Principles of education

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Contents

Preface vii

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The New Interpretation of Education ... i

Chapter I The New Interpretation Of Education

Popular View of Education.— Education is commonly measured by the number of years of schooling one has had, the institutions attended, the subjects pursued, degrees conferred, and by other similar conventional measuring units. One whose school training has been abbreviated, who has not been through the traditional mill and ground out according to a standard pattern, is often said to be uneducated. Even many scholarly people think of the science or the philosophy of education as dealing wholly with methods of teaching the various school subjects or with school management. While the subject of education may be properly concerned with principles underlying methods of instruction and management, it is by no means restricted to them. This popular conception of education as something confined to schools and school-rooms, the acquiring of book facts, formal drill and discipline, is altogether too narrow.

New Interpretation. — Education is not a new process, but it is receiving new interpretation. Many of the means of education are of very recent origin; but education is in reality a process as old as the race itself. Whatever influences one in such a way as to determine his future conduct is a means of education. This is true whether the influence comes from external forces or as a resultant of one's own actions. Education may thus be good or bad; may elevate or debase. The school, though conventionally regarded as the only institution of education, is of comparatively recent development. But it is not the most fundamental means of education, even though society tends to relegate all educational functions to it. Reflection shows us that there are multitudes of influences which help to determine the character of every individual. A few of these factors will be considered.

The Home as an Educator. — First consideration may properly be given to the home. This is the first institution to touch the life of the individual, and in many ways it is the most influential of all the forces brought to bear upon him. Though the school and one's business or profession give more definite mastery of technical accomplishments which come to be regarded as the fruits of education, yet the use to which these will be put is largely determined by the ideals developed in the home. Religious creeds are gained at the mother's knee, political beliefs are absorbed in the family circle, and social ideals largely fixed by family customs. Honesty, veracity, politeness, good manners, clean living and temperance, are most easily inculcated in the home. Likewise, on the other hand, immorality and unrighteousness may be generally traced to undesirable home influences. In fact, the ideals which dominate life and character and give them significance owe more to home influences than to all others combined. So important is this early formative period that some of the churches say: "Give me the child for the first seven years, and, the world may have him the rest of his life."

Institutional Influence. — Besides the home there are many specific institutions and activities that educate as really as do the schools. For the great mass they even provide the major portion of the training received. All forms of occupation furnish training and extension of one's horizon. Various scientific, historical and literary societies, clubs, lodges, labor organizations, and guilds, encourage the social instinct and give intellectual and moral uplift. Then there are special means employed to supplement the schools. Among these are lecture courses, public libraries, reading circles, chautauquas, and reading-rooms. The daily newspaper, the magazine, the

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telephone, the telegraph, commercial intercourse, etc., all furnish knowledge and incentives for learning, and supply outlets for activities that contribute to the modification of the thoughts, taste, and conduct of the individual. Even plays, games, sports, and pastimes are of vast moment in the develops ment of latent capabilities and in stimulating new ones. In determining a boy's moral action the neighborhood environment and the neighbors' boys are far more instrumental than the school.

President Butler says: 1 "The doctrine of evolution teaches us to look upon the world around us — our arts, our science, our literature, our institutions, and our religious life — as an integral part, indeed as the essential part of our environment; and it teaches us to look upon education as the plastic period of adapting and adjusting our self -active organism to this vast series of hereditary acquisitions." Dr. Harris 2 emphasizes the importance of the state in education, and maintains that indirectly it is the most influential of all. He writes: "The influence of the constitution of the state, and of its transactions with other states in peace and war, weaving the web of world history, is known to be more powerful in educating the individual and forming his character than any of the three phases of education mentioned (home, school, church), for it underlies them and makes possible whatever perfection they may have. Without the protection of the state no institution can flourish, nothing above savage or barbarous human life can be realized. . . . The state is the essential condition for history. . . . History commences with the evolution of man's substantial self and its realization or embodiment in a state."

Farm Life. — The duties and environment of the farm are often thought to be directly opposed to education. But well-ordered farm life offers the most advantageous sort of environment and discipline that childhood and youth could have. At its best, when made significant through books, good schooling,

1 Meaning of Education, p. 13.

and the intelligent leadership of parents, it affords certain educative means that money cannot purchase in crowded cities. To be deprived of its advantages and pleasures is almost calamitous. The outdoor exercise and healthful recreations develop firm muscles and red blood, healthy brains, and vigorous constitutions, without which mental development can proceed only indifferently. The farm duties bring a sense of responsibility, so often lacking in city-bred children, and also secure motor training invaluable for all future accuracy of work and for will development. President G. Stanley Hall says: "Of all workschools, a good farm is probably the best for motor development. This is due to its great variety of occupations, healthful conditions, and the incalculable phyletic re-enforcements from immemorial times. I have computed some threescore industries, as the census now classifies them, that were more or less generally known and practised sixty years ago in a little township which not only in this but in other respects has many features of an ideal educational environment for adolescent boys, combining as it does not only physical and industrial, but civil and religious elements in wise proportions and with pedagogic objectivity, and representing the ideal of such a state of intelligent citizen-voters as was contemplated by the framers of our Constitution." Because of its opportunities for immediate and prolonged contact with nature there is offered the best possible preliminary nourishment for the understanding and appreciation of science, literature, and art. Here is offered the chance to find "tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything."

The Playground. — The function of play as an educative factor is only just beginning to be realized. It is not long since play was very generally regarded by serious-minded people as sinful. We now know that through play the child not only gains necessary relaxation and invigoration, but the forms of play are instinctive expressions of the unfolding potentialities gained through race experience. Play not only retraces ancestral experiences, but anticipates future adult experiences.

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To work properly in adult life there must be natural and abundant play in childhood. Bagehot wrote : " Man made the school, God made the playground. Before letters were invented or books, or governesses discovered, the neighbor's children, the outdoor life, the fists and the wrestling sinews, the old games (the oldest things in the world), the bare hill, the clear river, — these were education; and now, though Xenophon and sums become obsolete, these are and remain. Horses and marbles, the knot of boys beside the schoolboy fire, the hard blows given and the harder ones received, — these educate mankind."

Influence of Chance Environment. — Not only purposive influences educate, but also all chance environment. The slums educate as forcibly as do Grand Avenue, the church, and the school; a candidate for the penitentiary helps to educate our boys no less than does the Sunday-school teacher. Sometimes the chance and baneful education is more forceful than the designed and elevating. According to Spencer's definition the purpose of education is to prepare for complete living. This even is a conception of an ideal education. Dewey has defined the term in a much more fundamental sense by declaring that education is not solely a preparation for something in the future. It may include that, but there is something more basal. Education, he says, is life itself; and conversely life is education. Here is the only conception which is broad enough, even when we consider ideal education. According to this conception every individual becomes educated, in fact, none can escape it. Even the lower animals, as well as man, undergo education, for do not their experiences bias their future conduct ?

Influence of Primitive Arts and Occupations. — Shall we not consider the stride from savagery to civilization as education? But through the long struggle there were no schools except the effective school of experience. In this struggle with the elements, with wild beasts, and with each other, were men not taught some things? Whenever one is taught anything or learns anything there is education. Were not primitive men for long ages learning how to make implements for warfare, for the hunt, and the chase; learning to make fire, how to cook, and how to spin and weave; how to clothe themselves, provide shelter and protection; how to plough, plant, and harvest; how to cure disease and avoid pestilence; learning methods of transportation, barter, and exchange; learning how to dig, smelt, and fashion the ores; how to utilize the wind and water, and employ the simplest mechanical principles ? And when learned were these things not taught? And have they not influenced profoundly the whole character of subsequent history?

We are prone to forget that the school of experience has been in session since the world began and there have been no vacations. Nature has not missed assigning a single lesson. The credits received for the training have been recorded with absolute fidelity. The education which man has received in this wise is incomparably greater and the results are much more enduring than the results of a few centuries of formal education since schools began. In cudgelling his brains for some new school arts which might interest and profit the children it would be well for the school-master to take a retrospective glance and pass in review the school arts which mother nature has employed. If he can discern anything which is related to getting a living, providing food, clothing, shelter, amusement, or advantages, there he will find an interesting and effective school instrument. Utility has been the watchword of nature; it should be the school-master's.

When considering the function of school training it is important to remember that the development and progress attained since the invention of systematic schooling might be represented by a dot, while that achieved in the pre-school period through the exercises gained in connection with the everyday occupations in providing food, shelter, clothing, protection, and recreation would have to be represented by a line of infinite length. If the educational values of industrial activities were correctly understood, we should utilize them far more than we now do in formal education instead of bringing forward something far

THE NEW INTERPRETATION OF EDUCATION n

Because of the necessity of understanding the past if we would build wisely for the future, all the great subjects of sociology, psychology, and education have come to be considered from the genetic or evolutionary point of view. If we would act wisely upon the individual mind or society we must take into account the present status and also the long, circuitous processes by which the present has been attained. We must note what factors have contributed to the growth of desirable qualities and what have eliminated undesirable ones. We must also know the hidden potentialities which only need the slightest encouragement to blossom forth in rich profusion, as well as those whose counteraction demand elimination or suppression before the germs of good may be quickened into life.

Education as Unfoldment and Adjustment. — Education is thus recognized as a manifold process of aiding the individual to come into full possession of all the desirable features of his heritage, to minimize the undesirable ones, and to initiate new tendencies. The child should be developed definitely in harmony with innate tendencies and toward the best ideals attained by the race. That is, both biological and social heredity are to be heeded. Education is consequently a process of development and of modification or adjustment to environment and to the ideals of perfection conceived by society and by the individual. It involves all the forces operating to mould the individual. These forces include natural environment, social environment, institutional environment, as well as the factors of food, clothing, climate, etc. The amoeba has to adjust itself to a changing habitat. The freshman likewise has to adjust himself to the college surroundings, so different from his home village. Each is modified in the process, and successes or failures in life are measured by the power of adjustment to the new conditions.

"This period of adjustment," says Dr. Butler, 1 "constitutes, then, the period of education; and this period of adjustment must, as it seems to me, give us the basis for all educational

1 The Meaning of Education, p. 15.

theory and all educational practice. It must be the point of departure in that theory and that practice, and it must at the same time provide us with our ideals. When we hear it sometimes said, 'All education must start from the child,' we must add, 'Yes, and lead into human civilization'; and when it is said on the other hand that all education must start from the traditional past, we must add, 'Yes, and be adapted to the child.' " Education thus viewed places weighty obligations upon each individual. Every person should become concerned for his own welfare and that of the race.

Ideal Education Seeks Human Perfection. — Attention has been drawn to these lower forms of influence which bias conduct, in order to assist in understanding the complexity of the problem of ideal education. The formal processes of education are designed to be applied to an individual for the purpose of developing, modifying, or moulding him in harmony with ideal conceptions of development. These ideals may be conceived by the individual himself or by others concerned in his education. The processes may be applied by the individual or by those interested in him. The highest results are not reached until the individual himself consciously strives toward ideal perfection.

The National Educational Association at its annual meeting in 1905, at Asbury Park, New Jersey, voiced its sentiments concerning the highest functions of education. As a part of its resolutions it was stated that "the Association regrets the revival in some quarters of the idea that the common school is the place for teaching nothing but reading, spelling, writing, and ciphering; and takes this occasion to declare that the ultimate object of popular education is to teach the children how to live righteously, healthily, and happily, and that to accomplish this object it is essential that every school inculcate the love of truth, justice, purity, and beauty through the study of biography, history, ethics, natural history, music, drawing, and manual arts. . . . Character is the real aim of the schools and the ultimate reason for the expenditure of millions for their mainte-

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nance." The foregoing are statements of the highest aim of education. Attention is directed to them in this connection to suggest that most of these aims are equally well inculcated outside of formal school work.

Education Concerns Posterity. — Education is not a matter which concerns the individual alone, but also his posterity. The effects of the education of a given generation do not terminate with its death but are transmitted to succeeding ones. Through heredity the results of education are conserved for society. Not only are the sins of the fathers visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generations, but also the virtues of the fathers are manifest through hundreds of generations of them that love the Lord and keep His commandments. By his progress toward the ideals of the race each one should be a contributor to its desirable attainments and to higher ideals. One's education is relatively inefficient until he consciously strives to understand and approach perfection. Similarly education is at a low ebb where the majority of its individuals are not earnestly seeking higher development.' Every individual should realize the far-reaching effects of every thought, every feeling, and every action. One who grasps the full significance of education in the light of evolution cannot fail to be more concerned for the welfare of his fellow men and for posterity. The faithful conservation of all the effects of righteousness accounts for race progress. Such a conception is a doctrine of altruism and of the highest optimism. It is hoped that this is reflected in all the succeeding pages.

Education and Evolution. — Viewed in this broad way, it is seen that education is an evolutionary process. Every situation in life tends to modify the individual and to produce new adjustments. The whole of life is educative. Not only do experiences even passively received produce modifications, but on the part of all life there is a striving toward new conditions. This is true of life from the simplest amoeba to the grandest work of nature. These new conditions are the ideals. The multitude think of evolution as operative in the production of plant and animal forms, and generally as a force of the long-gone past, but evolution did not cease with the crayfish. It is going on all about us at a rate never before equalled or appreciated. The most mighty evolutionary force is that of the conscious education of human society. The function of education narrowly conceived stops with the training of individuals, but the ultimate object is not an individual, or even individuals, but society. The true educator must be concerned not only with adjusting John and Mary to particular niches in life, but he must look to the development of higher ideals for the whole human race and the conscious striving for and attainment of these ideals. Each individual should feel his obligation to leave society better than he found it. Because he stands on the shoulders of the past he is responsible and unworthy the "Well done, thou good and faithful servant," unless the world is the beneficiary through his having lived in it.

Several recent writers, prominent among them Spencer, Fiske, Butler, and O'Shea, have emphasized the idea of education as a process of adjustment. They would not have us infer that the adjustment is an expedient of adaptation to unavoidable conditions of environment. In its higher phases it would certainly involve the adjustment of the individual to the best ideals conceived by the race. Definite educational means seek to realize these very aims.

Since education is as broad as life itself, the biological view will be made prominent throughout this book. The intimate relations between mind and body and the correlation between their functions make it imperative to give due consideration to certain physiological aspects of educational processes. But the superlative problem of every educator is to influence the mind, to produce modifications of intellectual, emotional, and volitional life. Hence a thorough knowledge of mind and its means of development should be the highest concern of every educator. In subsequent chapters the psychological aspects of education will therefore occupy a relatively large space. While no special section is set apart for a consideration of the social phases of

THE NEW INTERPRETATION OF EDUCATIO

education, at every step the effect of society in shaping the inc vidual consciousness is recognized. Likewise, while no sepai treatment is devoted to educational ideals, yet a discussion this phase of the subject is interspersed throughout the boo

Chapter II Adaptation, Adjustment, And Specialization Of Functions

General Considerations. — The previous chapter has prepared the way for a wider conception of education than that generally held by the popular mind. Most definitions of education characterize it as a preparatory stage for something yet to come. This is the truth, but not the whole truth. Spencer was right in regarding education as a preparation for complete living, but Dewey has furnished a desirable supplement by showing that all life processes and activities are a vital part of education. Consequently while we properly regard the formal, artificial educational processes as preparation for adult life, let us not forget that the very maintenance of an existence is a schooling more rigorous and influential than any artificial exercises we may interpose.

Since all of life's experiences are contributory factors, whether we will or no, we must then include in our educational philosophy not only mental, moral, and even physical education, but we must make our consideration cover a field as broad as life itself. Biology, the science of life, is not confined, as many seem to suppose, to worms, insects, beetles, and algae; but includes man as well — not only physical but psychical and moral man. It is perfectly proper to speak of the biological consideration of memory, imagination, instinct, the emotions, love of right, etc. They all have their genetic or developmental aspect. In dealing with these, even in a practical way in the school-room, we ought to know how they differ in children and adults, in different families, in different children, in different races, their laws of growth and development, their instinctive beginnings, and their hereditary variations. Consequently this and several succeeding chapters will deal with the biological phases of educ? >n.

ifch these preliminary remarks and with the admonition to keep constantly in mind that experience and education, fundamentally considered, are one and the same thing, we shall enter upon the discussion of some concrete facts showing how adjustment of various organs, organisms, and functions to ever-varying conditions has produced modified organs, organisms, and functions, in harmony with the demands of new environments. Illustrations will be drawn from lower animal life and even from the plant world to exemplify the points under consideration. Similar processes though often infinitely more complex, affect man's progress and destiny and constitute the essential features of education.

Adaptation in Unicellular Animals. — Without varied environment and consequent varied experiences, development, progress, education in the best sense could not be. In the first chapter it was shown that anything is educative which acts upon individuals or a species so as to mould them to new ways or to bias their future conduct. The resultant tendencies constitute the education received. With this idea more firmly in mind, let us consider the unicellular animals in their relation to environment, and study in them a most primitive educational experience. These little creatures can exist only under tolerably uniform conditions. A slight increase or decrease of heat means destruction to them. Their aqueous environment is a relatively simple, uniform, and unchanging medium in which to exist. They have little to learn to fit them for this environment. It is probable that they have been little modified through long ages. President Jordan says, "That the character of the body structure of the Protozoa has changed but little since early geologic times is explained by the even, unchanging character of their surroundings. The oceans of former ages have undoubtedly been essentially like the oceans of to-day — not in extent and position, but in their character of place of habitation for animals. The environment is so simple and uniform that there is little demand for diversity of habits and consequent diversity of body structure. Where life is easy there is no necessity for complex structure or complicated habits of living." * But even here we find individual and race adaptations and modifications which permanently influence all subsequent actions. That is, these minute animals are in that sense educated.

Experiments in Adaptation. — Lloyd Morgan records 2 the results of experiments by Dr. Dallinger to determine whether monads could gradually become acclimatized to a temperature higher than 6o° Fahr., that which is normal to them. By the end of four months the temperature had been raised to 70 without destroying them. On reaching 73 adverse conditions were observed. A rest of two months was made at this point, and then the gradual increase resumed. In five months 78 was reached. "By a series of advances, with periods of rest between, a temperature of 15 8° Fahr. was reached. It was estimated that the research extended over half a million generations. Here then, these monads became gradually acclimatized to a temperature more than double that to which their ancestors had been accustomed — a temperature which brought rapid death to their unmodified relatives."

Although allowing for elimination of the unfit, Morgan says: "But in any case, the fact remains that the survivors had, in half a million generations, acquired a power of existing at a temperature to which no individual in its single life could become acclimatized. Here, then, we have the hereditary transmission of a faculty." Here we have an illustration of the permanent modification — -education — of a species through experience. These processes of adjustment of the individual to environment constitute the most primitive type of education. This is true of all the lower animals as well as of man.

Effects of Experience. — There is a constant struggle on the part of each animal to master its surroundings and to put itself into harmonious relation with them as it understands them.

1 Animal Life, p. 23. 2 Animal Life and Intelligence, p. 147.

Each experience produces a modification of form, structure, or function, either physical or psychical, and the modification becomes a permanent possession, producing predispositions which tend to bias all future action. This means that the animal profits by experience. The process of learning by experience is education. Thus we see that all organisms receive education. It may not be according to our ideals, but there is education nevertheless. Not only man, but the lowly earthworm and the amceba receive it. Not only does the individual gain an education, but through heredity the species is made a sharer and a contributor.

In the effort toward adjustment there is always an accentuation of some function or organ. For example, in the effort to capture a certain kind of food certain organs or sets of muscles are brought into new use, or, as in the case of man, when mere muscular power no longer suffices he uses his wits to effect a capture. In the former case the muscles that underwent extra exercise became specially developed; in the latter the mental powers performed the extra work and were developed accordingly. Thus specialization has taken place because it has been advantageous. In fact, we may say, to paraphrase Spencer's cosmological formula, that the whole course of life development, that is, education, has been a process of change from that which is relatively simple, homogeneous, undifferentiated, unspecialized, to that which is complex, heterogeneous, and specialized. This is as true of society as of animal structure.

"With the increase in degree of the division of labor among various parts of the body, there is an increase in definiteness and extent of differentiation of structure. Each part or organ of the body becomes more modified and better fitted to perform its own special function. A peculiar structural condition of any part of the body, or of the whole body of any animal, is not to be looked on as a freak of nature, or as a wonder or marvel. Such a structure has a significance which may be sought for. The unusual structural condition is associated with some special habit or manner of performance of a function. Function and structure are always associated in nature, and should always be associated in our study of nature." *

Necessity for exercise in a particular direction has either produced variations or accentuated them. These modifications have been preserved through heredity. This is the history of evolution, of progress, of education. While each individual tends to vary in some direction or other, heredity tends to conserve with great jealousy everything gained. In this there is not complete success, for we find in some cases a loss of function and structure.

Illustrations of Nature's Adaptations. — Among both plants and animals it is easy to cite a sufficient number of cases to demonstrate fully that the processes of adjustment to environing conditions are continually taking place. Not only are new species evolved in this way, but organisms selected from a given generation and placed under changed conditions become very materially different from the specimens that remain under usual conditions. For example, if either plants or animals are removed from a terrestrial life to aquatic conditions, or from fresh to salt water, and succeed in adapting themselves to the new conditions, they undergo changes of external aspect, internal structure, and other modifications. A few illustrations are subjoined to make the point clear. De Moor says 2 the leaves of the water Ranunculus with laciniated leaves are of normal structure when grown on dry land. The epidermis is furnished with stomata and the constituent cells contain no chlorophyll. But when grown in water the leaves are much longer, have no stomata, and the epidermic cells are full of chlorophyll. Again, upon the authority of Goebel, De Moor says that cacti show remarkable adaptation to varying conditions. The Phyllocactus when grown in the light has a smooth stem, but when grown in the dark it becomes prismatic and thorny. The cactus and all the odd desert flora are doubtless the result of ages of struggle with peculiar climatic conditions. The cacti and each one of the other peculiar