A new life in education

Front matter

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UNITED STATES OE AMERICA.

[Green Fund Book, No. 9 a,]

Preface

This book is written with a double purpose, to discuss, first, the place of the religious (as including the moral) element in education ; and, second, the place and function of the highest type of education, in the immediate future. It will be found, however, that in the treatment these purposes merge or coalesce into one. Bej^ond this, the views herein expressed suflflciently explain themselves. It may be of interest to some to know that these views are the outgrowth of the study and teaching of subjects mainly scientific in character.

The sources of the material used being familiar and easily accessible to the reading public, and it being the intention to have the book as far as possible a pictorial argument, I have not deemed it advisable to cumber the pages with detailed references or footnotes. The main sources of information, and notes on matters needing further explanation, are given in an appendix. Special mention however, should be made of my debt to the ex«

8 PREFACE.

tremely useful Reports of the Commissioner of Education.

I wish also to make acknowledgement of the aid, direct and indirect, in the preparation of this book, given me by m}^ former colleague, Prof. Robert W. Rogers, now Professor of Hebrew and Old Testament Exegesis in Drew Theological Seminary. My best thanks are due to my present colleague, Prof. Bradford 0. Mclntire, for aid in reading the proof and for rhetorical corrections and other changes. The editor of The American Sunday- School Union, has also made several important suggestions, which I have been glad to adopt.

Fletcher Durell. ' Carlisle, Pa., March 19^ 189 ^,

N. B. The Index figures in the text of the work, refer to notes in the Appendix, at the end of the volume.

SYLLABUS.

Chapter I. A Heritage And A Need

A Contrast — Increase of Formal Education — Increase of Informal Education — Lifelong Education — Vistas of Need — A Concrete Basis — Communication — Transportation — Production — Problems Unsolved — First Transforming Agencies — I. Business Power — II. Government by the People — III. Other First Transforming Agencies — A G-eneral Survey — Place of Concentrating Need and Opportunity. . . . Pages 13-42

Chapter II. The New Education And Cheist

The Old and the New — Search for the New^ — Illustration of the New — Forms of the New — Limitations of the New — Jewish Education — Galilee — Unfolding of Jesus' Mind — Jesus as a Teacher — Features of Jesus' Method — Christian Education in Three Senses. .... 43-64

CHAPTER IIL

EXPANSION.

Two Elements in Growth — Expansion Hlustrated — L Magnitude Expansion — II. Diversity Expansion — Value of Expansion — I. In Assimilation — II. In Discovery — IIL In Practical Life — Means of Attaining Expansion — Difficulties and Limitations — Expanding Power in Moral and Religious Ideas, . . .... 65-86

Chapter IV. Organization And Exactness*

Second Part of Growth — Organization as a Process — Accuracy the Basis of Organization — Illustrations- — Fruits of Accuracy — Combination

10 SYLLABUS.

of Expansion and Accuracy — Individuality — Inclusiveness — Productiveness — Means of Attaining Trutli-Organization — Conscience and Keligion as Organizers. . . . . Pages 87-106

CHAPTER Y.

THE WILL.

Third Element in Growth— The Will a Factor in Expansion — Factor in Organization — The Will in the Future — Education of the Will — Relation of Will to Religion — The Trinity of Growth 107-120

CHAPTER VL

A NEW BODY.

The Changed Ideal — Nerve, Brain and Activity—Physical Expansion — Physical Organization—The Physical Will— The Swedish System — German and English Systems — Other Elements of Physical Life — Selection and Adaption —The Christian Ideal 121-146

CHAPTER YII.

ADULT EDUCATION.

The People's Purpose — In the Land of Philosophy and Science — In the Land of Arts — In a Remote Province — In the Land of Commerce and Dominion — In the Home Land — Woman's Place in Adult Education — Free Public Libraries — Value in Social Problems — Value in Formal Education — Immigration and Heredity — The Religious Element in Adult Education. . 147-163

CHAPTER VIIL

THE USE OF BOOKS.

The Wealth of Books— The Problem— The Great Books — Searching out the Essence — Assimilation of the Essence — The Princess' Quest. . 164-177

CHAPTER IX.

THE TEACHEE.

Three Great Systems — The Teacher in the Jewish System — In the Jesuit System — In the

SYLLABUS. 11

Grerraan System — A Fundamental and Difficult Problem — Dramatic Power — The Teacher a Student — Experimentation — A Teaching Era — The Religious Spirit in the Teacher — Hints of this Spirit — Two Great Teachers — Pestalozzi — Thomas Arnold— The Ideal Teacher. . Pages 178-206

CHAPTER X.

MORAL AND EELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN ITSELF. Most Important Single Element — Moral and Religious Acts the Most Numerous — The Most Important — The Most Difficult — Relation to the Future — delation to the so-called Practical Life and Education — Its Inclusive Relations — Value Increases with Amount — The Absolute Value- Conclusions of Educators. 207-222

CHAPTER XL

THE PEACTICAL PKOBLEM.

Separation Education — Religious Education Adapted — Secular Education Adapted — Value of a Closer Union — Sectarian Education — A Protestant Experience — A Catholic Experience — Other Instances — Semi-sectarian Education. . 223-242

CHAPTER XII.

THE SUBSTANCE OF EELIGION IN EDUCATION. An Aggressive Substance — A First Essence : A Common Fact and Act — Common Feeling — Common Activities — Use of the First Essence — Essence Developed into Substance: Development of the Fundamental Religious Act — It is the Simplest Act — The Most Fundamentally Constructive Act — Its Universality — Extended Use of the Primal Religious Act — The Whole Developed Essence — Development of a General Idealism : Germs of Idealism — Culmination of Idealism in Religious Ideas — Idealism and Religion Develop Each Other — Practical Aspects : Attitude of Agnostics — Attitude of Denominations — Relation to Education as It Is— Relation to the World as It Is — Arnold ^s Method — Jesus' Method— A Symbol of the New Life. . . 243-281 Appendix 283

A mw LIFE IN EDUCATION.

Chapter I. A Heeitage And A Need

A CONTRAST.

AS the world advances the function of the teacher becomes more and more important. Among uncivilized peoples there are no specific, organized educating agencies. All education is incidental to and a part of other pursuits and pleasures. But, in proportion as the world advances, professional teachers appear in all lines and areas of work and pleasure. Take the contrast, in this respect, between the land in which we live as it was four hundred years ago and as it is now. Then there was not a single trained teacher amid all the populations of this vast country, now there are three hundred thousand of them ; then there was not a single school child, now there are fifteen millions ; then not a single wigwam devoted to the purposes of instruction, now two hundred thousand buildings devoted to the work of the most intense, exclusive education, some of them palaces in splendor and beauty ; then not a single string of wampum expended for purposes of either abstract or directly practical instruction, now $150,000,000 of the public money is so expended, which sum is supplemented by an increasing and rising tide of private benefaction. *

I. INCREASE OF FORMAL EDUCATION.

This fact of the increasing function of the teacher is realized in a somewhat different way, if we consider the increasing number of occupations — the preparation for which is handed over more or less to the instructor. The first teachers gave instruction in only here and there a subject or a calling, which for the time being was regarded as particularly important. ]N"ot many centuries ago only two occupations had distinct, adapted, preliminary training — war and the priesthood. " The education of the middle ages was either that of the cloister

or the castle The object of the one

was to form the young monk, of the other the young knight.'' Since then not only have the military academy and the theological seminary been developed, but also schools adapted to prepare one for almost any form of work or pleasure.

As the world has advanced, more phases and elements of life have been made departments of distinct training. In each an abstract essence of principles has been wrought out. This is early trained into the mind, and is later used everywhere in its appropriate area of work, and is built up and around with details and developed into new forms

A HEKITAGE AKD A KEED. 16

as occasion may require. Men, who formerly would have scratched in the earth with rude shovels in search of ore, without a thought of previous schooling for the occupation, are now trained into mining engineers. Men, who once could have measured a piece of land only as they had seen their fathers do it, by ploughing it with oxen and counting the days occupied, are now trained as civil engineers. Schools for journalism, business, cookery, sewing, dress-making, millinery, replace the incidental and desultory instruction of former days given by the editor to his assistant, by the business man to his clerk, by the mother to her daughter. Carpenters are coming to be trained, not as apprentices, but in manual training schools. Politics is taught in universities. Agriculture in which formerl}- there was only such instruction as the farmer gave his sons and hired men, has now become the field of labor of a host of different kinds of teachers, men that teach chemistry and botany and surveying, and the combination of these and other sciences, as agriculture itself. Art and bicycle-riding alike, and all forms of esthetics and amusement are taught. Even the play of children has been handed over to the teacher in the kindergarten to be made more fruitful. Even teaching itself has been made the subject of instruction, and men are taught how to teach.

II. INCREASE OF INFORMAL EDUCATION.

Thus various kinds and portions of what was once incidentally and accidentally conveyed information have been converted into departments of specific, professional education. But not only has the amount of professional teaching thus increased, the amount of lay or incidental teaching has wonderfully increased also. The extension of professional teaching has not diminished, it has rather enlarged the amount of lay teaching. Taking education in its broadest sense, every man, as has often been remarked, is educated by all whom he meets, by all of his surroundings, and by many of them profoundly. Their primary and conscious or intended purpose is usually something else, and 3^et many of them are so intensely educative as to form almost specific educators. Travel has cheapened till it is to some extent within the reach of all.

Photographs and various pictorial illustrations are so numerous, and fiction depicting the habits and life of other lands is so abundant and excellent and costs so little, that all can supplement travel or indeed multiply it by their use. Newspapers are manifold teachers. All these are powerful educators, and the increase in their number and excellence has been prodigious. Every advertiser is an educator. Every man with a new idea or invention, in order to reap the fruits of it or make it fruitful in the lives of others, must instruct the public. Every political campaign is a factor in national education. The preacher educates his congregation, the lawyer his client and jury, the business man his employees and patronizing public, and in the rush of modern life each of these is doing his work with greater care and intensity. Indeed, to-day, almost every man to succeed must carefully educate a clientage. In all lines men have been compelled to convert themselves more and more into teachers. Man's success depends increasingly on his ability to teach in all sorts of ways, and to be taught in like manner.

in. LIFELONG EDUCATION.

Not only is it found that a specific education, a period of training pure and simple, is more and more necessary in every department of life and work, but it is also being realized that there is increasing need that this education be continued throughout life. In an ever greater number of departments, a single period of training at the outset is found to be insufficient. Men must be constantly learning new methods. The world makes fossils ever more rapidly. Once this process occupied thousands of years. Now ten 3^ears is sufficient for it. The physician to do his work in the best way, must not only learn as best he can constantly, but more and more he must also occasionally, if possible, give up a year's practice and devote the time exclusively to study in some institution. The clergyman often does likewise.

The teacher devotes some vacations to studj^ in some school ; in many colleges each professor is sent off at stated intervals for a year's study in some advanced institution at home or abroad to master the newest methods in his specialty. Just as the manufacturer counts on making some changes constantly, and also, at stated periods, on removing bodily large sections of his machinery and sending them to the junk shop and replacing them by more powerful and improved machinery, so must every first-class worker both constantly and periodicall}'' renew himself. He must learn and relearn new information. He must train and retrain himself in new methods. He must be constantly and repeatedly educated.

VISTAS OF NEED.

Thus the advance of the world life has been marked by an advancing and developing system of education. Nor has the limit of usefulness of this agency yet been reached. Education having extended itself throughout the main elements of life and the entire duration of life, needs further to extend itself in detail and among all peoples, and also to complete and perfect all its present numerous functions. But most of all it needs to be elevated in function to the highest point, that is intensified and idealized in every possible way. There is an increasing demand for the utmost use of its highest offices and for the development in it of new and more elevated, more spiritual functions, if possible. Its powers have been extended in the past, they now need to be exalted to the highest pitch. If we examine some features of that heritage, which the twentieth century is about to receive from the nmeteenth, this overwhelming need for the utmost exercise and development of the higher and more spiritual functions of education will everywhere appear.

A CONCRETE BASIS.

The nineteenth century will hand down to the twentieth a material civilization which has suddenly outrun all other factors and elements in the developing world life. Material progress has been so swift J and men are so immersed in the vast processes of further concrete development, that they do not often pause to contemplate properly how much has already been accomplished. Furthermore, the results already attained are so unevenly distributed and often so imperfectly applied, that when men do pause to examine they do not rightly estimate them. Rightly estimated, it is no exaggeration to say that the problem of a material basis for a new and better world has, in many respects, been solved. A sufficient material basis, in fact or in method, has been laid for that Utopia, that Millenium, that Kingdom of God, of which men have dreamed in all ages.

I. COMMUNICATION.

In the first place, the problem of communication, of the conveyance swiftly, universally, and at small cost among men, of knowledge, thought and sympathy, has been solved. The telegraph and telephone, the printing-press and post-office already answer every practical purpose. All important facts and sympathies, the death of a president, the emancipation of a race, the discovery of a new principle, may at once be made known throughout the world at little expense and trouble, and men can act upon them unitedly and harmoniously if they desire so to act.

As Joseph Cook says, when cable lines now in process of construction are linished, it will be possible to send a message round the world seven times in an hour. It is possible now to communicate with three-fourths of the missionaries in the world, from any large city, within a day. Other inventions may give new facilities of communication to supplement those we now have. The telautograph may enable one to w^rite a message on the other side of the globe. What seems at present the wild dream of being able by use of electricity to see what is happening at the end of a line on another continent ma}^ be realized in the future. But without another invention of this kind, without a single new facility of communication beyond those which we already possess, methods for the mechanical exchange of fact, thought and sympathy, adequate to the harmonious development and reciprocal enrichment of all lives, have been wrought out.

II. TRANSPORTATION.

The problem of transportation has also been sufficiently solved by the railroad and steamship in

A HEBITAGE AND A NEED. 21

their various types. By these, wheat is carried from both Dakota and India to London without adding an undue percentage to its cost, and is thus made to feed advantageously the millions of a metropolis on the other side of the globe. The luscious, but perishable fruits of California are transported in like manner. Aye, the dressed fresh meats of Australia are now being carried to London in increasing quantities, so that the present system of transportation enables one part of the world to profitably feed on the perishable products of its antipodes. What is true of the food necessities of life is true also for some of its delicate, esthetic luxuries. The orange blossoms of Florida are sent and carry their perfume over a large part of the United States. Cut flowers packed in New York are delivered in unimpaired freshness in Paris.

New facilities of transportation may come. Some form of electrical propulsion, substituting the purely rotary motion of the motor for the reciprocating action of piston and rod, may double the speed of our trains. Competent authorities assert that with proper road-bed and equipment there is no reason why a train driven by electricity should not move with a speed of one hundred and fifty or two hundred miles an hour. Aerial navigation may even surpass this both in speed and economy. But as the matter stands at present, so far as exchanging readily the best products of any one land with the best from all the rest

22 A KEW LIFE IK EDUCATION.

of the world is concerned, without adding materially to their cost, all that is necessary has already been achieved, and thus another wall has been built in the foundation of a new and better world life.

III. PRODUCTION.

The problem of production has also been adequately solved. In fact over-production is the cry almost everywhere, the curtailment of production has become a prominent feature of modern business life. A small per cent.^ of the land in our Southern States will produce all the cotton the world can use. A small fraction of the West will produce enough wheat to make bread for the world. The merest extension of the process we now know, the merest duplication of the machinery we now possess, would enable us to feed the world properly without effort, to clothe the world properl}^, and also to bestow upon all human beings the principal luxuries of life. On the one hand, this has been accomplished by the vast developments of laborsaving machinery, by putting life, thought itself, into iron and wood.

As an illustration of the brain which acts in steel and steam the world over, take the wonderful machine which has been invented for weaving that difficult fiber, horse=hair. The fibers to be woven are short, of unequal length, considerably thicker at one end than the other, very elastic and so hard that they will speedily wear away the hardest steel over which they may be dragged. The machine

A HERITAGE AKD A NEED. 23

has a shuttle with a pair of jaws, and a hand which picks up one hair and only one, and presents it to the jaws of the shuttle. The hand must let go at the very instant the shuttle takes hold, otherwise the hair would be dragged through its fingers, which would soon be worn away. Sometimes however the fingers fail to grasp this single hair. It makes then a second try, and, if the second fail, yet a third. Supposing the third attempt also prove unsuccessful, there being no time for a fourth, the hand promptly stops the weft motion, so that no change takes place, whilst the shuttle is making its traverse without a hair to form the weft. Such a machine may be taken as a miniature representation of all our present vast system of perfected machinery, the world over.

Not only are machines vast labor performers, they serve and aid each other. On one of our great steamships beside the main engines, there are numerous auxiliary engines, which aid and act with the main engines as if they were intelligent, titanic beings. Smaller engines feed coal to the larger, fan the draught, withdraw waste ; hydraulic engines steer and hoist ; other engines run auxiliary boats. The British war vessel Victoria had eighty-eight'^ of these auxiliar}^ engines interacting with or supplementary to the main engines. The modern steamship may be said to be manned with a crew of engines as well as a crew of men. So do machines interact and aid each other in all lines of productive activity. Steam ploughs prepare the way for the drill, the drill for the reaper and binder, the binder feeds the threshing machine, the threshing machine feeds the flour mill, the flour mill and bakery hand their produce to the locomotive and steamboat and thus feed the world.

The problems also, of the discovery and mastery of material, and of physical force, out of which and by which to make products, have been adequately solved. Every continent is now fairly opened, and all are found to be full of wealth of soil and mineral. Coal is found in all parts of the world. The steam engines of the world, by the use of coal, now do the work of one thousand millions of men.^ There are twice as many men of steam in the world as there are men of flesh and blood, and they are all intensely working. Each man on the average the world over, has two slaves of steam working for him. Force to sustain these and to make any needed multitudes like them is at hand. Coal will supply the world with force for some thousands of years to come. When coal is exhausted, we know that a vast store of unused force exists in sunlight, only one thousandth part of it being at present used by man and vegetation together. The sunlight that falls on New York city and Brooklyn would if collected run all the steam engines of the world.* Enough sunlight falls on the state of Pennsylvania, to make every man within its boundaries a millionaire inside of a week. Hence we say the problem of production is essentially solved.

A thousand million of steam men are at work in

A HERITAGE AND A KEED. 25

the world. In labor performing machinery we have at least two thousand millions^ of men of steel and iron working by their side. The world over, six steam and iron slaves are working for every man. In the United States, eighteen of these are working for every man, six for every individual. At the time of Christ, there were sixty millions of slaves in the Roman Empire ; there are four thousand millions of machinery slaves in the modern world. . Those hosts of bondsmen who created a material basis for the vast civilization of the ancient world are now replaced by vastly more numerous hosts of workmen, vaporous yet most substantial, creating and alread}^ having largel}^ created, a concrete basis for that immeasurably superior modern world life which is to come.

PROBLEMS UNSOLVED.

It is thus clear that the problems of communication, of transportation, of manufacture, of the discovery of force and material, have all been essentially solved. In this difficult work of creating a material basis for a new and better world, education has had an increasingly prominent part. But there yet remains the more difficult problem of actually building a new and better world life on this material basis, of converting all our manifold wealth and power into the highest life. Iron has been millenialized but the human soul has not. In this remaining work, education is called to act a still more prominent part. If in the nineteenth century education has been important, in tlie twentieth century, education, taken in its broadest sense, must be supreme. Material development left to itself does not rise into a higher, symmetrical life ; on the contrary, it, in the main, gravitates downward, and that with crushing force at places.

Great Britain and the United States have led in this material development, and have a richer concrete basis on which to build a new and better life than exists in any other lands, yet both these countries abound in want and vice. Increased wealth of itself has had no power to produce a millenial life. In England during the past four centuries, wealth has increased seventeenfold,® while the population has increased only fourfold, yet to-day in London ^' considerably over one-tenth of the deaths are in the workhouses." " In the United States fifty years ago practically no poverty existed in the sense that men willing to work could not procure the necessities of life," yet there now exist in every great city of the land, masses of confirmed vice and destitution. In New York city nearly the same proportion are buried in the Potter's field that die in the workhouses in London. In 1890 there were twenty-three thousand evictions in New York city for unpaid rent. In the United States in the past fifty years, wealth has increased tenfold and population only threefold, yet the last census shows the existence of over nine millions of mortgages. In the face of all

A HEEITAGE AND A NEED. 27

our material deTelopment, want and discontent have developed on a gigantic scale, and so plainly that all the splendor of it cannot irradiate the facts out of sight. New York and London, the two great population centers of the world, the two great wealth centers, are also in many respects the two great misery centers of the world.

The problem of production has been solved, but the problems of distribution and transmutation remain. Privilege and duty alike demand that every energ}^ of attention and earnest work be directed to them. If there be any power in education in general, or in any form of education, direct or indirect, or in education re-developed in more vital alliance with Christian truths, to help men evolve a proportionate and uniform higher life out of a great material basis ; any power to make it easier for all to become in many senses the possessors of all ; any power to teach rich and poor alike out of how small a basis of concrete a complete and enduring life may be developed ; any power to transmute riches of steam and steel, electricity and gold into a higher wealth of ideal and spiritual life ; in a word, any power to make moral and religious development more swift, easy and natural, the twentieth century will demand the full exercise of this power.

FIRST TRANSFORMING AGENCIES.

A further examination of some other elements of the heritage which the twentieth century is about to receive from the nineteenth only serves to emphasize the conclusions already reached. In several civilized countries not only is a sufficient material basis already attained either actually or potentially, but also certain first steps in the transmutation of this basis into higher life have been taken, and certain needed powers of higher organization evolved. A look at these steps of achieved progress will show that they do not lessen but rather specialize, elevate and emphasize the need of education.

I. BUSINESS POWER.

First, is to be mentioned the business or practical power of the age. This has developed itself on a scale and to an intensity, and extended itself with a universality quite unparalleled in the past. Along with the development of the material basis and yet quite above this, has come a power to see and grasp its elements, to use them together, to organize them into most fruitful interaction, for a desired, concrete purpose. The value of push, pluck, punctuality, organization, exactness, good faith, in all immediately practical affairs is understood as never before.

Many splendid and striking illustrations of this practical power are constantly appearing. A few years ago a great railway was pushed out over our unsettled western country faster than the exploring expedition of Lewis and Clark travelled through the same region ^; ten mUes of track were both graded and laid in a single day, over five hundred miles were graded and six hundred miles laid in seven months, and this though every pound of food used hy laborers and every bushel of oats consumed by animals had to be transported into the unproductive country. The Dakotas, where in 1869 not one bushel of wheat was raised, in 1887 produced fifty millions of bushels. The Philadelphia Record recently celebrated an anniversary by making a tree into newspapers in the shortest possible time. The standing tree was cut down, the wood made into pulp, the pulp into paper, the paper printed upon with news from all the world, and put into the hands of the reader, all within twenty-two hours' time. The first white child born outside the walls at Fort Dearborn is still living as a not very old man, who can boast Chicago as his native place, and can see the civilization of the world summed up both in that great city itself, and in its World's Fair.