Studies in pedagogy

Front matter

^^Hiiji

TV DIES IN

^EDAGOG^

Preface

Plato has said that "man cannot propose a higher and holier object for liis study than education and all that pertains to education." One of the most fascinating phases of the subject is that which relates to the work of teaching. Nothing so prevents monotony and drudgery in the schoolroom as a lively interest, on the part of the teacher, in the philosophy of his work.

One of the interesting signs of the times is the rapid increase in our country of pedagogical literature, either as translations from foreign languages, or as original productions of American auth"ors. This indicates a growing popular interest in the great question of the proper education of American youth.

This volume is the outgrowth of a good many years of observation, reading, thinking, and experience, and the author hopes that, while consisting of mere "studies," it may yet be considered as at least an earnest efifort to contribute toward the promotion of higher ideals of education and better methods of teaching.

The author acknowledges his indebtedness to the writings of Rousseau, Comenius, Compayr6, Fitch, Tate, Jacob Abbott, Page, Joseph Payne, Rosenkranz, Froebel, W. T. Harris, and many others. He takes especial pleasure in acknowledging his obligations to two former teachers, E. G. Robinson, d.d., LL.D., now president of Brown University, and M. B. Anderson, LL.D., president of the University of Rochester. He acknowledges also the courtesy of Dr. William A. Mowry, editor of " Education," for the privilege of using certain, matter here which was formerly prepared for his magazine.

6 PREFACE.

He was glad to find in Compayr6's Lectures on Pedagogy, translated by Professor W. H. Payne, apian of treatment similar to the one that he had already adopted.

He takes this occasion to express his appreciation of the kind reception accorded by the critics and the public generally to his first volume, Educational Mosaics.

Providence, Rhode Island, March, 1889.

Table Of Contents

PAGE

I. — Education 9

II. — Training 19

I. Education

The attainment of perfect manhood as the actuahzation of the freedom essential to mind constitutes the nature of education in general. J. K. F. Rosenkranz.

Education is the process of making individual men participators in the best attainments of the human mind in general; namely, in that which is most rational, true, beautiful, and good.

William Whewell.

The object of the science of education is to render the mind the fittest possible instrument for discerning, applying, or obeying the laws under which God has placed the universe.

Francis Wayland.

The true end of education is to unfold and direct aright our

whole nature. Its office is to call forth powers of every kind — power

of thought, affection, will, and outward action; power to observe, to

reason, to judge, to contrive; power to adopt good ends firmly, and to

pursue them effectively; power to govern ourselves, and to influence

others; power to gain and to spread happiness.

W. E. Channing.

Studies in Pedagogy.

I.

EDUCATION.

The aim of education is to give to the individual all the perfection of which he is susceptible. — Immanuel Kant.

In the most general sense education is that which marks the difference between what a child is by nature at birth and that which he becomes by growth, training, and experience. In this sense the vital process of evolution by which the germinal power — body, mind, will — becomes unfolded and brought to maturity is a part of education. In this sense the word embraces as one of the greatest forces of education. Nature, including soil, climate, scenery, etc. The entire environment, nature, home, society, etc. etc., is one vast educational agency. The influence exerted upon the child by these varied and diverse forces are so intimately blended with the conscious efforts of teachers to train and instruct him, that it is impossible to separate them except in thought. The manner of the teacher is as potent with his pupils as his word, and his example outweighs his precepts.

II

Ordinarily, however, we mean by education the effect produced upon the young mind by those who purposely seek to influence him. Especially, and in a still narrower sense, education is restricted to the direct influence of school-teachers and schools.

We sometimes say of a man who is not a schoolman that he is uneducated, or, at least, self-educated. But this is unphilosophical. No man who has acquired knowledge and strength or skill is uneducated ; and every man who has either knowledge, skill, or power is in a very real sense self-educated, however much help he may have received from others. This will be made more evident by what follows.

I. Education implies knowledge. An educated man is a man who knows. Knowledge is either a means to an end, or an end in itself. Very many facts involved in trades, and even in the learned professions, are acquired, not for their own sake, but for the sake of the use that the learner can make of them. On the other hand knowledge may be acquired simply for the sake of knowing it. The man is more highly educated who loves truth for its own sake, studies simply for the sake of knowing, seeks rather to comprehend knowledge as science than as means to some practical end. Practical education, industrial education, must ever be regarded as lower than a liberal training or philosophical culture. It can make no difference in what way knowledge is acquired, whether from consciousness, reflection, observation, books, or teachers, provided onlv that one be certain that he has it. To know a thing is to be certain of it. The Indian, who by personal observation has acquainted himself with the forms, habitats, and habits of wild animals about him, so that he knows them, is so far an educated man. The blacksmith, who by experiment and imitation has learned how to heat iron, cut, bend, and shape it into a horseshoe, is to that extent educated. The child that has committed to memory the multiplication table or the Ten Commandments with their meaning has so much knowledge — education.

The practical value of knowledge depends necessarily upon circumstances. The depth of the harbor at Glasgow or the location of an island in the Pacific may be, and probably will be in most cases, utterly without practical value to the student of geography unless he should some day be a pilot or a sea-captain. A knowledsre of the writings of Confucius is to an American youth barren of practical utility, while to a young Chinaman it may be the one thing upon which hinges his appointment to office and his success in life. Practical education may be said to consist in an accumulation of those facts which one is most likely to need in the daily duties of life. There are some facts of practical use to ever)^body, such as those pertaining to climate, health, domestic economy, social customs, common forms of business, etc. The rudiments of reading, writing, spelling, language, geography, arithmetic, physiology, civics, and histor}' enter so largely into the common intercourse and occupations of ever}'day life that a man living in the midst of society who is ignorant of these can hardly be said to be an educated man, whatever his attainments in other directions. In addition to this general knowledge the farmer needs to know facts about farming, the tailor about tailoring, the sailor about navigation, and the lawyer about law and codes of procedure.

For purposes of general education one should have an acquaintance with those branches of knowledge which are of most general interest, which give to one the highest topics of thought. The chief facts and general principles of art, literature, science, politics, and religion make up a body of knowledge that is essential to a liberal education.

Exhaustive knowledge in any department of human investigation is scarcely attainable by the specialist even, and is utterly beyond the reach of the many, while cyclopaedic knowledge is but the dream of an enthusiast.

2. Education involves mental power.

The soul at birth contains certain great possibilities, latent forces, which, by exercise, experience, culture, are to be educated, drawn out. Education is the evolution of the hidden germ, the unfolding of latent power, the calling into active exercise of the capacity to feel, know, reason, and act. It is putting the myriad-sided soul into contact with the myriad-sided universe, so as to bring it to self-consciousness. It is the investment of the soul with the vast realm of thought, feeling, action, power, authority, dignity, and enjoyment, to which it is rightful heir. Man is God's image, gifted with powers and prerogatives second only to his own. Education is that process by whicli God actualizes in the soul the lofty conceptions embodied in his thought of man : the liberation from the crude, rough-hewn marble of the imprisoned angel: the elaboration into form and imperishable color of the rude sketch on the canvas : the condensation of mist, cloud, and rain into one vast ocean, whose mighty currents thrill at the touch of his fingers with deep resounding roar, which is joyous with his praises, and from whose surface, in sunshine and in storm, is reflected the glory of his own countenance. The uneducated, undeveloped soul is little removed from the clod, scarcely better than the brute, merely a foreshadowing, a dim, vague prophecy of itself as matured. Helpless, ignorant, unconscious, it is an object of pity. As an untutored savage, delighting in the low pleasures of mere animal existence, ignorant of fire and tools, without means of communication beyond a few signs and a limited jargon, with neither literature, philosophy, nor religion ; homeless and Godless, the sport of the elements, and the victim of disease ; naked, filthy, lazy, cruel, and bloodthirsty, he sinks below pity to become an object of abhorrence and contempt.

The man who can use his faculties in acquiring knowledge, in thinking and in expressing his thought, is so far an educated man. Facility in the use of mental powers, accuracy in observing, tenacity of memory, correctness of judgment come from practice. Every one must learn to employ his powers l6 STUDIES IN PEDAGOGY.

aright. This is education. Abraham Lincohi, in the struggle for existence during his frontier life, in the sharp conflict with rivals and opponents in political and legal contests, and in his study of Euclid, learned to think and to clothe his thought in forcible English. This education fitted him to become the nation's leader in the hour of its great peril.

The student engaged in solving problems, analyzing sentences, investigating phenomena, writing essays, learns to use his mental powers, and so is educated.

The mother, busied in the practical duties of the home, in the management of, and providing for, her household, learns to use her mental powers. She observes, reflects, remembers, imagines, reasons, talks, and argues, and thus calls into exercise, to a limited degree perhaps, but really, all her faculties, and so acquires that power of using her mental endowments which is of the very essence of education.

The pupil that in school is content with memorizing facts, dates, definitions, rules, principles, which he takes on authority without using any power but memory, may be educated in the sense of having, so to speak, a knowledge of what he has learned, or perhaps of having a trained memory, but he is not educated in the higher sense of having a trained mind. His power to observe, to think, and to reason is not necessarily called into action.

Education does not create : it can only unfold or draw out. It evolves what is involved by the Creator. It may increase the efficiency of the native endowments, but it does not add to their number.

The possibility of the development of the faculties by education is limited. Education is not omnipotent. The differences among men are not simply differences of culture. They are inherited differences, and cannot be effaced by any system of training any more than a pear-tree can be converted into a grapevine by cultivation.

3. Education involves the proper use of the sensibilities and conscience. The power to feel is as much an original endowment as the power to know, and is quite as susceptible to education. The heart is bigger than the head and plays a larger part in life's drama. No education is complete that fails to train the moral nature.

Men differ widely in the range of their sympathies. One is interested in the welfare of himself alone, anotlier embraces in the scope of his interest only his family, kindred, and neighbors, while still another thinks nothing foreign to himself that belongs to humanity.

The range of enjoyment varies greatly with different individuals and marks a difference in the degree of their culture. The character of one's education has very much to do with deciding whether he shall find his pleasures on the low plane of the senses or on the higher levels of intellectual and spiritual enjoyment. The variety and intensity of his pleasures depends also upon his culture.

4. Education implies a firm will. In nothing is the difference in education shown more fully and impressively than in the state of the will. The untrained will is fitful, unsteady, unreliable. Proper training gives fixedness of purpose, loftiness of aim, purity of motives, patience, fortitude, firmness, and sustained power.

It will thus be seen that education as administered by the wise teacher seeks to secure physical health, mental activity, and moral soundness. Sana mens in sano corpore. It seeks both to form the mind and to inform it. It aims to secure complete manhood and womanhood ; to fit men and women for the performance of life's duties, high and lowly ; to promote at once usefulness and happiness. It strives to develop self-control ; to aid the human being to adjust himself wisely to his environment that he may obey nature and control it ; benefit society and enjoy it ; serve the state and reap its privileges.

To be an educated man in the highest sense is to be a complete man — strong, active, intelligent, wise, good, useful, and happy.

II.

TRAINING.

A WELL-MADE head is better than a head well filled.

Michel Montaigne.

The primary principle of education is the determination of the

pupil to self-activity.

Sir William Hamilton.

The sciences should be employed only as an instrument for

perfecting the reason.

Nicole.

What a man has learnt is of importance, but what he is, what he can do, what he will become, are more significant things.

Arthur Helps.

Unfortunately education amongst us at present consists too

much in telling, not in training.

Horace Mann.

II.

TRAINING AS AN ELEMENT IN EDUCATION.

We take education as aiming at the formation of faculty. — Sully.

He who would gain a correct idea of the magnificent Mount Ranier must view it from many points. When it first bursts upon his enraptured vision, as he approaches from the south, it seems like a mighty king, surrounded by his courtiers and glittering bodyguard. To one who stands upon the deck of the steamer in the harbor at Tacoma, it looks like a solitary pyramid, majestic, magnificent, rising directly out of the deep waters of that wonderful inland sea — Puget Sound. When the spectator has moved far down the sound, and looks at it from a hundred miles away, the bold mountain, now little more than a mass of snow, flashes in the sunlight, the same, yet how different ! While he, who approaches its base, is charmed and terrified by turns, as it allures him by its lofty summits, or hinders him by its mighty glaciers. With each passing season, each changing day of storm or sunshine, each varying hour of darkness, twilight, dawn, or high noon, it presents a new aspect and awakens new emotions. One must " summer and winter " in its grand presence to be able to say " I know and love it."

So does one need to study the work of the teacher in its varying phases in order to understand truly its many-sidedness, and full significance. There is nothing in nature so grand, so beautiful, so full of absorbing interest to an appreciative observer, as is found in the moral world, in the sublime work of educating an immortal soul.

It is the purpose here to consider not the teacher's work as a whole, but only one phase of it, that which may be called training : to explain what is meant by training, show its great importance, and to indicate some of its hindrances and limitations.

Training is causing to act, drilling. It means to govern, lead, compel. Training, as a process in education, signifies such a control exercised by the teacher over the pupil as will lead him to so use his faculties as to secure their completest development. Training has for its immediate end the evolution of power. As treated here, it means the unfolding of all the faculties of the human being. The great mental endowments may be grouped under five heads, those of acquiring, understanding, reproducing, using, and expressing knowledge. We acquire knowledge by means of observation, intuition, reflection, and testimony. The child has been trained when he has been led through such exercises that he can acquire accurate and comprehensive knowledge with ease and facility. The infant and the untutored savage have the same faculties and the same sources of knowledge that are possessed by an Agassiz or a Milton. The babe has no knowledge and little ability to acquire it. The savage has a very limited range of information, and gains knowledge with slowness and pain. The scientist, the philosopher, the experienced jurist acquire knowledge with great facility, accuracy, and pleasure. Training, so far as it relates to the observing powers, means the leading of the pupil to so use each of his senses as will ensure its highest development. The trained man sees, hears, feels, smells, and tastes in such manner as to extort from nature her secrets. He knows the objects about him, or at least can know them. The work of the trainer is less the giving of information about objects than calling into vigorous and healthy exercise the perceptive powers. He is not to "give object-lessons," but to train the pupil to skill in studying objects.

The pupil understands the full import of the facts accumulated only when he has thought profoundly about them, that is, when he has by analysis, comparison, abstraction, judgment, reasoning, etc., comprehended them in their parts, relations, uses, history, etc. The difference between telling and training, can perhaps not be illustrated better than by reference to the thinking powers. It is one thing to communicate to a pupil the results of thinking, and quite another to train him to think. There are several stages or states of the intellect in relation to knowledge. They may be illustrated by an example from geometry. One child may commit to memory the proposition that " the sum of the squares described on the two sides of a right-angled triangle are equal to the square described on the hypothenuse," with a vague notion of its meaning. Another may regard it as a fact which he clearly apprehends, and accepts on authority. A third may not only believe it to be true, but may be able to follow the line of reasoning, step by step, from the beginning to the " Q. E. D." A fourth may devise a method of proof of his own ; while a fifth, observing the triangle, may divine the truth, state the proposition, and originate the demonstration of it. Training aims to lead the pupil to this highest stage, where he not only sees facts, but so brings to bear upon them his powers of thought as to comprehend them. ICnowledge, thus acquired and mastered by the understanding, can be reproduced by the memory and the imagination. Training seeks to render the memory facile, retentive, accurate, comprehensive, and ready, and the imagination vivid and true to nature.

But knowledge has a practical value. It can be applied to the mechanical industries and to the fine arts. The mind has been trained when it can make a ready application of its accumulated store of knowledge to the daily needs of life. All education should, in a sense, be industrial. That is, the pupil, who is trained rather than taught, is led to see that books are only keys to nature. Botany is only the study of plants, and enables him to understand and use the things that grow in his field and garden. History gives him a clearer understanding of his neighbors and makes him a better citizen. Training transmutes knowledge into wisdom, science into skill, philosophy into fact.

One of the highest achievements of the human soul is that of expressing, in appropriate language, its knowledge and thoughts of facts and principles and their relations. Next, certainly, to the power of thought is the power of language. Ability to express thought and emotion, so as to convey to others the exact state of one's mind, and to awaken in them corresponding states, is very unusual even among educated people. Composition clear, forcible, pleasing ; correct description, accurate narration, convincing argument and persuasive appeal, elegant conversation, and winning oratory are accomplishments possessed by few. Training aims to call the powers into exercise, so that the student can both write and speak well. One may parse correctly and speak incorrectly ; may be well versed in the principles of rhetoric and have little power of language ; may understand all the moods of the syllogism and be able neither to convince nor persuade. Training gives him mastery over that subtlest of instruments, human speech.

Training seeks to lead the pupil through such exercises or operations as will tax each of the powers, or faculties, and not one only. The soul is endowed with sensibility, conscience, and will as well as with intellect. A fully developed soul, that is, a welltrained soul, not only knows but feels and not only feels but acts. The appetites, desires, affections, and emotions are as much integral parts of the soul as thoughts or volitions.

I may illustrate the difference between teaching and training by describing a scene. I once witnessed in a college classroom. The teacher was the honored president of the institution, a man renowned for learning and venerable in years and character. His pupils were seniors. The subject, ethics. With a book open before him, he questioned the students one by one as to what was said on the various parts of the subject under consideration, while he recorded the marks to correspond with the answers. During the period of half an hour I think I heard no single recitation that indicated anything more than a feeble effort at mere recollection. There was not only no attempt at independent thinking, but there was not even a show of a serious endeavor to master the thought of the author. Meanwhile these students of ethics were . indulging in most ;/«ethical conduct, levity, frivolity, disrespect to their teacher, indifference to the subject, want of self-control and of all moral earnestness.

Training seeks to awaken and regulate desire for society, for approbation, property, life, happiness, etc., together with all right affections, such as patriotism, filial affection, philanthropy ; noble emotions, such as love of the beautiful, love of the sublime, reverence, etc. Training seeks for its ultimate end the av/akening and disciplining of each and every endowment, so that the soul, with all its powers developed harmoniously and to the highest degree, stands forth complete, a symmetrical whole.

An instructor can only impart a portion of his own limited store of knowledge ; one who causes to learn may lead the child to the exhaustless fountains where he may drink his fill. A trainer, though a weakling, may see a giant develop under his wise direction.

Training then is only a part of the teacher's task, not all of it. He is to guide and instruct. Each of these is an important part of his work, and no discussion of teaching can be complete or philosophical that ignores or belittles either of these. There was indeed a time when books were scarce, and the teacher's memory was the great storehouse of knowledge, and he a walking encyclopaedia ; when instructing, or mere giving information, constituted a more important part of his work than it does to-day. The multiplication of books and the increase of facilities for gaining knowledge has doubtless greatly diminished the importance of this part of his work, but it has by no means done away with it.

His chief business, however, is not to give information, not to impart knowledge, nor even to cause the pupil to learn ; but it is to train the pupil's powers. Let me suggest some reasons for this statement.

I. Training, more nearly than any other work of the teacher, meets the ideal of education. By the concensus of opinion among the ablest thinkers on this subject, a man is educated only when his powers are developed. Here is Landon's definition of education : " Taking into account both functions of education, we may say that when a person has stored his mind with all serviceable materials and cultivated his faculties to such an extent that he is able to make a vigorous use of the knowledge he possesses ; when his moral power has become so developed and experienced that he not only has a delicate appreciation of duty but his conscience gives its sanction to that which his intelligence dictates ; when his will has been strengthened to such a degree that he is enabled to act with decision and bear with constancy the strain of difficulty and disappointment ; when he recognizes his relationship to a Superior Being and realizes that his every action may have an influence not only for time but for eternity ; and lastly, when his mind has acquired such susceptibility to the beauties both of nature and of art that it adds to his pleasures and softens his cares, — then he is educated." The underlying thought in this is development, or such an unfolding of the powers of an individual as can come only from exercise. The direction of this exercise by the teacher, which results in this exalted state of the pupil, is what is meant by training. No other part of his work so nearly corresponds to the high ideal of education as this.

2. There can be no successful work of instruction without a preliminary work of training. All our knowledge of the external world comes to us through the senses. Knowledge is primarily immediate, conscious contact of the soul with things. Ideas result from sense impressions. Thoughts spring up from the contemplation of things. The mind must apprehend from its own inherent energies. Every act of acquisition is an act of mental exercise. It is by this use of its varied powers of perception that the mind increases in capacity and strength. The elements of knowledge, ideas of form, color, size, weight, extension, odors, tastes, etc., must of necessity be intuitive, that is, must come by observation of things. They cannot come by verbal description. Instruction cannot convey them. Elementary ideas must be awakened in the mind by presenting the appropriate objects. Training the observing powers underlies, therefore, all instruction. It is fundamental, a condition precedent. There can be absolutely no progress without it.

If it should be said that the time for training the perceptive powers is in childhood, and that this work belongs preeminently to the nursery, the kindergarten, and the primary schools, and consequently does not concern the teachers in the higher grades, the reply is not far to seek. In the first place the work is either not done at home and in the lower grades, or, if done, is done poorly. Every child, by the necessities of the case, is compelled, of course, to use his senses. They do indeed grow by exercise. But it is the common observation of teachers that children, on entering school, have a very imperfect use of these. Teachers in colleges, as well as those who teach in high and grammar schools, find a lamentable lack of control, on the part of pupils, of their observing powers. Besides, even if the child had been under systematic training in the nursery, and in the lower grades of school, there would still remain the necessity for a higher order of the same kind of training in higher grades. Observation becomes more minute, complex, and sustained as the pupil advances in his pursuits. Training should fit him for the best work, in all stages of school life.

Again, the acquisition of knowledge, which begins in sense perceptions, is only complete when all the powers of the mind, memory, imagination, and the reasoning faculties have done their work. Merely seeing a thing is not getting a knowledge of it. It must be revolved in mind, thought about. Committing a thing to memory is not learning it any more than swallowing food is taking nourishment. The food must be digested and assimilated to be of real service. Knowledge must undergo an analagous process before it becomes brain fibre or spiritual power.

Before pouring corn into the hopper, the miller sees to it that the millstones and all connecting machinery is in proper working order. The overseer does not begin to thrust his cotton into the receptacle till all the varied and complicated machinery is in readiness, so that the carding, spinning, twisting, and weaving may go forward together. The conductor does not cry "All aboard," till he knows that the engine is ready to start.

Mere lecturing a child, whose interest is not awakened and whose powers are not active, is about as effective as attempting to fill a jug by pouring water on it while it is corked. Knowledge merely lodged in the memory is about as serviceable as money locked up in a vault. Money to be helpful must be in circulation in the channels of trade ; knowledge to be of worth must enter into the circu-