Studies in education: science, art, history

Front matter

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Preface

In 1885 I published a volume of papers, mainly educational, under the general title of ' 'Schools and Studies." These papers were selected from a much larger number written in the years 1870-1885. Here I publish a similar selection from essays and addresses written during the last ten years, under a title that fits almost as loosely. Many of them have been already published in some form, but not all. In preparing them for this volume, some have been abridged and some expanded, while all have been more or less revised in style. A single paper — the one that heads the column — has been written for the volume. The earlier volume was sent out in the hope that, in this time of great educational activity, it might serve a good purpose. That hope is now expressed anew.

My thanks are given to the editor and publishers of "The Educational Review" for permission to reprint the papers that are credited to that publication.

B. A. H.

Contents

I. SOURCES OK HUMAN CULTIVATION.

The Problem of Human Cultivation, 13; Difficulty of the Problem, 13-14; Elementary Facts of the Mental Life, 14-16; Pedagogical Metaphors, 16-19; Causes of Mental Growth Divided Into Two Groups, 19; (1). The Primary Group: Facts of Nature, the Actions of Men, Facts of the Mind, 19-24; The Primordial Sources of Cultivation and Their Relations, 24-25; (2). The Secondary Group: Oral Language, Arts and Inventions, Symbols, Writing, 25-26; Remarks on this Group, 27-38; School Studies Determined in Great Part by Logic of Life, 39; Child's Store of Knowledge and Store of Language when He Comes to School, 39-40; Child's Development to Continue on Both Lines, 40; All Sources of Knowlege to be Drawn upon, 40-41 ; Arts of the School to be Taught, 41-42; Changes in Education, 42; Narrowness of View the Danger of the Present, 42-43. >

II. THE DOGMA OF FORMAL DISCIPLINE.

I. Sources Of Human Cultivation

O other transformation that men are permitted to witness is so marked in character as the transformation wrought in the mind of one of their own number in his passage from feeble infancy to the maturity of adult life. No other is so interesting, so important, or so necessary to be understood. The seed and the plant, the egg and the bird, are not to be mentioned in comparison. Only one transformation that history presents to our view is worthy to be compared to it, and that is the analogous transformation seen in the life of a tribe or a society of men as it passes from low savagery to high civilization. The causes that effect this transformation in the individual man I propose to examine, offering also some remarks on the transformation itself. In other words, I am about to map out the territory covered by the phrase, "Human Cultivation."

It is first to be observed that the subject presents difficulties that are in part insuperable. The cultivation of the individual begins in the mysterious region of infancy; and as no memory of what occurred in this region in our own case remains, and as the infant can give us no account whatever of his own experience, and would not be an infant if he could, we are thrown back upon our own observation for facts and our own interpretation of the facts observed. But such observation and interpretation are peculiarly difficult. Facts of the spirit are the most subtile and elusive of all facts, and particularly those of the infant spirit. With great reason has it been asked:

Who can tell what a baby thinks ?

Who can follow the gossamer links By which the manikin feels his way Out from the shore of the great unknown, Blind, and wailing, and alone, Into the light of day ?

What does he think of his mother's eyes? What does he think of his mother's hair? What of the cradle-roof that flies Forward and backward through the air ? What does he think of his mother's breast — Bare and beautiful, smooth and white, Seeking it ever with fresh delight — Cup of his life and couch of his rest ? What does he think when her quick embrace Presses his hand and buries his face Deep where the heart-throbs sink and swell, With a tenderness she can never tell ?

But the fact that we are unable to answer these questions fully is no excuse for not making the best answer that we can. I^et us then begin with the most elementary facts of the mental life.

The first of these is the mind itself. While we are unable to tell what the mind is, we readily discover some very interesting things about it. First, it is active, self -active as the philosophers say, and this activity is its characteristic attribute. Through its activity the mind grows or expands; or, to express the same fact in other language, it accumulates experience or gathers knowledge. The mind is one, a unit, and has no parts, but it acts in several different fields or spheres, or has a variety of experiences, and in this way its so-called powers or faculties are developed. Again, the mind grows or acquires knowledge only through its activity. And still further, the mental growth or accumulation that comes in this way we call cultivation and education, using those terms in their broadest sense.

The mind cannot act, and so cannot grow, if it is left to itself. Mental activity depends upon stimulation or excitation, and this can come in the first instance only from the outside. An object to be known is as essential to knowledge as a mind to know. Accordingly, the second elementary fact to be considered is some reality external to the mind itself — what is sometimes called the world.

Perhaps some would pause here. But it will conduce to clearness to recognize a third fundamental educational condition. This is the mind and reality in contact. The speculative relation of the two factors we may leave to the metaphysicians; the practical fact of contact we must emphasize. Until such relation is established, there is no mental activity, and so no mental growth; the moment it is established, activity begins, and, progressively, the mind knows, objects are known, knowledge begins to exist, and education takes its rise.

Properly speaking, knowledge has no existence outside of the mind; it is a continuous state of mind; if mind should cease to know, knowledge would cease to exist. 1

1 "But Casaubon's books, whatever their worth, were not the man. The scholar is greater than his books. The result of his labors is not so many thousand pages in folio, but himself. The 'Paradise Lost' is a grand poem, but how much grander was the living soul that spoke it! Yet poetry is much more of the essence of the soul, is more nearly a transcript of the poet's mind, than a volume of 'notes' can be of the scholar's mind. It has been often said of philosophy that it is not a doctrine but a method. No philosophical systems, as put upon paper, embody philosophy. Philosophy perishes in the moment that you would teach it. Knowledge is not the thing known, but the mental habit which knows. So it is with learning." — Mark Pattison: Isaac Casaubon, p. 488.

Men do indeed speak of books and libraries as containing knowledge. What books and libraries do in fact contain, is symbols of knowledge that are dead and meaningless until they are read by a mind that knows them. However, as usage justifies the objective sense of the word, and it is convenient, we may use knowledge in that signification.

The relation of knowledge to the mind may properly occupy our attention a little longer. That such a relation exists, men must have discovered the moment that knowledge became the subject of reflection, and they expressed the fact in the only way that was open to them. The relation is a philosophical idea, and they conceived it, as they conceived other philosophical ideas, under a physical image. The conception of knowledge is governed by the conception of the mind and is represented in the same way. Philosophy having, for reasons that are here immaterial, no vocabulary of its own, borrows one from physics and then proceeds to spiritualize it. Some examples of this process will emphasize the fact and also help on the general inquiry.

One of the earliest and best educational metaphors makes the mind an organism and knowledge food for its nourishment. Sometimes it is assumed to resemble a plant and sometimes an animal. This is the most common way of representing knowledge or doctrine in the Bible. The man who meditates in the law of the L,ord is like a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth its fruit in its season. Disciples who have neglected their opportunities to learn have need of milk and not of strong meat. Kvery one that uses milk is a babe, while strong meat belongs to them that are of full age. The underlying idea is that of growth or development. As a new-born babe, the disciple should desire the pure milk of the word that he may grow thereby. The terms that are employed to represent this view of education are considerably varied. The mind "hungers" and "thirsts"; it "digests" and "assimilates;" it is "nourished" and "strengthened," while the teacher ' 'feeds' ' the pupil. It is in this way that the New Testament presents the relation of the minister to the church. He is a pastor or shepherd, and is enjoined to feed his flock. The metaphors that fall into this group may be called biological metaphors, as they are suggested by the phenomena of life.

A second group of pedagogical metaphors, almost as common as the biological ones, are derived from architecture. The mind is a structure or edifice that is ' 'built, ' ' ' ' constructed, " or " formed ' ' ; knowledge is buildingmaterial; the teacher is an artificer, and his educational ideal is a plan or model. According to this conception, the mind has a foundation, apartments, stories, and windows (although this last metaphor is used also when knowledge is considered as light). This imagery is also of frequent use in the Bible. The terms ' ' building ' ' and ' ' temple ' ' are used to symbolize the Church and also the individual Christian. An Apostle likens himself to a ' ' wise master-builder. ' ' Great stress is laid on ' ' edification " and " edifying," or " upbuilding;" charity "edifies." The statement, "He that speaks (that is, in the church) edifieth himself ' ' recognizes the pedagogical truth that to teach is an excellent way to learn — a truth that has been repeated times without number from ancient days.

Thirdly, mental growth is pictured in language that properly belongs to physical exercise; excitement of some kind stimulates a muscle or nerve to action, and this again stimulates nutrition. But this nutrition does more than simply supply the waste that activity has caused; the muscle or nerve is strengthened or enlarged.

The words " exercise " and " discipline," and even " activity ' ' itself, fall into this category. Here we meet all the pedagogical metaphors that are furnished by the gymnasium and the playground. Very naturally, considering their peculiar genius, and especially their view of physical perfection, the Greeks made this a favorite mode of representing pedagogical facts and ideas, just as it was natural that the L,atins, with their peculiar genius, should draw their educational vocabulary mainly from agriculture and war.

Warfare has made its contribution to the pedagogical vocabulary. " Drill " comes to us from this source, and so does ' ' education' ' itself. This last means etymologically to ''draw out "or to "lead out," and it was originally applied to physical acts merely. Thus, a soldier "educates" his sword from its sheath, and a general "educates " his army in battle array.

These are a few of the many pedagogical metaphors. There has been some discussion of the relative values of the several groups. The truth is that no analogical theory, nor all such theories together, exhaust the content of mind and education. These metaphors are but adumbrations of spiritual facts that we are unable to express fully. The mechanical analogies balance the biological ones, and vice versa; but the mind is neither a seed nor a building, or a combination of both; neither is the teacher a gardener or a carpenter, or half one and half the other. The pedagogical metaphors all present interesting phases or facets of the one grand process and result; they supplement and correct one another; but they present the mind as a kaleidoscope and not as a living unity. We may observe further that the English language, owing to its composite character, is particularly rich in pedagogical terms, so that the English-speaking teacher is able to look at his work, through his own speech, from more points of view than any other teacher.

The causes of mental stimulation, and so of mental growth, are divisible into two great groups, the primary and the secondary.

I. THE PRIMARY GROUP.

These require, at the present stage of the discussion, no general characterization. They are divisible into three sub-groups.

1. Facts of Nature; External Realities. — Every material object presents to the mind one or more points of contact, and as soon as the mind seizes upon one of them that marvelous stream of activity which, at different stages and under different aspects, we call sensation, perception, conception, memory, apperception, thought, imagination, pleasure and pain, choice and volition, begins to flow. The child's first world, properly speaking, is neither external nor internal; he does not discriminate between his own body and the surrounding objects, and much less between his mind and such objects; all things are presented to him as one inseparable mass. Moreover, the child's first world is a very small world, embracing only the objects that lie within his ken. At the very first, he has no "ken"; he is blind and deaf, and merely feels; when he begins to see and to hear, he sees and hears things in close connection with his eyes and ears; and it is but slowly that he conceives the ideas of separateness, externality, depth, and distance. For his purpose the poet has chosen his objects well; still, the mother's eyes, hair, and breast, and the cradle-roof, as particular objects of knowledge, mark a considerably advanced stage in the child's mental life. I shall not seek to analyze the processes by which the child's homogeneous world is gradually iesolved into a heterogeneous one. My main purpose is to emphasize the fact that those material objects which are right about the child are the things that first fasten themselves upon his mind, and so are the first to be known. In the first stages of knowledge the child is wholly at the mercy of his environment, as much so as the whelp in the kennel or the cub in the jungle. Furthermore, this environment is for the most part predetermined; for the rest, it is controlled by the nurse, the mother, and other members of the family; at most, such selective power of objects as the child's own mind can assert is purely instinctive and spontaneous. How important an element such natural selection is, we have no means of knowing, but it is absolutely limited by the environment. It is worth remarking, too, that the influence of environment when the child-nature is soft and easily colorable is great, far beyond our power to measure it.

We will assume that the first objects to arrest a child's attention, and to be separated from the surrounding mass of objects, are his own hands. But they do not satisfy him. He reaches out to other and remoter things. Through every inlet and avenue sensations, which form the raw material of knowledge, are poured into his mind and are slowly elaborated into ideas. The child is an inductive philosopher. He learns his first lessons by observation, experiment, and reflection. Every circle that he makes about the room in his nurse's arms, every excursion beyond its walls, is an exploring expedition in the dark continent that shuts him in. Biting on his rubber, twisting the neck of his doll, beating the floor with his heels and the table with a spoon, he lays the foundation of his future scientific knowledge. Progressively, he comes into contact with further objects; he conquers the yard, street, and field on his way to the conquest of the mountain, the sea, and the sky.

While we call the child's mental progress slow, it is really rapid considering all the factors that enter into the account. It would be immeasureably slower than it is, did not our first ideas assist us in acquiring later ones. As has been said, the child's ' 'perceptions are not heaped up like dead treasures, but almost as soon as acquired they become living forces that assist in the assimilation of new perceptions, thus strengthening the power of apprehension. They are the contents of the soul, that now permanently assert themselves in the act of perception. For wherever it is- at all possible, the child refers the new to the related older ideas. With the aid of familiar perceptions, he appropriates that which is foreign to him and conquers with the arms of apperception the outer world which assails his senses." 1

2. The Acts of Men; The Objective Realities of Life. — From the first the child is brought into contact with a second order of facts. These are the deeds of men, which, in due course of time, are discriminated from the movements of things and the actions of animals. Their distinguishing character, which, however, the child does not at first perceive, is that they express intelligence, feeling, and will. Further, the child discovers that some things he may do, and some things he may not do. This is not due to natural barriers, but to human barriers. He does not at first know the power of a will as a will, but only as a force; but progressively control, restraint, obedience, authority, law, rule, and government are learned as mere objective facts. They are but slowly separated from the analogous physical facts, and are never fully separated until the child has found the cause and the signification of social facts in the third group of primary realities.

1 Dr. Lange: Apperception, p. 55.

3. Facts of the Mind; Spiritual Realities. — It is in the nursery and the home also that the child first meets the things of the spirit. Here it is that he learns those fundamental ideas of government and social relation that are afterwards developed in general society and in the state.

At some time the child begins faintly to discriminate between the cradle-roof and the nurse who rocks it. The time comes when he begins to see that his mother's breast, hair, and eyes are not his mother. He makes no account of definitions; he has no use for "matter" and "mind," "body" and "spirit;" but the elementary facts of rational existence begin to orb themselves in his consciousness. His own ideas and feelings interpret to him the ideas and feelings of others. Other minds are measured by his own mind. He may beat his hobby-horse and his nurse indifferently when they displease him; but this act, which originates in blind impulse and is strengthened by habit, nevertheless hastens a fuller discrimination of the two orders of being.

The child's higher education now begins in earnest. He has felt the power of spiritual realities. As he learns hardness by beating the floor with his heels; resistance, by bumping his head against the wall or door; strength, by breaking his toys; heat, by burning his hand; weight, by dropping a hammer on his toe, and sharpness, by cutting his finger with a knife: so he learns what intelligence, feeling, and will, order, right, and wrong, aversion, sympathy, and affection, are through contact with nurse, parents, brothers, sisters, and playmates. He discerns the spiritual elements that constitute authority and government, approval and disapproval, rewards and punishment, which before had been to him but objective facts. And not only are these ideas formed, but the institutions that express them are in time duly recognized — the family, society, and the state.

The child finally becomes introspective and knows himself. On the basis of the natural consciousness, self-consciousness is developed. His ideas and feelings are realities that stimulate his mind and create new realities. The subjective becomes objective. Old thought becomes material for new thought. It is very true that the normal child develops slowly along this line. He first marks off his body from other objects. Then he distinguishes between his body and his mind, and learns the meaning of the word "self." Few are the persons who ever had or, at least, can recall such an experience as the one related by Richter. " On a certain forenoon I stood, a very young child, within the house-door, and was looking out toward the wood pile, as, in an instant, the inner revelation, 'lam I,' like lightning from heaven, flashed and stood brightly before me; in that moment had I seen myself as I, for the first time and forever." 1 But this revelation, when it comes, marks the next step in development, following the discrimination between the tilings of the body and the things of the spirit.

The baby new to earth and sky,

What time his tender palm, is prest Against the circle of the breast,

Has never thought that "this is I:"

But as he grows he gathers much, And learns the use of "I" and "me,"

And finds "I am not what I see,"

And other than the things I touch.

So rounds he to a separate mind,

From whence clear memory may begin, As thro' the frame that binds him in

His isolation grows defined.

1 Quoted by Dr. Porter : The Human Intellect, p. 101.

The birth of self-consciousness marks the entrance of the child upon the third and last stage of primary education, in the present sense of that term. Its ethical importance is very great. Moral thoughtfulness now begins, feeble of course at first. Man communes with his own heart, and his spirit makes diligent search. He communes with his own heart upon his bed, and is still. He examines himself, whether he is in the faith.

The three groups of facts that have just been described are the primordial sources of human cultivation. With them the education of the race began. With them the education of every member of the race begins. In both the general sphere and the individual sphere, they antedate teachers and schools and education as those terms are commonly understood. It can hardly be too much insisted upon that, in direct attrition between the mind and nature, human society, and the mind itself natural knowledge, moral knowledge, and philosophical knowledge originate. Man's cultivation can never begin with books and libraries. Both history and personal experience tell us that there is an earlier culture; a culture derived from the earth, the sky, and the sea, the family, the camp, and the market-place, and from communion with the thoughts and intents of the heart. There are secondary sources of cultivation, which we shall soon describe, but it is these primitive culture-elements that make them possible. Nicely to define the relations of the three groups of primary factors, or to measure their comparative value, is beside our present purpose. Three or four remarks will suffice.

The three groups appear in life in the order in which they have been presented. Still, they are all found in the child-mind from an early age, and from the time of their full appearance they run side by side through his mental life. Their interaction is constant and powerful. They can be no more separated than cognition, feeling, and will can be separated in the stream of consciousness. They are not of uniform prominence in all persons, or in the same person in all periods of life. Some persons live in nature, some among men, some in their own minds. Children again live in their senses, adults in reason, the old in memory. The speculative man lives in thought, the sensitive man in his feelings, the practical man in his deeds. The three groups of factors have each their peculiar educational value; they cannot be made to take one another's place; and they are all essential to a well-ordered education.

II. THE SECONDARY GROUP.

The educational factors that we have been considering are powerfully reenforced by a secondary group. As men originally acquired knowledge through attrition with the primordial sources of cultivation, they began to communicate back and forth, and so became teachers one of another. In this way there grew up a common fund of experience or culture that has played a prodigious part in the education of the world. Tradition and authority appeared early, and henceforth second-hand, or derivative, knowledge supplemented first-hand, or primitive knowledge. These new agents may be divided into four sub-groups.

1. Oral langtmge. — This stands first in power,, if not in time. Speech is the most direct, the most complete, and the most rapid mode of conveying thought and feeling. The matter conveyed comes from one of two sources. One source is the speaker's own personal experience, the other the common fund or stock of experience that is called tradition. In the narrow sense tradition embraces facts, rules of conduct, sage councils, generalizations of experience, old wives' wisdom, and prudential maxims that have been handed down by word of mouth through successive generations. Tradition in its large sense will come before us further on; here it should be remarked that the total effect of oral language upon men's minds and lives, they are quite incapable of estimating. No doubt it is less than formerly, owing to the multiplication of artificial substitutes for the memory, but in the first stage of life it has suffered no diminution.

2. Arts and Inventions. — Here we inventory the visible works through which man accomplishes his purposes (excluding only symbols proper and writing). These works range from the simple articles and utensils of common life to the steamship, the city, and the Simplonroad. These objects are things, but they are more, since they express human thought and purpose.

3. Symbols. — Here we catalogue those works of art the direct object of which is to express thought, sentiment, or feeling: the decorative art of the savage, the illustrations of scientific and literary books, the Sistine Madonna, and the Parthenon frieze. Symbolism and the practical arts are often found mixed. The idea of beauty allies itself with usefulness.

4. Writing. — In this expression we include picture writing, hieroglyphics, and alphabets. It is a form of symbolism, but a form so unique in character, and so vast in its influence, that it well deserves to stand in a category by itself.

It is quite impossible to exaggerate the influence of writing and printing on the communication of thought, and particularly on education. "It is the greatest invention man has ever made," says Carlyle, "this of marking down the unseen thought that is in him by written characters. It is a kind of second speech, almost as miraculous as the first." 1 And again: "Universities arose while there were yet no books procurable; while a man, for a single book, had to give an estate of land. That, in those circumstances, when a man had some knowledge to communicate, he should do it by gathering the learners round him, face to face, was a necessity for him. If you wanted to know what Abelard knew, you must go and listen to Abelard. Thousands, as many as thirty thousand, went to hear Abelard and that metaphysical theology of his Once invent printing, you metamorphosed all universities, or superseded them. The teacher needed not now to gather men personally round him, that he might speak to them what he knew: print it in a book, and all learners far and wide, for a trifle, had it each at his own fireside, much more effectually to learn it." 3

Such in outline are the secondary sources of knowledge and mental discipline. The analysis might be carried further, but this one is comprehensive and will answer - our purpose. The group suggests some observations of importance.

1. The first of these observations is that these last sources of cultivation are plainly secondary and derivative. They mean nothing and serve no useful purpose save as they rest upon a previous cultivation. Properly speaking they are all arts. What Professor J. S- Blackie says of books is true of all of them. "They are not creative powers in any sense; they are merely helps, instruments, tools; and even as tools they are only artificial tools, superadded to those with which the wise

1 The Hero as Divinity.

2 The Heto as Man of Letters.

prevision of Nature has equipped us, like telescopes and microscopes, whose assistance in many researches reveals unimagined wonders, but the use of which should never tempt us to undervalue or to neglect the exercise of our own eyes." 1 A book is nothing but a thing to a child until he has accumulated a fund of first-hand mental experience that will furnish the apperceiving centers necessary to enable him to understand it, as well as mastered the symbolism of the printed page. The "parchment roll' ' is not

the holy river, From which one draught shall slake the thirst forever. The quickening power of science only he Can know, from whose own soul it gushes free.