Problems in modern education; addresses and essays

Foreword

This volume is composed of some of the essays and addresses which, in spite of the many exacting duties of a busy professional life, I have found time to prepare. All but four of the papers here brought together were delivered before Texas audiences, two of the exceptions being written for national educational societies, the third for the Association of Southern Colleges and Preparatory Schools, and the fourth for the Southern Educational Association.

The essays and addresses were, in each instance, born of a desire to meet the demands of a practical situation ; and were, therefore, concerned, not so much with the presentation of abstract ideals, as with the application of wellrecognized educational principles to the solution of school problems that abound in our day. If there be a unifying principle in the several discussions, it is that of concrete idealism, which is the controlling, characteristic attribute of human evolution, and which insists upon the wisdom and necessity of reckoning with environment in order to obtain desirable results.

The Authoe.

The University of Texas.

Contents

PAGE

I The Attitude of the Man of Science TOWARD Educational Criticism 1

II Some Contributions of the Nineteenth Century to Educational Progress 17

II

SOME CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE NINE- TEENTH CENTURY TO EDU- CATIONAL PROGRESS '

It is a comparatively easy task for the believer in social evolution to exhibit the great progress the world made from 1801 to 1901 in the four great institutions of the family, the church, civil society, and the state. It is the purpose of this paper, however, to set forth, at least partially, the changes wrought in that other institution, the school, changes which have been as marvelous and as far-reaching as those which have occurred in any other field of human endeavor. It is proper to state as a further preliminary that the marked educational influence of other agencies is duly recognized, but that, on this occasion, it is desired to confine the term education to that single institution which has for its sole function the purposeful training of the young.

In the first place, the Nineteenth Century has, by reason of its spirit of critical investigation, completely changed the world's idea respecting the aim in education. In former centuries several aims obtained. Among the ancient Jews, for

1 A paper read before the Texas Academy of Science, June 10, 1901, example, it was that of a pious, virtuous life seeking to reach the ideal of holiness commanded by the Almighty. Among the Spartans and the Romans it was the splendid physical training and the unswerving patriotism necessary to promote the safety and majesty of the state. Among the Athenians it was the harmony of moral, physical, and intellectual development, the aesthetic element being dominant. Among the early Christians celestial citizenship was the controlling ideal. With the educators of the Renaissance the aim was learning, and learning confined chiefly to the ancient classics of Greece and Rome.

But the world-spirit of the Nineteenth Century could not be satisfied with any of these partial aims, for new conceptions of human life, brought about by new conditions, demanded that education should result in something more than the production of a kind of pietism, which, by reason of its disregard of human relationships, is dangerously akin to mysticism. Nor could the narrow view that man is to become a mere creature of the state, a tool for civic use, or the mere creature of any social whole, be longer tolerated, for the belief in the doctrine insisted upon by Kant that every human being is his own end, is fundamental to the ideal of modern education. The idea that either the body or the soul should receive exclusive attention could not longer survive, nor could adherence to mere scholarship as an ideal be longer maintained.

That ancient and medieval educational ideas have been discarded, the testimony of hundreds of eminent thinkers of the Nineteenth Century and the practices of the better schools throughout the civilized world furnish abundant evidence. Let us briefly examine only a small portion of that evidence.

Herbart, the successor of Kant at Konigsburg, declared that the only and the whole work of education can be summed up in the concept morality. "Morality," says he, "is universally recognized as the highest aim of humanity and, consequently, of education" ; but he goes a step further and declares that morality is the whole aim of both humanity and education ; but it is a morality which is founded upon, and includes, enlightenment and training of the whole self through the development of many-sided interest.

In Herbert Spencer's essay, "What Knowledge is of Most Worth?" which was published in 1859, and which attracted world-wide attention, the aim is defined thus : "To prepare us for complete living is the function which education has to discharge." By complete living Spencer does not mean living in the mere material sense, but in the widest sense. "The general problem which comprehends every special problem," he contends, "is the right ruling of conduct in all directions under all circumstances — in what manner to treat the body ; in what way to treat the mind ; in what way to manage our affairs ; in what way to bring up a family ; in what way to behave as a citizen ; in what way to utilize all those sources of happiness which nature supplies ; and how to use all our faculties to the greatest advantage to ourselves and others. And this being the great thing needful for us to learn, is, by consequence, the great thing which education is to teach."

Rosenkranz expresses the generally accepted view when he says : "Education has for its end to lead man to actualize himself through his own efforts." Tompkins expresses a similar view in these words: "Teaching is the process by which one mind of set purpose produces the life-unfolding process in another." Dr. William T. Harris has formulated the aim in these words : "Education is to elevate the individual to the level of the species."

But it is useless to multiply quotations bearing upon this point. The educator of to-day, through the labors of his predecessors of the last century, has obtained clear vision of the true goal of education. He understands, as it has never before been understood, that to be educated means to be prepared to enter efficiently and hopefully upon the work of the world's civilization ; it means to have interest and power and skill with respect to the several phases of human life ; it means, in one word, to become a man intellectually, morally, physically ; a man in all the fullness and glory that have, through the evolution of the race, found a place in the content of that term.

EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS gl

It was reserved, furthermore, for the Nineteenth Century to discover and formulate the specific aims of elementary, of secondary, and of higher education, an achievement which has served to organize and rationalize the whole process of the school, and which has assigned definite functions to each period of school life. The aim of the elementary school, which is to occupy the time of the child from the age of six to fourteen years, is to give him a mastery of the school arts, such as reading, writing, and arithmetic, as well as some degree of skill in their use. It is not expected that the pupil in the elementary school will gain a mastery of nature or of human nature. The law of his being is such as to preclude his dealing in a thorough manner with such subjects as require a careful, discriminating, and exact judgment. The pupil here looks upon each event in his mental progress as largely independent of every other event. He lives in the realm of the particular, and he is, therefore, on account of his intellectual infancy, unable to draw logical conclusions with reference to the nature of things or to the conduct of life.

The distinctive aim of the secondary school is to furnish the pupil with general culture, that is to say, to give him insight into the world of human learning. The general culture is to disclose to him the real nature of life and is to show him, by means of the close relationship existing between his school studies and life in the world, the possibilities that are spread out before him.

The aim of higher education is to give a mastery over some particular field of human learning. It presupposes on the part of the student such previous training as has furnished substantial foundation for the successful prosecution of the work of the specialist.

The Nineteenth Century, having transformed the aim in education, it followed as a natural consequence that the materials of instruction should likewise be altered. The curricula of the elementary and the secondary schools of the great nations of the world to-day provide for instruction in the two great groups of human learning, one pertaining to nature, and the other to human nature. This expansion of the curricula was born of the world-wide belief that the traditional tripos of Latin, Greek and mathematics produced a one-sided development, a development, too, that has too little bearing upon the problems of life. The school, being free from the domination of artificial aims, has to a great degree been free from the use of artificial means. It is for this reason that the study of the vernacular has assumed a dignity co-ordinate with that of other languages, and has, in fact, supplanted the ancient languages for use in the beginning of the child's education. While the vernacular has not, in some quarters, been regarded as highly as it should have been, yet these words, uttered by the common-sense philosopher, John Locke, do not now justly apply to many an institution in Great Britain and America: "If any one among us have a facility or a purity more than ordinary in his mother tongue, it is owing to chance or his genius or anything rather than to his education or any care of his teacher." No doctrine in education has been more completely removed from the realm of debate than that training in the use of one's own tongue wherein he is born, and in which and with which he is to live his intellectual life, is an indispensable factor in a liberal education.

Time forbids a detailed statement concerning other subjects, which, for the purpose of general culture, are to be found in the curriculum of the elementary and secondary schools. I may, therefore, be allowed to say, somewhat dogmatically, that the curriculum which is inherited by the Twentieth Century contains five co-ordinate groups of study, as follows :

1. That group by which nature in its quantitative aspect is considered, including mathematics, physics, chemistry, etc.

2. The biologic group, which explains the phenomena of nature in their qualitative aspect.

At least a general knowledge of these two groups is conceived to be necessary for one to understand the physical world in which he lives, and is equally necessary for him to understand the existing forms of domestic, social, industrial, political, and even religious life, for, while it is unquestionably true that man's conquests in the realm of natural science have been the means by which he has conquered the forces of nature, it is also true that they have been made to contribute largely to the result of that higher contest in which man has gained the victory over himself.

The third, fourth and fifth groups of study relate to man, exhibiting him in his three-fold nature of intellect, sensibility and will. In grammar, for example, which is a representative of the thought-group of studies, the pupil learns that man is a thinking being, becomes acquainted with the nature of thought, and finds revealed one phase of his own existence. In the study of literature, which represents the art group of studies, he learns something of the ideals of humanity, and ultimately perceives how surpassingly good is that which is beautiful. The study of history, which represents another group of human nature studies, reveals man in his volitional aspect. While literature sets forth ideals to be reached, history records those to which man, b}'^ the exercise of will, has already attained.

Training in these five groups of study undoubtedly finds its raison d'etre in the modern aim in education, and, properly carried on, realizes that aim, furnishing the youth continuous opportunity for the development of his entire being, giving him acquaintance not only with the externalities of life, but also with that inner spirit which is the very essence of life, individual and social.

The modern educational ideal has had marked influence in changing the curriculum of the college and university, also. It would be interesting to trace the evolution of this curriculum during the last one hundred years ; but I deem it sufficient to give the final result only. It cannot be better stated than in this paragraph, taken from an article which was recently written by President Jordan of Leland Stanford Junior University:

"Each man should follow as near as may be that line of effort which will do the most for him, which will enable him to realize the best possibilities of his own life. There is no single curriculum, no ideal curriculum, and any prearranged course of advanced study is an affront to the mind of the real student. . . . Among men must exist a division of labor. No one man can master even a single branch of science. Mastery means willingness to forego knowledge in other fields. . . . The course of study thus is a relic of mediaevalism. . . . The keynote to the education of the future must be constructive individualismi. . . . We may answer Mr. Spencer's question: 'What knowledge is of the most worth?' — that which is worth most to me. The mission of the university is to furnish this knowledge, just this knowledge which I need, and to furnish it to me."

In matters pertaining to school discipline the Nineteenth Century made remarkable progress. In olden times, the authority of the schoolmaster was considered the chief element in discipline ; the rod, which was his first, as well as his last, resort, became the symbol of his office. In the schools of ancient Rome, daily lessons began at an early hour, and we are told that the screams of the pupils, caused by the blows of their teachers, were a source of so great annoyance that gentlemen living near tlio schools, and yet desirous of prolonging their morning slumbers, were obliged to remove their quarters to quieter neighborhoods. Montaigne gives this testimony concerning the schools of his day:

"It [the school] is a real house of correction of imprisoned youth. They are made debauched before they are so. Do but come in when they are about their lessons, and you shall hear nothing but the outcries of boys under execution, with the thundering noise of their pedagogues, drunk with fury. . . A cursed and pernicious way of proceeding! How much more decent it would be to see their classes strewn with green leaves and fine flowers than with the bloody stumps of birch and willows !"

But with Pestalozzi's experiment in Stanz, which took place near the close of the Eighteenth Century, kindness, love, and rationality of procedure have become more and more prominent in the management of schools. Corporal punishment is more and more passing into disuse, for it is now generally believed that intellectual and moral results are to be achieved through the use of intellectual and moral means. Compulsory obedience may do in the management of dumb creatures ; but in the development of a race of freemen it is singularly unreasonable and uniformly unsuccessful. It Is for this reason that, in the school, which is founded to unfold the powers and, thereby, the freedom of the human spirit, arbitrary, autocratic, despotic government should not be tolerated. Because of the fact that a man is worth only as much as his will is worth, it follows that one great function in the management of children is to cultivate the continuous free expression of human wills along right lines of conduct.

The political significance of this doctrine of freedom was thus emphasized in an address delivered before the Edinburgh Philosophical Society some years ago by Thomas F. Bayard, the Minister of the United States to Great Britain:

"The freedom of its individual members is the essential basis of the freedom of the state. The individual freedom of man's mind and soul is the instrumentality by which the world under the very laws of its origin and progress has been raised from brutality and barbarism to its present state of civilization."

The introduction of the democratic Ideal Into the management of the school is, however, by no means Inconsistent with that other Idea, that the individual must have regard for law and for righteous authority. In fact. It Is through the sovereignty of law that the freedom of the individual is to be protected and fostered.

Again, the Nineteenth Century has discovered and fonnulated a body of doctrines with respect to procedure in instruction, thereby bringing definiteness and sanity into method in teaching. Rousseau, who, as it were, was an eloquent voice crying in the wilderness, noted the complete absence of scientific knowledge in the practice of the schools of his day, and, hence, declared that, if one should desire to teach aright, he should adopt policies diametrically opposed to those in vogue. In his day, as in the centuries preceding, it had not occurred even to the guild of schoolmasters that there is any vital relation between psychology and pedagogy, and so teaching was little more than a mechanical process. In the Nineteenth Century, however, through rational, practical study of real psychology, some fundamental educational laws have been established, and have been made to lend dignity and certainty to the teaching process. Method, therefore, according to the modern notion, is not a mere trick or a device determined by the fancy or the peculiarity of the teacher, or by the age, sex, or nationality of the pupil, but by laws governing the development of the human mind. Through the application of this simple truth, teaching has been removed from the plane of empiricism, and has been placed among truly scientific pursuits.

In the method of the old education there were but two prominent factors — the cultivation of the memory for words, and compulsory obedience through fear of punishment. The new education rejects as unsound and irrational the study of mere words, and insists that the process of teaching, from beginning to end, shall be concerned with ideas, and ideas, too, that are to be gained by the self-activity of the pupil. The method of the old education was dogmatic: all truth was thought to be known, and the pupil was to accept it without daring to call it in question: the modern teacher's method is inductive, and stimulates the pupil to examine things for himself, compare them for himself, and express his own conclusions for himself. The method of the old education laid an embargo upon thought; that of the new education is in harmony with the belief that, through freedom of thought, is to come the glorification of the race. The method of the old education relied upon fear as the supreme motive to learning; the method of the new education relies upon the inherent interest in the subjects of study. That this great change has taken place, is attested by every well-conducted oral recitation, by every real science lesson, by every map, by every piece of apparatus, and by every laboratory of the present day.

The fact that the Nineteenth Century attached new and great importance to method, led inevitably to another advance in education, the establishing of schools for the professional education of teachers. Early in the century Pestalozzi, after the failure of his work in Stanz, in Burgdorf, and Munchenbuchsee, established in Yverdun what was, perhaps, the most celebrated institute of which the history of education gives account. The dominant thought of its founder was that, since the elevation of the people depends upon their education, it is absolutely necessary that those who engage in educational work be prepared therefor by special training. For years his institute was the center of the greatest pedagogic interest. Many teachers from European countries and from America found tlieir way to Yverdun to study under the direction of Father Pestalozzi and his assistants. The Prussian government, for example, sent seventeen young men to take a three-year course in order that they might return to their fatherland prepared, as the Prussian minister of instruction said, "not only in mind and judgment, but also in heart, for the high function they were to follow." It was the spirit of Pestalozzi which these young men and others imbibed, and which was infused into the German schools, and which has made the schools of that nation famous for pedagogic excellence. From the Germans other nations have borrowed the idea of professional training and to-day teachers' seminaries, colleges for the training of teachers, normal schools, and schools of education in universities furnish the most positive evidence that the doctrine of special education for teachers is one which this century will not be called upon to establish. The attitude of universities, which are the most conservative of all institutions of learning, instead of being hostile to this doctrine, is distinctly favorable. During the last quarter of a century all the leading universities of America have provided for instruction especially planned for men and women who expect to adopt teaching as their vocation. Occasionally in university circles even yet one hears that scholarship is the sole qualification for successful teaching; but this opinion, which is expressed by persons who draw conclusions from insufficient data, is certainly obsolescent, if it has not already reached the stage of the obsolete.

The Nineteenth Century, furthermore, decided that education should not be confined to the privileged few, the clergy and the nobles. The doctrine of universal education which Comenius had advocated in the Seventeenth Century had to wait for two hundred years or more to receive practical recognition. Even Rousseau, the great apostle of human rights in the Eighteenth Century, frankly said that men in the lowly walks of life have no need of education. But, in the last hundred years, in all civilized lands, provision has been more or less adequately made for the instruction of all classes and conditions of society, females, as well as males, the poor, as well as the rich.

In order that this idea of universal education might become effective it was necessary that it be placed under the control of the state. For ages the church had been the dominant power in the management of schools, and, notwithstanding the fact that tuition was free to paupers, large numbers of the people, even in the most enlightened countries, were illiterate. For many reasons the failure of the church to provide education for all, and education of the right kind, was inevitable. Early in the Nineteenth Century the new doctrine that education for the masses should be added to the functions of the state, received a wonderful impulse from the labors of Pestalozzi, who may be justly considered the father of popular education. Fichte's addresses to the German nation, delivered in Berlin shortly after the victory of the French at Jena in 1806, had marked effect in producing the conviction that education is fundamentally necessary to the upbuilding of a nation. The king of Prussia himself was persuaded to this belief, saying, "We have lost in territory, our power and credit have fallen ; but we must, and will, go to work to gain in power and credit at home. It is for this reason that I desire above everything that the greatest attention be given to the education of the people." It is a well-known story how the development of an efficient system of popular schools regenerated the German states, and how it resulted finally in the wiping out the disgrace of Jena with the victory at Sedan and the triumphant entry of the German troops into the capital of France, and how France, in turn, learning a valuable lesson from her calamity, at once began active work to rebuild her fallen fortunes through the ministry of education. In the last twenty-five years she has established and equipped an educational system upon which she is expending immense sums of money, and which is destined to unify and strengthen all the forces of her national life. In England and her dependencies, in other nations of Europe, and even in far-off Japan the idea of public education has taken deep root.

In our own country, however, which, above all others cherishes the ideals of democracy, has the cause of public education received the most loyal support. The national government has rendered liberal aid by setting aside, as an endowment for public education from the public domain, 86,138,- 473 acres of land, an area greater than the combined areas of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware. The value of the lands and of the money which have been devoted by congress to educational purposes amounts, according to Commissioner Harris, to almost $300,000,000.

But the appropriations of the national government are but a small per cent, of the expenditures for public schools in America. The general government, aside from maintaining a bureau for the purpose of gathering statistics and disseminating information upon the various phases of educational work, has nothing to do with the control of public schools. The maintaining and direction of these schools are undertaken by each of the several states. The statistics compiled by the United States Commissioner of Education give us some idea of the seriousness with which the problem has been attacked by the states of the American Union. In 1897-8 the number of pupils enrolled in the public elementary and secondary schools in the United States was 15,030,030. In the instruction of these pupils nearly 500,000 teachers were engaged, while the value of the property used for school purposes was not far from a billion dollars. To defray the necessary expenses of this vast work, a sum averaging $18.06 per pupil and equal to a tax of $-1.27 upon every inhabitant of the country was expended.

But America has not rested content with providing only elementary and secondary education at public expense; many of the states have founded universities, which are supported by public endowments and revenues. It is true that the extension of public education to include university training has met with determined opposition ; but the same arguments that have been made against public education in any form are the very reasons that have been advanced against public higher education. It is reasonable to conclude, therefore, that these arguments which have been unable to stay the resistless march of the elementary and the secondary public school, will not be able to retard to any great degree the progress of the state university. Surely the lover of democracy can rejoice in this great contribution of the Nineteenth Century — state education, which, theoretically at least, has the primer at one end and graduate work in the university at the other, an achievement more colossal than the building of the pyramids and more glorious than the conquests of Alexander.

Yet another contribution of the Nineteenth Century consists in the development of industrial and technological education. For centuries the so-called learned professions, medicine, law, and theology, monopolized the time and the thought of educated men. It was not believed that a really comprehensive education was necessary for those who were to engage in industrial and commercial pursuits; but the great development of material resources in the Nineteenth Century, amounting, practically, to revolution, required that the old wasteful and unscientific methods employed in the production, manufacture and distribution of commodities must be abandoned, and that the world's industrial affairs must be managed by men especially trained for their work. Hence arose the scientific and technical schools. It would be interesting to trace the history of these schools, but the limits of this paper forbid. There is one thing, however, to which it may be well to call attention. The thoroughly modern technological school has two purposes, one of which is to afford training for special pursuits, the other, which is, in fact, the more fundamental and without which the former cannot be obtained, is to furnish in large measure such instruction as is necessary to a liberal education. The technological school of the highest type is not confined in its operation to the teaching of trades or the making of tradesmen: it is equally concerned in the making of men.

In this paper I can only barely mention two other contributions. The first is the kindergarten, the function of which is to give systematic training to children too young to enter the elementary school; and the second is university extension work, the many forms of which are designed to benefit men and women who are prevented by the force of circumstances from pursuing their studies in school and college.

In conclusion, let us inquire. What is the significance of all these contributions? Upon what principle can be explained the accomplishment of a task so stupendous as to involve, first, the most radical changes with respect to the aim in education ; second, the vast expansion of the culture-material to accomplish this aim ; third, the discovery and application of scientific method in instruction ; fourth, the provision for the professional education of teachers ; fifth, the organization and the partial development of gigantic S3'stems of public instruction at public expense ; sixth, the increase of the number of the learned professions by recognizing the dignity of the applied sciences ; and lastly, the extension of the privilege of education to the child in the kindergarten and the parent in his home? There can be but one answer — it is the spirit of real humanism, the spirit of social democracy, which is the distinctive characteristic of the Nineteenth Century.