Better schools

Front matter

Class _LJjlS*y

Book QS'Z

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Preface

Those who had the privilege of knowing Dr. Gregory intimately during the last few years of his life were hopeful that he would do an essential work for the schools of the world. He had the spirit of a great teacher, and he was a true man. He understood the fundamental principles of Froebel's philosophy much better than most of the progressive educational men, better even than many of the Kindergarten leaders.

He clearly grasped two of the vital principles that are transforming educational thought and revolutionizing educational practice: first, that the child, and not the knowledge to be communicated to him, should be the determining basis of pedagogical systems and of school methods ; second, that the child develops power — which is infinitely more important than knowledge — by his own self-activity, and by self-activity only.

Dr. Gregory made these two principles the basis of educational practice, and the unfailing test of all school work. His lectures and his writings revealed a rapidly developing insight that fully justified the hope that he would become a revealer of truth and a transformer of conditions in the schools in harmony with the most advanced educational ideals.

He was writing a series of educational articles with the

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VI PREFACE

view of having them published in book form, when his life work came suddenly to an end. Some of these articles were published in a local paper in Chelsea, Massachusetts, where he was Superintendent of Schools at the time of his death. Others were published in educational magazines.

It was his intention to publish these articles in book form, and many of those who had been admitted to his circle of friends, or who had heard him expound and apply his principles of education at Summer Schools or at institute meetings, expressed the hope that they might be collected and published. The privilege of editing them was graciously given to me. To do the work assigned me has been joyous and uplifting. I hope the result — his book — may be a worthy memorial to him, and that it may guide many of the teachers of his own and other lands to clearer insight, broader thought, and higher power as teachers.

Teachers will find the book stimulating to original investigation. It emphasizes the need of a closer unity between the school work of the child and the work and life of the world in which ht lives. It advocates the wisdom of adapting the course of study and the operative processes of the school to the nature of the child and to the progressive development of his powers. It makes the child and his activities and interests the center of the school universe. It accounts for the child's apathy and carelessness in school, and reveals the methods by which he may be kept as vitally interested and energeti-

PREFACE Vll

cally productive in school as he is in his free life outside of school. It shows how the bright, alert, interested, achieving child of five may be saved from the too common torpor and indifference and ineffectiveness induced by the schools at fifteen. It changes the aim of education from mere knowledge to power, skill, and character; from books to life.

Dr. Gregory did not use new thought merely to reveal the weakness of old ideals and practices. He was constructive, not merely destructive. He used new truth to reform conditions and in his reconstruction he preserved all that was useful or beautiful in the revelations of the past. His theories are not visionary; his ideals are clearly expounded and easily understood. They are applicable to schools of all grades. Superintendents and teachers will find the book interesting, instructive, and inspiring.

JAMES L. HUGHES.

Toronto, August, 191 1.

February 20, 191 2.

Mrs. Hannah B. Gregory, 5 Fitz Terrace,

Chelsea, Massachusetts.

My dear Mrs. Gregory:

I am greatly pleased that the letters contributed by Doctor Gregory to the Chelsea Gazette, shortly before his death, are to be published in book form. These articles I read with the greatest interest and pleasure from week to week, as they appeared. You will remember I wrote to Doctor Gregory at that time, urging him to recast them and have them made into a book.

Doctor Gregory had an unusual insight into the principles of education, and a still more unusual ability to state them in clear English, easily intelligible to the great mass of teachers. It was for this reason, I think, that year after year at the Summer School of the South, held at Knoxville, Tennessee, under my supervision, a large number of the thoughtful teachers rilled his classes to hear his lectures on the principles of Froebel as applied to education in schools above the kindergarten. His constant study of education not only from the books but concretely and at first hand, his clearness of statement, and his sweet spirit made him an ideal teacher of teachers.

X COMMUNICATION

These letters have the added value that must ever come to any writings that have sprung out of the life and heart of a man when working for the advancement of a great cause. I am glad they are to be given this more permanent form by a man so capable of interpreting Doctor Gregory as is Doctor Hughes. The book cannot fail to accomplish much good for the cause of truer ideals and better practice in the schoolroom. Yours sincerely,

P. P. CLAXTON.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Self-Activity i

II. The Kindergarten n

CHAPTER I Self-activity

The weakest element in modern educational thought is the belief, conscious or unconscious, that a child's character may be constructed by the teacher, and that it may be constructed by the judicious selection and teaching of certain amounts of different kinds of knowledge. Nearly as weak is the idea that the great aim of the school should be to communicate knowledge to the pupils as a preparation for their life work.

The child's success in life will depend mainly on two things: his power and his skill. The development of his power and his skill should, therefore, be the supreme aim of the school, not the storing of his mind — or, as is too often the case, his memory merely. The overvaluation of knowledge, and the inability to recognize the selfhood of the child, are responsible for the failures in modern education. The New Education believes that the child — not knowledge — is power, and that the development of this power by the child's self-activity is the supreme work of the school. This thought lies at the basis of every great modern tendency in education.

You cannot "grow" a child's body. You cannot " grow " a child's mind. But modern educational practice says you can do the latter. Therefore modern educational practice is absurd. This is our fundamental absurdity, the absurdity on which we build our other absurdities. It is our pet absurdity.

The postulate, so far as it applies to the body, does not admit of argument. You can surround a child with conditions favorable to growth, but he himself must do the growing. He must do the eating, the exercising, the sleeping, the bathing. Nobody else can eat, exercise, sleep, or bathe for him. But when one turns to the growth of the mind, a spurious pedagogy asserts itself. No one who thoughtfully considers the data offered by thousands of schoolrooms can come to any other conclusion than that our practice, at least, is fundamentally wrong. The pupil's attitude toward work is seen in the aimlessness and feebleness of his efforts, in the fragmentary character of his answers, in the inarticulate language in which they are expressed, in the slovenliness of his written work, in the perfection to which he has reduced the art of dawdling, in his slouching posture in writing, and often in the extraordinary contortions by which he arrives at such a posture.

The teacher, on his side, favors this attitude and ministers to the condition of things which lies back of the attitude, by coming to his assistance in every possible way, explaining before the pupil himself has really tried to comprehend, filling out his imperfect sentences, point-

SELF-ACTIVITY 3

ing out his errors, most of which the child knows very well are errors, and at every point anticipating healthy effort on his part.

Let the following test be applied by any teacher. Hand a set of compositions back to a class without indicating the errors, and demand that the errors shall be not only corrected but discovered, and that the compositions shall be rewritten. Continue to hand back the same compositions indefinitely until all the errors are discovered by the writers, and a composition perfect in view of the state of the child's progress is evolved. Persevere in this treatment, and soon the child becomes practically independent. Whereas the pupils at the beginning could not produce a perfect composition without many efforts, at the end of the year they are able to do so with one or two efforts. The same course of treatment applied to arithmetic, Latin, German, or anything else, will reveal the same result. It becomes apparent, when such a course of treatment is persisted in, that for the first time in their school lives the pupils are self-active. The teacher learns how low his standards have been, and for the first time in his life grasps the possibilities of self -activity in education. Indeed the modesty of the teacher's usual demands on the child would be amusing if it were not so serious.

No one can do for another what the latter can do for himself, without interfering to that extent with his growth. Growth is from within and is brought about, consciously or unconsciously, by the acts of the party who desires to grow. Whenever a teacher does for a child what the child could have done for himself, he deprives him of the right to grow ; if he persists in such treatment, he stunts the child's growth; if he could do absolutely everything for the child, the child would not grow at all.

This treatment of the child is sometimes called "the new education." It is a libel on that honored phrase. The new education emancipates the individuality of the child. Its very basis is self-activity, and it aims to place the child in such an environment as to evoke that activity. In the new education there is a time to explain and a time to cease from explanation, a time to give help and a time to withhold it.

There is but one remedy. The child must be forced back on himself. He must have just as much help as is necessary to place him in a position to help himself , and no more. This amount varies with the child, but its limit in any case is a sacred line, over which you pass at his peril. The teacher must more and more withdraw himself. He must stop meddling. There is no educational discipline but self-discipline, and, in its final resolution, there is no education but self-education.

Self-activity must not be confounded with the activity of the pupil in response to the suggestions or directions of the teacher. The teacher's duty is to reveal new laws and new principles that the pupil cannot discover for himself, but the application of the principles should be made by the pupils themselves. The simplest and most perfect test of the value of a teacher's work is the amount

SELF-ACTIVITY 5

of self -activity developed in the pupils. The great aim of every teacher should be to discover new methods of arousing vital interest in his pupils as the true basis for increased self-activity on their part.

Self-activity is not an empty word with a big sound. It lies at the basis of all teaching. The lack of it explains most of our failures. To really grasp the idea will revolutionize any teacher.

The product of the public school system taken as a whole is not inspiring ; in many cases it is disheartening.

This does not apply to all the schools in our land, but it applies to most of them. The picture is not accurate in its entirety in all schools, but the weakness is in most of them. It is generally, at least, a clearly defined tendency, and often it is a clearly defined fact.

And the condition grows worse from the time the child enters school. When we receive him he is a bright, wide-awake, self-active little child. When we get through with him at the close of the high school he is neither bright, wide-awake, nor self-active. Every teacher knows that these statements are true. The high school teacher, for example, is emphatic in his criticisms of the grammar school graduates whom he receives. He is right, but he does not do any better. The deterioration does not stop at the high school. And the worst critic of all is the business man who receives our output.

This is not education. Indeed, such a state of things makes real education impossible. The importance of education lies not in the arithmetic, geography, etc., but in the reactions arising from these studies; not in how much arithmetic a boy learns, but in what sort of an arithmetician he becomes. Which, for example, ought we to prefer in arithmetic : rapidity and ease in straightaway percentage, or a feeble and perfunctory power in four cases of percentage ? What should be the outcome in arithmetic ? Simple arithmetical power, and this can be taught by the use of a very narrow field of topics, so that the pupil will be able to take up the omitted topics whenever it is necessary. But no such definite outcome as arithmetical power is before the teacher whose aim is merely the acquisition of facts. Picture a student with arithmetical power and a love for arithmetic who has never studied partial payments, but is called upon to use partial payments after he has left school. He will learn the subject in five minutes.

But children do not leave school with that power. They acquire merely a mechanical, and generally a dawdling ability to do a few specific things.

So much for the diagnosis. Now for the cause of the disease and its treatment. The analysis is simple and has been hinted at already. The worst of the trouble lies in the tendency on the part of the teacher to do for the child what he can do for himself.

Every time a child acts for himself he grows stronger. Whenever some one else does his work he grows weaker. Let the process of outside assistance go on year after year and the present results are explained. To develop

SELF-ACTIVITY 7

his arm, as a child he must use his arm. The law applies equally to his brain.

But there is a deeper question. Why do not teachers demand and get self-activity ?

Teachers may be divided into two classes : those who can get this self-activity and those who cannot. Whatever other results a teacher may obtain, if she does not obtain this result, her product will fall far short of the true ideal. What is the consideration on which the whole question is determined ? The answer is, the outcome, — the outcome which the teacher proposes for her own attainment. There are two possible outcomes between which the teacher must choose. The outcome that attracts many teachers is the acquisition of facts and a certain mechanical efficiency that can be measured by examination.

When this attainment is placed above power, the end of education is misconceived. Attainment is essential, but the world needs power, and the complaint of the world is that it does not get it. There is no loss in attainment when power is the outcome. Power makes attainment possible, and it is the only way in which it is rationally possible.

Let grammar illustrate the distinction. If does and do produce a treadmill boy, the reaction is malign. A love of written expression, which includes a love of grammar, should be the outcome, not mere accuracy in answering certain questions.

This, again, is the reason for failure in many high school subjects, e.g. literature. The question is not whether the pupils understand a certain classic which has been discussed, but whether they long to read other classics for themselves. Professor Tyler of Amherst says that the teaching of literature in most high schools is like vaccination. In vaccination you give a person a mild attack of the disease and that insures that he will never have another.

From this point of view, again, the important thing is not the number of subjects taught in arithmetic, but the reaction caused by those that are taught.

Again, think of geography in this connection. The teacher in whatever grade who has not recently done some teaching of Bosnia, Bulgaria, or Turkey, or who has not followed the fleet, has misconceived the purpose of geography. 1 This is true even if the subject in the course of study in the grade is the United States. Why ? Because such teaching makes geography live. It is more important that geography should live than that the pupil should be able to bound states or to tell their capitals. Therefore, geography must be cut, but even if it is cut, it is entirely possible to teach the balance of it mechanically.

The lack of self-activity, I have said, expresses itself in the attitudes and positions of children, in their tone of voice, in dawdling and careless written work, in unwillingness for research. According to the psychological law, external phenomena react on internal phenomena. In accordance with this law we should expect our school 1 Written during a war in Turkey.

SELF-ACTIVITY 9

work to show this reaction. Of course it shows it. An apathetic class in reading is a proof that the reading is badly taught and is having no educative effect, and this is true in the high school as well as in the primary school. When children wish to come back to school for geography and arithmetic, as they wish to come back for manual training and music, the teacher has been truly successful.

These considerations, therefore, are not merely facts. They are indications of wrong conceptions, and of failure. Froebel says the child must evolve his own personality; he must find himself. But in many cases the personality is submerged. There is a vague theory that the teachings of the teacher will all blossom by and by, even if the child does not show interest in them now. The fact is that the teachings do not blossom.

There are, of course, reasons for this malign state of things we have been describing, for which we are not responsible. So far as the results in our schools are controlled by inheritance or by the fact that the pupils have been passed up from one class to another with a tendency to inactivity accumulating, the teacher is not to blame. But while these causes account in part for failure, they do not account at all for our lack of effort.

But there are reasons for which we are responsible. For example, there is a state of mind, a false conception of the path of the least resistance. It is easier to do treadmill work because we know it than to attempt a disgression. Old plans, like old shoes, are more com-

IO BETTER SCHOOLS

fortable. The teacher sees the phenomenon of apathy, but becomes used to it and says it cannot be modified.

Then there is a stolid conservatism in regard to old things. This is maddening. And finally there is the failure to conceive the true end of education.

Chapter II

For one who is imbued with the so-called practical views of education only, it is not easy to make an argument in favor of the kindergarten. "The kindergarten is a pretty sight, the children are evidently happy and that, of course, is a good thing, but — what are they learning ? Only to play in a variety of expensive ways, — a rather costly frill."

But, on the other hand, what about these same children in the ordinary primary classroom ? Children under the age of six, for the most part, get very little in school. They dawdle, fuss with busy work, take instruction with the greatest difficulty, and lose it with the greatest facility. If they entered at six, they would be just as far along at seven as they are when they enter at five, and they would be more original, more independent, and stronger physically. This is not economy either.

On this supposition the presence of these children in school means a waste of energy and money. It would be economy to let them play out of doors, begin school at six, save money, and increase their power. So much is clear.

But the case is not all in yet. Children on the average are not fit for regular primary work before they are six, but does it follow from that that they cannot learn anything? Every parent knows that they learn a great deal and learn it very fast. For instance, they learn the English language. Not an insignificant achievement, that. A child at the age of six speaks English very much better than most college graduates speak French, and he learns his new language in five years, but he learns it in his own way and not in the way the schools teach it. This is not complimentary to the schools, more's the pity.

The child under the age of six has, in fact, certain powers which are fully alive and seek exercise. For the most part they are not guided, at any rate they receive no training. If such an extraordinary accomplishment as the learning of a language takes place without training and almost without guidance, what might not be accomplished with guidance? On this question the kindergarten is based. The kindergarten takes the child as he is, with all his wonderful powers. It does not substitute other powers, it does not seek to train what the child has not, it accepts the child just as he is made and does not pretend to greater wisdom than the Almighty. The little one has not any arithmetic or reading or grammar to give ; the Lord has left that out for the present. The kindergarten leaves them out, too. This general proposition sounds sensible. If the kindergarten can obtain a development along other lines corresponding in extent to the language development, the trial is surely worth making.

This is the aim of the kindergarten. To determine whether it is practical we must answer two questions : What is this training ? What is its effect on the child ?

These are the acquisitions claimed for the kindergarten-trained child. I condense from the statements of many primary (not kindergarten) teachers : —

First, he is awakened. Second, he grasps much more readily than other children the idea presented, whether it be a direction to be followed, a story to be told, or a new word to be learned. Third, the kindergarten child uses his senses intelligently. He sees, he hears, and he is able to tell about it. He compares what he observes, and thus forms his own ideas in regard to everything with which he comes in contact. Hence the teacher has a little thinker to deal with, a mind ready to begin work for itself. Through his habits of observation the kindergarten child has gained such a fund of information concerning the world around him that the primary teacher has just so many more avenues through which to reach his mind. Fourth, his powers of attention, alertness, and self-reliance are better developed. Fifth, he gains the power of concentration, which very, very few home children possess. Sixth, as he has learned to work unaided at a given task, the kindergarten child needs less supervision. Seventh, the kindergarten child is more resourceful, and more skillful with his hands than home children. Eighth, the kindergarten child has been taught the beginnings of self-government, unselfishness, respect and reverence for the rights of others. Ninth, the kindergarten child shows a generally higher moral development than those who come directly from the home. Tenth, the little child when he comes from the kindergarten knows how to conduct himself. With quick adaptability he comes into line with other children; in short, he has learned that he is a member of a little community in which every one has equal rights.

The foregoing is not an insignificant category : grasp of ideas, habits of observation, attention, alertness, power of concentration, self-reliance, resourcefulness, skill at hand work, self-government, unselfishness, respect for the rights of others, higher moral development, community spirit. What more could you ask of a boy whom you were about to employ than this galaxy of acquirements ? Ought not his arithmetic, for instance, to be rather better with this preparation ?

But this is not theory. "The primary teacher," says the principal of kindergartens of Duluth, "says that all this helps the child greatly when he comes to read. His observing powers have been so quickened and trained that he distinguishes the forms of sentences and words readily and accurately, and the interest aroused in regard to all the works of nature and the occupations of man, give the child that desire and longing for information that is the source of good work everywhere."

And she adds, very significantly: "When the child feels that a great gain is to be made by learning to read, he learns very quickly. When the adult craves information, he makes a way to get it."

It is not a development in which books and formal instruction have any part. But it is not the less education for this reason. It is the education of the perception and imagination, but especially an education of the emotions.

Dr. C. B. Gilbert, formerly superintendent of schools, Rochester, New York, makes this impressive suggestion : "Many have started on a course of criminality almost in infancy. The children of the degraded poor, and also those of the degraded rich, need kindergartens while young. We cannot catch them too early if we are to make good citizens of them."

Mr. L. H. Jones, superintendent of the state normal schools of Michigan, says in the same vein : "The period between four and six is morally a very dangerous period to children that are not well cared for in their homes. Many of the evil habits learned during this period require for their correction the strength of the teacher for many years of school life. This reason in itself is sufficient proof of the wisdom of placing the child during this period where he will not only not form bad habits, but will form good ones/'

The cost of the kindergarten has been greatly exaggerated. In the public schools of Massachusetts, including high schools, the average cost for the education of each pupil is $30.53. The average cost for each child in the public kindergartens now maintained is $18.67. In St. Louis, where the kindergarten is most firmly established as a part of the public school system, the cost of the kindergarten per child is $16.12, or about $3 less than the cost of the grade schools.

But if the statements made above regarding the efficiency of the kindergarten are true, and a year's time may be saved to the child in the elementary school, the cost of the kindergarten practically disappears.

The cost of kindergartens, however, like the cost of all forms of education, must also be thought of from the standpoint of the cost it prevents.

On "The Cost of Crime," Warren F. Spaulding, prison commissioner, writes: "It takes one tenth of the taxes to punish our offenders. From this it will be seen that the criminal is a very expensive citizen, and that the tax-payer has a pecuniary interest in the prevention and abolition of crime. Most of the crime-costs paid by the tax-payer are for the punishment of crime ; comparatively little is spent for prevention."

Civic righteousness has a money value. The individual may have it for the asking, but the community must pay for it. But it is better to pay for righteousness than for sin.

The Century Magazine says: "Kindergartens yearly feed into the common schools fresh material, alive, alert, awake, taught to think, able in six months to do the work of a year in the old system, grasping numbers with ease and rapidity, their fingers trained to hold the pencil, the task of learning either writing or drawing half done."

President Harper of Chicago University said that "a thorough kindergarten training saves two years in the university career of a normal child. His powers of mind are developed and trained, and he goes to his work which opens up a new field in every study pursued."

But let us get down to figures. The late Superintendent Soldan of St. Louis said : " In the St. Louis schools without kindergartens, children are admitted to the primary grades at six; in those with kindergartens, at seven. The kindergarten children ought therefore to be one year behind the non-kindergarten. But this is far from being the case. By the time the children have reached the fifth grade there is no longer any material difference in age between the two classes; and by the time they reach the highest grade, the kindergarten children are somewhat younger than those without kindergarten training."

In Des Moines, Iowa, the age of kindergarten children in every grade is actually less than that of the remainder of the class by a few months, until the eighth grade is reached, where the difference is ten months — a school year.