Social education

Preface

The aim of this book is to put at the disposal of its readers a point of view or method of thinking rather than a completed system of thought. Since this point of view is social, it should be participated in by the pupils as well as understood by the teacher. The question of " methods " as something peculiar to the outfit of the teacher is thus absorbed into the larger and more practical problem of community life.

The stimulus to such thinking comes from the observation of the facts of social life as they occur in the schoolroom or wherever people are being educated. It is interesting to observe that most of the systems of education and their consequent "methods" have had another origin. Herbart's experience as a private tutor, in which capacity he was engaged principally with single pupils, doubtless gave him the important observations of fact which led to his theories. When Rousseau explains what education should be, he takes one pupil and artificially isolates him from the rest of the world. It was difficult for Pestalozzi to see what was actually occurring among the children in his charge, because his own peculiar experience as a child was constantly in the background of his mind and constantly affecting his emotions. Other writers, as Montaigne, Mill, and Herbert Spencer, have in mind to a large extent their own experience as individuals. Their views are thus largely subjective.

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PREFACE

The actual facts, however, press upon us the necessity for social observation and explanation. Even approximately scientific results cannot otherwise be obtained. Children in the schools are always in numbers, and classes are never successfully taught as mere collections of separate individuals.

The experiences described in this book are therefore nothing more than cases. They are not ideals and do not call for imitation. Every group for education and cooperation will differ from every other, just as individuals differ and the circumstances in which they find themselves. The point of view or method of thinking is the essential factor which makes for liberty, social cohesion, and thoroughness. These same educational requirements can be realized in entirely different forms.

As suggested above, the experiences described are quite incomplete and fragmentary. Even so, they may be of considerable service to the reader who cares to habituate himself to the social point of view in education. A critical sketch of three famous schools is begun in Chapter III. This is followed by descriptions of school work, which are not meant to represent perfection of either method or attainment, but which, it is believed, succeed in showing some features of the social spirit more completely than do the three examples studied in Chapters III, IV, and V. The two chapters on self-organized group work aim to show the more general features of social organization in the school. The concluding chapters of the book take up some special themes of education and attempt to show to what extent their best teaching depends upon a recognition of social facts.

The social education club, the Social Education Quarterly y and the social education congresses held in Boston, have

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A

PREFACE

already awakened considerable interest in the movement they represent, — a movement which it is safe to say is destined to stimulate the deepest, the most progressive, and the most characteristic elements in American education. The state and the school can avoid the evils that threaten them only by a more comprehensive and deeper social synthesis organically united with a freer and more thoroughgoing individual development. The aim of this book will not be realized if it does not add something, however small, to the solution of this problem.

The pleasant duty remains to acknowledge the assistance of many teachers and pupils who have, by their cooperative work and criticisms, made this book possible. It is only because they are now so numerous that special recognition becomes difficult and practically impossible. Of President G. Stanley Hall, without whose epoch-making work in child study the observations in this book would have been difficult, if not impossible, I desire to express my sincerest admiration. To Professor W. H. Burnham, Professor George H. Locke, Principal Myron T. Pritchard, and to my colleagues. Miss Dora Williams and Miss Katherine Shute, who have read the manuscript, I am deeply indebted for many valuable suggestions. To President Arthur T. Hadley, whose criticism was most profound and far-reaching, I am under a very special obligation. Through the courtesy of the publishers of the Educational Review I have been able to use for a part of Chapter VIII a portion of an article

which appeared in that magazine.

COLIN A. SCOTT

Contents

Pages CHAPTER I. THE SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS OF THE

SCHOOL 1-22

Man as a member of society. Society not formed by any one's intention. Society establishes the school. The return effect of the school upon society. Discipline in social education. The school as a system of causes. Crowd psychology and evolution. Marginal consciousness and the opinions of others. The uniformity of the school. Why the school is imperfectly social. False independence. The formation of groups. The conditions of the freedom of a group. The role of force. Justice and liberty. The demand for responsibility. The school should protect the best activities of groups.

Chapter II. Tests For The School 23-42

The need for social service of a voluntary character. Dictated courses of study justified when they give rise to voluntary work. Such justification is a test that should be applied to all courses of study. Rough means of testing the schools from the standpoint of social service. How private and professional schools are tested. The lack of suitable tests for the public schools. Improper tests. Testing by means of industrial work with which other subjects are correlated. Criticism of correlation. The logical expansion of interests. What is it to indulge one's interests ? The kindergarten and primary grades. The significance of the circle and the group. Leadership of groups. To what extent do high-school pupils carry out the results of their work in school ? Value of testing for the teaching profession. Teaching a social work.

Chapter III. The School As An Organism — Monarchy 43-57

The social satisfaction of pupils themselves. The social motive of honor. Honor yielded to those above us. Honor to those on the

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same level and below us. The school at Abbotsholme. The con- Pages trast between this school and the ordinary boarding school. The natural affections of boys in school. Dormitories. Cooperation in the making of rules. The monarchical type of honor. Responsibility to the ruler. The outdoor life of the school. The indoor or class-room life. How does an ideal monarchy differ from a democracy ? The power to create plans and direct others.

58-77

Chapter IV. The School As An Organism — The Republic

The George Junior Republic. Success of the Republic. Its principles of organization. The role played by Mr. George. Comparison between the Junior Republic and the state. The spontaneousness of real government. Voting not a mere registration of opinion. Voting is not for individuals but for society. The function of coercion. Protection and sustenance of the socially desirable. Excess of coercion is wasteful. Coercion ought not to be exercised by children. The industrial and economic features of the Junior Republic. Do the children realize the actual economic basis of the Junior Republic? The little society does very little experimenting. What are the motives which lead to the honoring of the policeman.? The right of children to be protected from economic strain. A school cannot be simply a reproduction of an adult society. The real cooperative elements of the Junior Republic, shown in the business ventures. The school city. The self-direction of groups as distinguished from government.

Chapter V. The School And Society 78-101

The Dewey school. Pragmatism. The school as a laboratory. Four problems worked on in the Dewey school. Whole activities rather than sections of work. The gap between theory and practice. The social defects of the ordinary school. Inadequate means of correcting them in the Dewey school. The disadvantage of harking back to social successes of the past. The mistake in losing sight of the child's real motive and substituting for it an idea of the teacher's. The will or the intention of the child is the vital fact. Small children who set themselves to difficult and even formal tasks. A course of study is a teacher's tool. Leadership is necessary as well as cooperative obedience. Analysis of individuals versus

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CONTENTS

analysis of groups. A contrast between the biological organism Pages and society. The significance of group organization in school discipline. Punishment is disapproval of the group. Punishment to prevent hindrances. The role of the teacher.

Chapter VI. Self-organized Group Work . . 102-130

Relationship of self-organized work to the dictated work of the school. How this work was introduced. A printing group. Three cooking groups. Importance of planning beforehand what is to be done. How some arithmetic was needed to overcome some difficulties. Internal resistance within the group and how it was overcome. A cooking group of boys alone. A photograph group. The play of The Sleeping Beatity. Interest of the home. Attitude of the teacher. The gradual extension of the time devoted to self-organized work. Further cases. The relationship of the group to the rest of the class. The use of reading and writing.

CHAPTER VII. SELF-ORGANIZED GROUP WORK {continued^ 131-169

The building of a house by a group which involved the rest of the class. Care must be taken by the teacher not to displace the leader of the group. " Drill " and real inquiry. The element of risk in starting any plan. The value of criticisms and temptations at the early stages of a piece of work. The case of the penholder. A class in German. A class in American history. Group work in Boston. Old Pipes and the Dryad. The Charlestown High School. Group work in science. Marking and examinations. Marking and social service. Marking and scholarship. Marking as distributive justice. Cooperative marking.

CHAPTER VIII. REASONING AND THE TEACHING OF SCIENCE AND ARITHMETIC FROM A SOCIETARY STANDPOINT 170-198

Some characteristics of inductive reasoning. The difference between reasoning and perception. The adaptation of means to end. Hypotheses to be tested by the judgment of our peers. The ultimate criterion of reasoning. The survival of society. Science teaching. The deficiency of reasoning power in high-school graduates. Should the teacher say what is right and wrong in reasoning? The value of hypotheses in learning. A lesson on Pages steam. The character of children's reasoning. The child's real point of view. Planning on the child's part necessary. Apperception related to reasoning. Nature study. Lesson on a bird's nest. Lesson on ants. Independent reasoning and social motives in reasonmg. Work in arithmetic.

CHAPTER IX. READING, LANGUAGE, AND LITER- ATURE .^^ z: 199-236

Ear-mindedness and eye-mindedness. Perverse application of the laws of association. Service given and received the mainspring of progress in reading. The origin of language. The development of language in a child. The building up from percept to concept. At both these stages a social environment presupposed. The transition from spoken to written language. Immediate satisfaction necessary to a child who reads. Case of reading lesson in first grade. The value of expectation. Mere reading only the passive half of a completely social process. The value of the motor ride. Elocution. The necessity for a real audience. A case of a high-school class in reading. The value of bodily expression in reading. The emotions in literature. Fear and love. The effect of tragedies. Red Riding Hood. The necessity for specializing in emotional expression. Story of Willie and the circus. Teachers must learn to interpret children at first hand. Children must learn to write and to read for each other.

Chapter X. Manual Arts: Industrial And Constructive Work

Manual arts fundamental to life. To what extent is the manual worker forced to produce in obedience to the orders of others > Social organization a tool whose use should be taught. Man as a producer and man as a consumer. The school must lead as well as follow. Manual arts an excellent subject for the experimentation of pupils. Children naturally organize for the sake of producmg. The physiological side. Without social power manual drill IS largely wasted. Children construct material objects for the sake of understanding them. The test of action. Manual training begms as a kind of dramatizing. Constructive work must be recovered for the soul. Material construction a part of the

237-259

CONTENTS

construction of life. The disadvantage of a strictly prescribed Pages course of study. The invention of " uses " by teachers for what children make. Consumption naturally guides production. Vacational schools. An ethics founded on work. The effect of good school work on adult life. The problem of classes in America and private schools.

Chapter XI. Fine Art 260-280

The control of work in drawing should be in the hands of teachers not of artists. The correlation of drawing. The effect of child study. The effect of the development of art. The fault of separating expression from its social conditions. Young children's drawings are dramatizations. The parable of the attic. Art of the present day not accessory, but must deliver its own message. The problem of art expression, in the middle and upper grades. The child should be protected from the adult environment. Pro- : tection does not mean isolation. The thought or feeling which is I expressed. The emotion of fear and the value of the grotesque. I Cases of drawings representing objects feared. Art in the higher grades and the high school — in its higher and more restricted sense. Inability of young children to appreciate higher development of art. Economic value of art. The art museum.

Chapter XII. The Education Of The Con- Science 281-298

The feeling of being a moral cause. Imperatives and verification. The selection of duties. The young child's development. The social ground and aim of conscience. The imaged assembly of

I persons. Conscience and honor. Egoism. Envy. Fault-finding. J Service. Originality and invention. Case drawn from the school. ' The need for experimentation. The value of discussion. Busi-

II ness. The church, the home, and the school. Cooperative proc duction the flower and the fruit of the moral life.

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Chapter I

Education is a work which is not confined to the schools. It is an undertaking which any individual may engage in to a greater or less extent. Each one has at least himself to educate, and the most of people are interested in trying to effect some beneficial changes in the minds of others. The schools are not the only definite social organization which pretends to educational aims. The church, the state, the club, the meeting, business concerns, and even gatherings for amusement are often consciously educative. Any effort which is designed to conserve values and develop personality makes a contribution to education.

The school as a special organ for education must fit into the rest of society, must supplement it where necessary, and learn from it on every side. It must prepare the children to live the best possible lives both for themselves and others in the world which they are to enter. In order to do this the school must be adapted not only to the present state of society, but it must select the influences received and perpetuate those which are best. It must carefully avoid fitting children for a past or lower order of things.

It must indeed do more than this, because society itself is constantly changing. Not only the industrial and business world, but the whole life of to-day is quite different from what it was thirty or even ten years ago. To be really effective the school is forced to idealize the present activities of society, and prepare the young for a future world which exists only in the minds and hearts of the community. The school at its best is a prophecy, as every embryo is a prophecy of a better and nobler life. j

To be a true prophecy the school must be itself alive and growing. The ideals of the adult community for the school remain sterile if they are not welcomed and do not enter into the lifeblood not only of the teachers but also of the pupils themselves. More than this, the school itself must make and realize something at least of its own proph- ' ecy. In doing so it must necessarily draw support and nourishment from the adult world, and adapt itself to it, ! but must at the same time be permitted an independence of life and movement which will win the admiration and approval of those who maintain its existence often at a sacrifice to themselves. Individual parents frequently realize this attitude with their several children. The adult community should be able to do as much for the new community which they are sending onward to the unfought battles and the untried tasks of to-morrow.

If there is any measure of truth in the view of the school as an indispensable organ of society, it is quite plain that some preliminary insight into the nature of this society, and some idea of the essential laws of its growth and progress, is absolutely necessary to any one who would wisely help in its evolution. From the mental mechanism studied by individual psychology enough cannot be deduced. Education can never be a mere matter of applied psychology, if this term be used in the strictest sense. Soci al r elationshiB sjniiat be studied in themselves, and not confined to the nevertheless necessary individual mechanism of mind or brain. It is indeed a question, as Tarde claims, whether even the power to think is not itself a creature of communication, language, and social intercourse.

However this may be, all the important needs and aspirations of man are revealed to him in his association with others. Without his fellow, as Aristotle said, man would be either a god or a brute. Except from a purely physical standpoint, and as representing the unity of cell life, man as an individual is an abstraction. His thoughts and ideas, his ambitions, his hopes and fears, his knowledge and morality, drive him constantly beyond the physical organism. His real self, as every one recognizes, is not merely this physical organism, but includes something spiritual and extra-physiological. What this may be in all its aspects is not our present function to determine, but part, at least, of this reality is social and consists of his relationships to others. The consciousness of what worth a man is to others represents and measures a large part of his true self. Indeed, if we could discover any aspect or portion of ourselves which never came into contact with, and formed no part of, any other being, whether God or man, is there any of us could claim it as his own ? Our secret thoughts are no exception : we long to utter them to some one. When we know them, they have already clothed themselves in language of some form, unuttered or expressed. This language is born from our contact with human beings, and is made for the purpose of com munication.

Man, as we know him, is already social. The existence i of society, or membership in society, does not depend upon the will of any individual or any number of individuals. Society was not formed by any one's intention. Association itself is the primary fact and dominates and modifies the character of each constituent. Like the copper in bronze or brass, the individual plays his part in the combination. The result may be brass or bronze, depending on the ingredients, although in this case, since it is never separable, we cannot know or rightly imagine what the copper would be by itself.

The truth of this is easily seen if we observe our own' feelings and actions in the various groups to which we belong. In the family we are one thing, with a group of friends another, in business relationships still another. Even when we are alone we are nevertheless in society. Our thoughts are still busy with others. If we think of ourselves, it is ourselves in relation to some social group or situation, either imagined or real. Sometimes, indeed, we are never more alone than when in the physical presence of others, and never more in society than when alone.

Society develops by the action of social individuals upon one another, but the effects of this action are, at first, largely unexpected and unforeseen by any individual. An illustration may help to make this plain. The first trail or pathway was worn through the woods, not because any one thought that a pathway would be a good thing. The pathway was the unlooked-for result of the frequent repetition of the same action perhaps for different personal motives. After the pathway has once appeared it becomes a fact which is not dependent on any one's private voUtion. It may grow into a well-marked roadway or into a crooked city street. It has its own nature to which individuals who travel on it must conform. It is not simply an effect. It acts as a cause and produces effects in those individuals who are forced to adapt themselves to it. Individuals can use it or modify it only by submitting to its laws.

The appHcation of the illustration is not difficult, since society may conveniently be regarded as a complex of pathways which are worn into the minds and brains of human beings by their mutual interaction. In one form or another these pathways are always there. They are not made primarily by the individual owner of the brain for the accommodation of the public. They are not made primarily by the public for their own accommodation. They are as much objective facts, with a nature of their own to which all who use them must conform, as is the pathway in the woods ; so long as people are in contact, which is always, either by word or pen, in imagination or reality, in pleasure or business, these pathways are being used, whether we will or not.

Without doubt the individual whose brain paths are being used socially is conscious of the fact. But he cannot prevent it. It may give him pain ; the result may seem useless to him ; but his private wishes and private feelings are necessarily borne down by the coercive force of society, as it exists in the structure of his own mind and the action upon it of the minds of others.

^ Of this coercive action of society there is no better example than the establishment of the school. This is not an institution which proceeded from individual intention on the part of its members. Children did not invent the school. They may yield to it with a good grace, they may even wish to go ; but the school exists and is maintained independently of their attitude on the question. The school is primarily an effect of social action on the part of the community. The original cause of the school exists in^ the thoughts of the adult community. It has become intolerable to society at large to see a child grow up without what are called the rudiments of education. That every child who is capable of it shall learn to read, to write, and to obey is felt to be necessary if he is to be a serviceable member of society. It is not primarily for his own individual good that he is taken from his free and wandering life of play. It is for what society can get out of him, whether of a material or a spiritual kind, that he is sent to school.

In so far as the school responds effectively to the social causes which maintain it, it acts as a cause itself, and produces return effects upon society at large. This is plainly seen in the social effect of the present widespread ability to read and write. As every one knows, without this power modern business and industry would soon be at a standstill. Our post office, our newspapers, our telegraph and cable systems, our railways, function as they do because of this general public capacity developed by the schools. If for no other reason than to maintain itself at its present status, society would be justified in compelling every one capable of it to learn this much. It is, however, to be noticed that when children in any considerable numbers were first sent to school and taught to read, the social results which we have indicated were not thought of No one pictured our modern newspapers and our system of advertising, or imagined the spread of our postal service. These are the material expressions of objective social facts, which are largely the unexpected result of the action of the school. This, however, is simply an instance of all social development. The effect always turns out to be a cause itself, which, reacting upon the original cause, reenforces and partly changes it.

Still more fundamental and necessary than the widespread capacity to read and write is the need of social obedience. " It is difficult," says J. S. Mill (1), "to make a free and warlike people submit itself to the yoke of civil government." But where this has been possible, it may be observed, says he, that there have been three conditions fulfilled, — an active principle of cohesion or sympathy among the members of the state, a feeling of allegiance or loyalty, and, most important, "a system of education, beginning with infancy and continued through life, of which, whatever else it might include, one main and incessant ingredient was restraining discipline. . . . The entire civil and military policy of the ancient commonwealths was such a system of training ; in modern nations its place has been attempted to be supplied, principally, by religious teaching."

Where, as in America, religious teaching is no longer associated with the state, it becomes all the more necessary that training in discipline should be directly organized by means of schools. If free and warlike people are to be properly tamed, they must be caught while young. And if religion is no longer to be taught, something else must be found to give opportunities for the exercise of submission.

Enough has been said, perhaps, to indicate the seriousness of the problem of discipline in social education. . It hardly needs to be dwelt on. The typical schoolmaster is an embodiment of its most obvious and perhaps most superficial demands. He transmits the pressure of the causal forces of society behind him. And having done this much, he often thinks he has done all. But a cause, however great and overwhelming, does nothing without its immediate effect. A hammer falls. If it falls upon a nail, it drives it in. If it falls upon an anvil, it makes a noise. If it falls upon a stick of dynamite, it makes a still greater stir. To confine ourselves to the falling of the hammer, and to neglect its effects, would be dangerous as well as unscientific. The study of the effect and its peculiarities is not to be ignored.

Society establishes the school by the compulsive force of its demands, and it requires of the school that this compulsive force be maintained and reenforced. But the characteristic effects of the action within the school itself are not primarily considered in these demands, and are not known to society as a whole. The operation of events within the school is left largely to the schoolmaster. Society as a whole is only concerned when these effects begin to react as a cause. While society may profitably enough ask the question. To what extent does the discipline of the school produce disciplined, loyal, and cohesive members of society? it is plain that the working problems which this question raises are problems of the school and not of the demands of society. They are the business of education which begins its characteristic work just where the compulsory demands of society leave off

Not that these educational effects would ever occur but for their controlling causes, but only that when these causes have once passed into the region of the school they must necessarily become modified and transformed. Indeed what we, as citizens of an adult community, feel about these questions is not directly relevant. Such feelings belong to the outside of the school and are but a part of the causes which originate and maintain it. What we feel simply as parents is no more relevant. Children in school, or in association with other children from other families, find themselves in different relationships and act and feel differently from what they do at home. A given act, a word or look, has a different effect upon them from what it has at home. The school is something more than a mere extension of the state or the home. It is a social combination, with social feelings, sentiments, and needs of its own. By constituting it at all, society has constituted it a social organism, certain to produce definite social changes in the brains of its members.

It is perhaps sufficiently evident from these considerations that the schoolmaster should be not merely a member of adult society, capable of transmitting its pressure to the school, but at the same time a specialist in education. He should know intimately the widest range of effects that can be produced in the school. He should realize that these are not effects which he is producing, except as a necessary medium and contributing cause. He should realize that the effects are written in the minds and characters, the actual feelings and spontaneous social actions, of the children themselves.

Nor does he need to wait till the children grow up to study these effects. Not only what they do in school, but what they do when they leave the schoolroom and are free to organize themselves, will tell the tale. Do they talk of school affairs, and in what way ? Do they loaf in parlors or on street corners, and find destructive mischief or idleness more fascinating than anything they have gained in school ? If social pathways are being worn into their brains, are these pathways such as the children care to use themselves when they come in contact with their fellows ; or do the pathways which are actually used have another origin, and are they of another character than those which the fond ideals of the schoolmaster picture or the interests of society require ?