that the period of secondary education is extremely important. The years covered by it say from the pupil's thirteenth to his nineteenth or twentieth 3'ear, mark the transition from early childhood into later childhood and youth : the period during which the child learns to put away childish things and to appreciate the interests and purposes of men ; to find his place in the social whole, and to realize the interdependence of public and private interests. It is the period when life aims and life habits emerge distinctly, and, under wise direction, becom.e dominant life influences ; or when, under adverse circumstances, these aims become atrophied for want of proper cultivation, or even perverted through false training. In any event, they rapidly develop stability ; and, so far as they are amenable to education, may, therefore, be permanently influenced.

Now, an individual's dominant interests and powers wholly determine the kind of work he voluntarily engages in, and also the sources of his pleasure, and thus, ultimately, wholly determine the range and quality of his productiveness and the character of his public and private life. To carry forward the work of development already begun in elementary education, and so to discharge its duty to the individual, it is, therefore, clear that the secondary school should especially promote the discovery a^id development of each pupil's dominant interests and powers ; and further, that it should seek to render these interests and powers subservient to life's serious purposes^ and also to the possibility of participation in the refined pleasures of life.

The serious purposes of life are, first, selfsupport; or, when that is unnecessary, some worthy form of service ; second, intelligent, active participation in human affairs — the intention to be one who, while performing his private duties and enjoying whatever leisure he may earn or deserve, is to Vv^ork with his fellow-men for the continuous improvement and happiness of his race, his nation, and his own immediate community.

The refined pleasures of life are found in the ability to participate with intelligence and appreciation in the intellectual and aesthetic interests of cultivated men. These pleasures, like most of the inspiration to worthy living in the pursuit of the serious purposes of life, are brought within the reach of men through general culture.

The important place occupied by secondary education in a democratic society is now apparent. It covers the plastic years of later childhood and youth, the years during which the youth's mental life is organized and permanently fixed ; and it is the most widely available organized social force for ele^^ating, refining, and unifying a democratic society.

It will be seen that the foregoing statement l6 A MODERN SCHOOL

of the function of a modern school comprises three classes of aims: namely, vocational aimSy social aiins, and culture aims. These three aims are, of course, not separable in practice, although they can be rarely, if ever, equally influential in determining any particular phase of school work. Moreover, the only way to realize the culture aims, for many pupils, will be the close affiliation which the pupils must be led to see between these and the vocational and social or civic aims. These three aims, then, ought together to permeate and underlie all the activities of the secondary school. We may, however, discuss them separately.

But what is general culture ? Ever since the Renaissance the meaning attached to this term, until recently, has been well-nigh restricted to acquaintance with the historical culture of the race embodied in .the language, history, and literature of ancient Greece and Rome, together with some knowledge of mathematics ; that is to say, general culture has been nearly synonymous with classical scholarship. But a glance at modern programmes of study in secondary schools and colleges, whether these programmes are prescribed or elective, or a moment's reflection, will show that the modern idea of general culture is much broader than classical scholarship. It is a truism to say that the range of life interests, the problems, and the resources of civilization, have increased enormously since the Renaissance. While we feel on every hand the influence of classical traditions in our modern culture, and while, therefore, we can never wish to dispense with classical scholarship as an element of general culture, it still remains true that a new culture and a new civilization have arisen since the Renaissance, and especially since the eighteenth century, which have their own resources of inspiration and guidance, and present their own problems for solution. To be ig7iorant of these resources and problems is for the '}noder7t man to be out of relation with his time, is to miss general cicltttre.

The process of adjusting ourselves to this revised and enlarged conception of general culture is now going on. The old narrow ideal is tenacious of life. It is powerfully intrenched in existing programmes of study, and in educational traditions ; in particular, it is sustained l8 A MODERN SCHOOL

by collegiate preferences for classical studies in secondary schools ; and, lastly and chiefly, it is strong by virtue of real achievements in the education of many generations of men. But alone it can no longer suffice.

The progress of civilization has brought with it new problems, and hence new demands on the individual. While it is true, in a sense, that no one can study the civilization of Greece and Rome without indirectly studying our own, because our own civilization is rooted in those older civilizations, such study cannot be successfully attempted in the secondary school by studying the classical languages themselves. A more or less thorough acquaintance with the elements of these languages, together with a very limited appreciation of small portions of say three Latin authors and two or three Greek authors, is all that is really accomplished. I need hardly insist further (and yet the fact deserves emphasis) that an acquaintance with the elements of two languages is a very different thing from an acquaintance with the civilizations which those languages express — from an appreciation of the thought and institutions of the people who used those languages. Incidentally, through the historical and explanatory notes, an approach to such comprehension and appreciation may be gained ; but this can be obtained much better in the secondary school, by studying the history instead of the languages of the nations concerned.

How clear a comprehension of our civilization could a Greek youth of the age of Pericles, miraculously transferred to the twentieth century, get from a few pages of General Grant's memoirs, Lockhart's "Life of Scott," and two or three books of Chaucer's " Canterbury Tales " 1 Or, how thoroughly would our institutions be understood by a young Roman of the Augustan age from a few pages of Lord Roberts's " Forty Years in India," Macaulay's speeches, and " Paradise Lost " t Or, again, no one thinks of arguing that secondary school pupils can best understand Germany and France and the influence of their culture and institutions on our own by studying the elements of the German and French languages and small portions of the writings of say Goethe, Schiller, and Bismarck, and of Moliere, Victor Hugo, and Guizot. Such a claim would be preposterous. When we wish a secondary school pupil to understand France and Germany and their influence on our own development, we very properly set the pupil to studying the history of those nations and of our own. And so it should be with Greece and Rome : Ancient history, not ancient languages, will enable the pupil to understand Greece and Rome, and if rightly taught, will help him to an intelligent appreciation of the important place held by those nations in the development of modern civilization.

But even this, important and necessary as it is, is not a direct study of our own age at home and abroad. Modern civilization is a new and complex thing. To be understood it must be studied in its present form as well as in its origins.

To induce pupils who are not going to college to spend much time on Greek and Latin in the secondary school is, accordingly, in my opinion, an economic and educational waste. While the pupil is studying Greek and Latin, we must bear in mind not only the little he gets, but what he does not get, — the vast resources he necessarily leaves untouched.

It seems clear to me, therefore, that although secondary school pupils may have pursued the classical languages and elementary mathematics for several years with diligence and more or less success, for most of that great majority who never go to college, a secondary education consisting of Latin and Greek, like the barren elementary education that formerly preceded it, is a perversion of opportunity and an economic and educational waste.-^

Such an education has been justified, however, on the ground of its disciplinary value. No matter whether knowledge, or interest in the acquisition of knowledge, or interest in the great contemporary concerns of life and some power to deal with them, has been acquired or not, the mind, it has been said, has received a training that will fit it to undertake, with every expectation of success, any problems or career v/hatever.

This view is, however, untenable. It is true that all mental training is, to some extent, general, just as all physical training is, to some extent, general. But we do not expect to make

^ Compare " Educational Aims and Educational Values " (The Macmillan Company, 1899), PP- 116-119.

a good all-round athlete by restricting his training to two or three particular kinds of exercise. We know that we must provide appropriate exercises for his legs and his arms to develop both sets of limbs. Leg exercises alone, or arm exercises alone, would do little for the limbs we do not exercise. Neither mental nor physical power can be cultivated " in general." This power is always primarily power to do some specific thing, and only power " in general " in a very restricted sense. That is to say, power cannot be trained, apart from the subject-matter on which it is brought to bear. No one would be foolish enough to seek to train a physician by making him study law, or vice versa.

Hence it is false to assume that because a youth has studied Greek and Latin for several years, he has been trained to apply himself with vigor and success to any mental problem that may be presented to him. The truth is that he has been trained primarily to study languages, and, in particular, Latin and Greek; and only incidentally to exercise his mental powers on intellectual problems outside of the field of linguistic study.

The first step toward realizing our revised conception of general culture through secondary education is, therefore, to admit frankly that general culture means much more to-day than classical scholarship ; that it may, indeed, mean something entirely different. The next step is, I think, to admit as frankly that classical scholarship, ix, literary appreciation of the classics, is not attainable anyway in the secondary school. As was asserted above, what is attainable is a fair to good elementary acquaintance with the classical languages, which is a very different thing. This achievement for many pupils is desirable, but, at present, it is not economically attained.

Now, is it not true that what we value most in the classics for all secondary school pupils who do not go to college, what we regard as most important, is to bring to bear on them the refining and enlightening influence of Greek and Roman thought, whether embodied in ancient art, or literature, or institutions, on the thought and life of to-day and of all time.? A moment ago I indicated my belief that this influence can best be realized in secondary education, not primarily through an extended study of the classical languages, but through a serious study of history and art, and I may add through a study of translations of the classical literatures into the mother-tongue. What secondary school pupil can appreciate Homer or Xenophon, Virgil, Horace, or Cicero in the original, as he can appreciate them in admirable translations ? We have begun to recognize the magnificent possibilities of instruction in the language and literature of English-speaking nations for their own sake ; why should we not also use the mother-tongue to bring the minds of our boys and girls into actual touch with the inspiring literatures of antiquity ? What they now see " through a glass darkly " they would then see " face to face." If such study, preceded or accompanied by a serious study of the modern languages, be then followed by a brief course in one of the classical languages, or both of them, during the last year or two of the secondary school course, sufficient to enable a youth to realize the importance of these languages to a full comprehension of the history and structure of his mother-tongue, and the significance of Latin and Greek in all advanced linguistic study, the full educational value of the classics for secondary school pupils would be economically and fully realized.

Accordingly, a modern secondary school must provide for a serious study of modern subjects — physical and biological science ; history (including the history of industry, of commerce, of education, of art, and of philanthropy, as well as political history) ; government and economics ; the literature of the mother-tongue ; modern foreign languages ; the elements of the fine arts and of the mechanic arts; and the elements of commercial training — all adapted to the needs of both sexes. Let no one be surprised to see manual training for both sexes and the elements of commercial training included in the studies to be pursued for general culture. All teachers are aware that the only way to arouse the minds of some pupils lies through "practical studies." Some minds are for a time quite inaccessible to intellectual pursuits as such. To such pupils intellectual pursuits acquire interest and significance only as they are seen to be associated with trade, manufactures, or commerce. Mathematics, natural science, and foreign languages acquire significance for many minds only when it becomes clear that these subjects underlie important phases of industrial or commercial life. Undertaken at first because of an interest with which they are associated, these subjects acquire, under wise guidance, the significance that belongs to them as such, and the way to general culture lies for a time at least through manual and commercial training.