The college course in the principles of education

Front matter

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The College Course in the Prin ciples of Education

DR. JOHN A. MacVANNEL

Part I. The Foundations Of Ed.ucation I, The Study Of Education As A Science

1. The relation of theory to practice. — "Sound practice is sound theory unconscious of itself; sound theory is merely sound practice conscious of itself." "Action, in the fullest sense, would also be theory ; it would be doing with the full consciousness of what we are doing." The genetic relation between theory and practice. The function of theory to reconstruct and economize practice. The cultural value of the insight into the idea of education in its organic wholeness.

(The technique of effective practice is ultimately dependent upon principles. Professional training in education should aim to give control of the principles or the intellectual methods involved in practice rather than the mere mastery of technique. It is a commonplace to say that reflection is an integral part of all worthy activity. Action in the highest sense includes theory. For an individual to trj' to understand any form of human activity does not necessarily separate him from that activity, making him a mere theorist; normally it should bring the activity home to him more vitally. It should enable him to perform the activity with clear consciousness of what he is doing. The study of facts does not imply separation from them. It means getting closer to them. In like manner, the study of education means its aims, methods, processes, consciously realized and brought home to intelligence.)

2. The nature and purpose of science. — The sentiment of rationality. Science {a) as knowledge, i. e., a body of systematized facts gained through certain methods; (&) as instrument of control, i. e., as a body of methods controlling our judgments concerning a particular group of facts; (c) as mediatory from one stage of experience to another.

3. The possibility of a science of education. — The so-called distinction between the descriptive and the normative sciences. The field of education. The relation between the history of education and the theory of education. Consideration of the question: How far may a science in process of formation be a useful guide ? The quantitative study of education Because of the unity of intelligence, the method of securing control of experience in one field may assist in securing control in any other field. The sciences of physiology, psychology, and sociology in their relation to the science of education.

COLLEGE COURSE IN PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION i-j

(Science as a form of human activity arises within experience; the science of education arises within our experience in education, and is therefore a function of educational practice. The question is often asked: Is there a science of education ? a question based upon a special interpretation of the meaning of science. It does not apf)ear that the search for a methodical treatment of education is to be abandoned, even though perfection has not been attained at this early stage. The science of education is Ihe method thus jar established oj controlling experience so far as it is concerned with the educational process. The theory of education should set forth, not a set of educational categories or principles independent of or isolated from one another, but an interrelated system " within which ever)' assertion entitles us to other assertions, and to which we are entitled only through other assertions." The science of education aims at securing the method by which the educational process may be increasingly controlled.)

4. The twofold aspect oj education as a science. — (a) The psychological, and {h) the sociological.

(A feature fundamental to the present outline is the conception of the organic unity of the individual and society. The study of the growth of consciousness, whether in the race or child, points to the conclusion that the real self is always a social self; that the nature of the individual is essentially social; in other words, the individual's relations to his fellows are not external attachments of his personality, but the source of its inmost content and reality. The completely isolated individual, uninfluenced by social forces, does not exist as a fact of experience. The ])rocess of education, therefore, is conceived as essentially a process of social interaction between the two factors of the experience process, society and the individual.)

5. The science and the philosophy of education.

(It may be noted in this connection that in a systematic and thorough-going treatment of the subject — by means of the regular college and graduate courses — two main divisions would be found — divisions, however, which are not separate, but rather stages in the movement of intelligence in its attempt to come to a conscious realization of the educational process in human experience: (a) the science, dealing with the main features ef the area which the subject comprises; (b) the philosophy, dealing with its boundaries, or its place in the territories of knowledge. The science, to a degree, isolates in order to organize; the philosophy unifies in order to adjust and interpret. The science of education, in other words, has to do with the theor}^ of education as isolated by itself; the philosophy, while presupposing the science, is the theory of the relations of education to other sciences and to the known world in general. Philosophy aims to combine the analytic movement of science and the synthetic impulse of art in one intellectual endeavor. In such a process the science inevitably undergoes partial transformation and reconstruction. At the present time, owing to the fact that education draws its materials from so many sciences, and owing to the remarkable development of these sciences in recent years, there has resulted a species of intellectual anarchy in educational theory. The single science, by itself, is frankly individualistic, and only unconsciously organic at best. On the one hand, the psychologist with educational leanings is apt to assert that his special discipline is the sole arbiter in educational theory; in other words, that educational theory, in so far as it can be made scientific, is simply "applied psychology." The sociologist, on the other hand, whenever his inclination takes a practical turn, is equally determined that educational theory shall become a part of the more comprehensive science of society. It is not a question, however, of identity, or of subordination, but of co-operative and complementary service. The worker in the philosophy of education must accept with gratitude the aspects of truth brought to light by the sciences which it presupposes. He must be mindful, moreover, that it is not in its positive contribution to human knowledge, but rather in the organization of that knowledge, that the true justification of philosophic inquiry consists. With the advance of the sciences which his inquiries presuppose, his task still remains imperative — to regulate the proportion that the contributions of the different sciences may assume, to co-ordinate and interpret the new materials, to unify them not only with one another, but with the other aspects of man's experience, and thus to restore to him a view of the educational process as a whole which is comprehensive, articulated, and wherein the different factors have free play.)

6, The literature of education.

II. THE PLACE OF EDUCATION IN HUMAN EXPERIENCE

1. The philosophical bases of educational theory. — (a) Evolution and (b) idealism.

(Evolution and idealism are regarded by the writer as the most logical and satisfactory foundations of a theory of education. It is assumed that even in a college course in the principles of education some indication may be made of the more important implications for educational theory of these two doctrines. On the basis of the doctrine of evolution the relationship between the educational process and that of organic and social evolution may be briefly outlined, and the influence of the more important factors in the process of spiritual evolution may be indicated. On the other hand, the doctrine of idealism — the doctrine, namely, which maintains that any developing series can be understood only in the light of its highest term, that any ultimate or philosophic explanation must look to the end of the process— in this doctrine a standard of interpretation is afforded by which the ethical and educational significance of the processes and influences of civilization may be estimated.)

2. The doctrine of evolution as a scientific generalization and as a working hypothesis.

(While keeping in mind the fact that the doctrine of evolution has not yet received its final philosophic form, and still awaits its final philosophic interpretation, a brief analysis of its content as a working hypothesis may be made in this connection. The concept of evolution implies (a) the intelligibility of the world, the possibility of establishing a correspondence between the course of nature and the mind of man,[between the system of things and the system of human thought; (6) the organic oneness of all things in spite of the great contrasts in the spheres of mechanism, chemism, organism, and spirit, and the genetic connection of these orders of existence; (c) that in the genetic process, or in the process of becoming, there is developed out of the previously familiar the qualitatively new; {d) that the emergence of the qualitatively new is by means of forces inherent in the co-operating elements of the process, which work according to fixed laws of variation and under determinate conditions; (e) more particularly, that the course which any developing process follows is one of differentiation and integration; (/) that in every process of development there are present the two interrelated and co-operating factors: (i) the individual existence in which the development takes place, and (2) the situation or environment which affords the stimuli or the conditions through which the development takes place; (g) that in organic or social processes new formations or structures, whether vital, intellectual, or social, are to be regarded as instruments or methods of adjustment to specific environmental conditions.)

3. The idealistic interpretation of evolution.

(For both evolution and idealism, the unity of the cosmos, in some sense, " is not so much a conclusion to be proved as an inevitable assumption." If we believe (a) in the unity of the cosmic process, and (ft) that there has been evolution and not mere aimless change, then in our interpretation we are forced either (a) to deny the statement ex nihilo nihil fit, or (6) to " read back the nature of the latest consequent into the remotest antecedent." The idealist may therefore accept Tyndall's remark that matter contains within itself the " promise and potency of every form and quality of life," for the reason that the mind is the " outcome," and the " realization " of matter, and therefore affords the interpretation of the ultimate nature of the latter. It would appear to be of distinct advantage, therefore, to assume that the law of evolution has been the mode of operation whereby the physical, intellectual, and moral natures of man have come to be what they are. In thus making man completely subject to the evolutionary law, we are admitting the method of evolution to be the absolutely universal method of creation whereof man in his whole being is the highest product; and what we gain from this conception is the right to interpret the entire process in the light of its end. In other words, the mechanical categories must give place to or be supplemented by the teleological, in our explanation of the process.

The conclusion seems to be warranted, therefore, on the basis of an idealistic interpretation of the evolutionary process, that spirit and nature are not wholly alien and hostile, but necessary and complementary elements in a unitary spirilual process. Religion, art, science, philosophy, as well as the common things of our common life, confirm our natural belief that nature is not indifferent to our human life, its needs, and its purposes, and tend to establish what seems to be the central truth of idealism, that the world is in essence spiritual, and its goal the perfecting of the life of man.)

4. The doctrine of evolution, a means whereby the theory of education may be brought into relationship with the facts of the wider organic and social process. — The doctrine of the significance of the prolongation of infancy as a factor in the evolution of man. Infancy as a period of adjustment. Elements in the educational process, (a) individuality and plasticity, (b) environment (physical, social, cosmical; from the educational point of view essentially social) . Effects of the application of the doctrine of evolution to psychology and sociology. Types of education, (a) natural or spontaneous, (b) artificial or telic. Education as conscious evolution.

(The notion of adjustment [conceived as dynamic, not static] expresses sufiSciently well for the present the essential nature of the educational process- This notion is developed more fully in later sections. Here it is enough to note (a) that the aim of education cannot be found outside the process itself. One purpose of education is the personal reahzation of his environment by the .individual; (5) that we must define more fully environment before we can indicate that which the individual is to realize or become adjusted to; (c) that "method" in education is fundamentally the mode of the individual's behavior in the realization of some phase of his environment. Herein we gain a point of view from which to recognize the unity of educational aim, of educational materials and of educational methods.)

III. THE AIM OF EDUCATION AS DETERMINED BY ITS MEANING

1. Interpretation and criticism of certain familiar educational categories: — (a) information, (b) discipline, c) training, (d) efficiency, e) culture. The danger of fixed, or ready-made, definitions of education.

2. Interpretation and comparison of various statements of the educational ideal.

3. The aim of education as determined by its meaning. — Statement of the aim of education through an analysis of the educational process. The conception of adaptation or adjustment. The social purpose and the educational aim. Self-realization and the social aim in education.

(Kant used] to say that the proper place for delinition was at the end of one's inquiries. From one point of view, a true statement of the aim of education can be made at the close rather than at the beginning of such an outline as the present. The purpose of the present section is therefore merely to indicate in a quite general way the line along which the statement of the educational aim must !ie. The fuller working out of this conception of adaptation or adjustment constitutes, in reality, the fuller exphcation of the educational aim as it is revealed in the meaning of education. The one fact which it is hoped will be made clear is the fact 0} the organic unity of the aim, means, and method 0} the educational process.)

IV. THE PRESUPPOSITION OF EDUCATION: PERSONALITY AND ENVIRONMENT

I. Personality as the pre-eminent reality m experience. — Self- activity as the essence of personality. Stages in the development of self-conscious mind: (a) primitive sensibility, (b) subject-object consciousness, (c) self-consciousness. Mental development through self-activity.

(In the second section, where the attempt was made to bring the educational process into harmcny with the life-process, it was found that the essential elements in the latter are (a) thing and (b) environment. As a fact of experience the educational process presupposes (a) a self or person that behaves, and (b) an environment in which it behaves. As will be indicated in a subsequent section, the emphasis must in many cases be on Junction rather than on self or environment, agent or situation. It is impossible to consider the self apart from its environment, or, in turn, environment apart from the coefficient of environment. The difficulty with the so-called faculty psychology was that of taking Ihe mind as a completely equipped self-existing entity, afterward brought into contact with an environment. There was also, on the other hand, the tendency to go to the other extreme and maintain that the self in the beginning was practically nil, environment was self-existing, a sort of thing-in-itself, capable of generating mind in some way. The process of the individual life is a unitary thing, in which an ideal distinction may be made between the self and its environment, the agent and his sphere of action. It is a process of interaction, the factors of which are for purposes of examination separable, in reality inseparable. In the present section, however, the problem would be to give some consistent account of the nature of the two— self and environment— and their mutual relations. It may be briefly remarked, in passing, that the self has reaUty as a center of experience, of a particular thought-and-action content, the bearer of the concrete life of an individual. The synthesis of knowledge and of conduct which composes that content arises from the self's own activity, and in its own degree expresses the soul's intrinsic character. The self, moreover, is no mere aggregate of parts capable of existing separately without losing their character. It is a systematized unity, the various members of which, appearing at various stages in its development, appear with a distinct place and function, each unintelligible apart from its function in that development.)

2. The nature of environment. — ^As relative to the specific nature of the individual. Not an unchanging form, but a changing process. Environment as the medium of self-realization. The environment of the human individual (from the eduational or ethical point of view) as essentially social. The connection between plasticity and the possibility of the control of adjustment, in which education as a human institution consists. Adjustment implies {a) participation, or culture, (&) control, or efficiency. The first is the conservative aspect of education, making for order and continuity; the second, its progressive aspect, making for change or progress. In the human being, adjustment implies conformity of a self-conscious personahty to an environment which also is undergoing constant change.

(On the basis of the community of nature between the self and its environment — since they are the terminal aspects of one movement — the nature and possibihty of their mutual adjustment or interaction become intelligible. The self through its inherent activity is able to maintain itself in a. (social) medium that is not alien, but fundamentally of one kin with itself. Its activity — i. e., its adaptation through intelligence and will — is not a consequence of the self, but its essence. Moreover, not only is the self able to maintain itself in its environment through adaptation, but through the same process of adaptation to realize itself, for the reason that knowledge of and conformity to the social order which forms its environment is essentially the process through which the self is realized.)

3 Environment as '^civilization." — The basis of civilization in the molding of his environment by man in the interests of human life. Civilization as the progressive articulation and realization of human nature implies {a) science, as knowledge and as instrument of control; {h) language; (c) art and literature; (d) social and political institutions; (e) religion.

(In the foregoing analysis— a merely tentative one— of the more persistent, dynamic, and cultural elements in civilization, it is assumed: (a) That the most satisfactory psychology of race-development is a psychology of action; man's ever-increasing wants rising into desires and his perpetual efforts to satisfy these wants. The history of man, then, the history of civiUzation, is the hi.story of human achievement, (b) That man's achievements in civilization are social achievements and have therefore been brought about by some form of social action and co-operation. The ultimate social fact, the second factor in civilization, is that of "men acting together" for the sake of interrelated ends, (c) That the material of human activity is nature. Civilization is ultimately possible because man and nature, activity and material, are not isolated entities, but rather phases of one spiritual movement or process. From the beginning man has been in some kind of functional relation to his environment. His life has presented itself to him as a series of problems to be solved, {d) That civilization in the largest sense represents the methods of the life-process, the tools of the mind invented by man in the course of his experience for the registration, organization, control, and perpetuation of his experience. It has thus a retrospective as well as prospective aspect. In civilization, therefore, as the organization of human life thus far attained, there are certain fundamental "methods" or norms which are inherent in its natural constitution, and which reproduce themselves in all its manifold forms. (e) That, in the brief analysis, made above, of these normative elements— science, language, art and literature, institutions, and religion— these must be continually viewed as interrelated aspects of a common social experience of activity; they are the general elements of civilization— elements which constitute the real existence of the concrete and organic unity of society. Each of these elements has its retrospective and prospective reference; each represents a fundamental habit and accommodation in the life of the race. All together they are functional elements within the social process, mediating agencies in the communication or transmission of experience, instrumental to the spiritual life of man. (/) That the evolution in nature and civilization has its goal in the elevation and expansion of the personal life. It will, it is hoped, be made somewhat clearer how necessary to any adequate statement of the "Course of Study" is a chart of civilization— a morphological or psychological presentation of the great methods or norms according to which human experience has been organized, elevated, and expanded. Adequately to state what science, art, or religion means in the movement of the indJvidual's experience it is ultimately necessary to trace their significance in the movement of the spiritual experience of the race.)

V. INSTITUTIONAL FACTORS IN THE EDUCATIONAL PROCESS

1. Education as a process of social transformation. — Informal and formal education. Two-fold aspects of the process, (a) participation in the experience of others and the gradual recognition of the value of social life; (6) the achievement of power on the part of the individual to express himself in social directions.

2. Society as a medium for the communication of experience. — Moral institutions as meeting points for the functional activity of the members of society. As (a) embodiments of a more or loss perma- Eent system of purposes,(6) centers for the transmission of experience, (c) instruments of social control.

3. The educational significance of the great human institutions. — {a) home, (h) school, (c) vocation, {d) state, (e) church. Interrelation and interdependence of the several moral institutions.

(A fundamental need of the social mind of the present is such a disciplined social self -consciousness as will gradually express itself in more intelligent and more thoruugh-going methods of social intervention. There need not be any depreciation of the experience of the past, and no honest effort should be undervalued. Yet any creditable program for social betterment must be based on an adequate investigation and formulation of all the conditions of human welfare. There is real danger when any one of the so-called elements of the social -problem is attacked in isolation from the rest. Such an attempt may tend only to increase the popular sensitiveness and irritation. A social theory, issuing in a social method, is essential to any approximately adequate preparation for the study of the problem of social reconstruction. Only through .such study — a study in which all the elements are brought together in organic relation— is one enabled to see how social tendencies may be projected into coherent and tenable social ideals. In hke manner lack of clearness concerning the objects at which education should aim, the ways in which educational principles should be applied to the concrete problems of social life, and lack of correlation among the various educational factors in society, are responsible for many of the shortcomings which exist in present educational practice. Education has become the most important method of social intervention. It aims consciously to control the direction of the social process.

As a method of social control in this larger sense, however, it as yet remains largely empirical. It can become rational only when educational theory is made an organic part of the philosophy of society. The organic interdependence of the two must be recognized. Educational theory cannot be studied in abstraction from social theory. Moreover, since the theory of education is a part of a larger social theory, it may be well to indicate in brief outline a working conception of the term "society. " It will then be necessary to point out what society, on the one side, and what the individual, on the other, contribute to the educational process, how the two are organically related, and how society through institutions aims to perpetuate itself, to enlist the individual in its service and provide conditions suitable to his realization. First of all it is to be noted that society is not to be identified with the state, the government, the family; nor is it the mere aggregation or combination of these. Society or the social process is rather the organism of which "institutions" are the organs; the latter are functional elements in the larger functional whole. This notion of society as a process should be emphasized. As in the mental process experience is communicated and transmitted from one level to another, and the continuity thereby maintained, so in the social process there is the continual communication and transmission of experience from individual to individual. The conservation and transmission of experience alone render the continuance of society possible. Social experience is projected or embodied in Institutions, and institutions, therefore, serve to link individuals to one another, and the generations each to each. The various institutions, then, may be defined as the objective methods 0} control which men working together I or the sake of interrelated ends have thus jar achieved. This transmission of experience takes place in every form of society, savage or civilized, the difference being that while in the former the activity is for the most part unreflective and instinctive, in the latter there emerges a more or less deliberate intervention in the methods oj communication, distribution and transmission; and in its higher development as a human institution education becomes a specific agency in the general societary process for the systematic communication and transmission oj human experience.)

PART TI. THE COURSE OF PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT

VI. THE BODY AS THE INSTRUMENT OF THE MIND

1. The psycho-physical organism.— Yunctiondl relation between organs and environment. Structure and function of nervous system in organism. The junctional unit.

2. Principles aj development oj the psycho- physical organism. — Differentiation and integration of function. Gradual development of nervous system and body as instrument of the mind. Place of play, games, gymnastics in the organization oj the body. Habit and control. The dualism of mind and body teleological rather than ontological,

(Concerning the relation between body and mind, the physical and the psychical, two well-defined types of theory may be noted: (a) the ontological, and {b) the teleological [or the evolutionary, strictly interpreted]. According to the first, mind and body are disparate and separable entities, each subject to growth and transformation apart from the other ; the second regards the body as the organ of, and instrumental to, the mind. The theory of the relation of body and mind assumed in the present outline is the teleological. As said above, it is assumed that the essence of being is one in kind and spiritual. Between mind and body there is no essential antagonism or opposition. The mind is no fixed entity separable from matter If we are to trust our experience, matter cannot be as foreign to consciousness as is ordinarily believed. If the analysis made in preceding sections be true, mind and matter, soul and body, are terminal aspects of a unitary, living, spiritual experience, organic throughout, and in which the so-called nervous system, body, or matter, is instrumental, the machinery oj its growth and oj its expanding lije. Many look upon the physical as something set over against the spiritual, something that restricts, confines, enslaves. It is interesting to note that Plato, one of the first to indicate the spiritual significance of physical training, should in his metaphysics look upon body and mind as disparates, and yet in his theory of physical education he proceeded on the basis of the teleological conception of mind and body. For while the speaks of gymnastics for the body and music for the soul, he is nevertheless very careful to insist that fundamentally the soul and not the body is the object of gymnastics as well as of music. For Plato, in his theory of education, body and mind are not simply two opposites, on the same level. In making the body subordinate or instrumental to the mind, he makes it instriraiental to a comprehensive purpose in life, thus avoiding the one-sidedness which in the judgment of Aristotle made the physical training of many Greek states a failure. For both Plato and Aristotle the aim of physical education does not lie merely in physical training. Rather its significance, its spiritual quality, is found in its effect upon character. .Our problem is still the problem of Plato, "to blend music with gymnastic and apply them proportionately to the soul."

According to the view expressed here, the physical with its senses and stimuli is the very means whereby we gain freedom. The child feeling the pain from the finger thrust into the flame, and thereby restraining itself afterward, is not limited by the bodily senses or its nervous system. Rather is its nervous system the very instrument through which its freedom is gained. Moreover, just as the body, and nature itself, are iiistrumeutal to the self, and no mere hindrance, in like manner is the machinery of institutions no mere hindrance, but the very medium of escape for the individual from the domination of mere instinct and impulse to conscious self-determination. No adequate statement of freedom as a ready-made faculty or power of mind can be given in a paragraph, if at all. Yet when we take the so-called physical and institutional life, not asm,ere external and antagonistic opposites, but rather from the teleological and instrumental point of view, we may realize more fully the significanee of the most apparent and the most fundamental fact in experience, namely, that the consciousness of self implies the consciousness of the not-self, and grows with it, and by means of it. Thus eonceiving the self and the world as the terminal aspects of a living organic reality or experience, and communicated to us [through consciousness] in inseparable correlation, we can regard neither one as a resultant of the other. Together they constitute a functional manifestation of a unity which is their common and absolute ground. What, then, is enforced in this section is the impossibility of conceiving a soul or mind in itself, a pre-existing entity, or of a matter in itself, a self-contained existence. Keeping by experience, we recognize that subject and object are never met by us apart. They are distinctions within a unity, but not different or antagonistic entities. And it scarcely need be remarked in passing that the doctrine outlined above is neither materialism nor subjective idealism. It is an attempt to construe teleologically the relation of mind and matter, without obliterating their differences nor reduchig one to the other; securing the reality of both in a life whose variety is unity and whose essence is spiritual.