Education for social efficiency

Front matter

- n V

»°a w -'aft: ^^ - «s w iSSk

*

Preface

In writing the pages which follow the author has had in mind not so much the interests of the educational specialist as the practical needs of busy teachers and parents. He has attempted to present, in simple language, and largely through the medium of illustration, a social view of education which is coming more and more to prevail. He has attempted to show, concretely, various ways in which the average teacher and parent may contribute something toward the realization of the ideal of social efficiency as the goal of our educational enterprise.

Let not the reader lose his perspective as he finds the social point of view constantly dwelt upon in these pages. In emphasizing the social meanings the author has not been unmindful that education has other important meanings and values. These are, in a sense, subordinate to the social values, and, in any case, they have received their share of attention elsewhere. It seems legitimate, therefore, to pass them by in this discussion.

The author gratefully acknowledges his indebtedness to Mr. Walter R. Miles, a graduate student in

the State University of Iowa, for his generous con-

v vi PREFACE

tribution to Chapter XVI of the account of his personal experience in organizing a "Social Center" in a small country town, and to The National Congress of Mothers, for permission to reprint in Chapter V a part oi a paper written originally for that- organization and published in Problems of Parents.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Social Origin and Function of Education ...... i

II. The Social Aim of Education . . n

Chapter I The Social Origin And Function Of Education

Education a Social Process. — The abstract statement that education is a social process, a social enterprise, will gain easy assent, but so complex are the currents of the modern world that it may be lost sight of as a practical truth. The social relations of education are so many-sided and so important that they may, for that very reason, be unappreciated, as one may fail to see the forest for the trees.

Even in its very earliest forms education was a social undertaking. The primitive tribes of to-day illustrate this fact in their methods of training their children. Indeed we may get important light upon the basic social principles of education by turning for a brief space to consider these beginnings, or at least these simpler stages of the education process.

The Beginnings of Education. — Some sort of child-training all savage tribes have, partly informal, and partly directed by conscious purpose. Crude though their culture may be they always have something which they must needs impart to their children, if the latter are to become efficient members of the adult society. In fact the very continuance of the tribe upon the human level requires that the children should receive and learn to profit by the experience of their parents.

Since the survival of the primitive group depends upon the educability of its children it would not be strange if the capacity both to teach and to learn were bred into the human race by natural selection. The groups which exhibited some slight tendency along these lines would have an advantage over the groups which had it not, and they would be the ones to survive. As for the very beginning of education it was probably quite without any definite purpose on the part of the elders to instruct. It depended, rather, upon a little superior imitativeness in the children. Not merely among savages, but among people in all stages of culture, it is imitativeness which lies at the basis of education. It is this quality which makes the child open and receptive to the experience of his elders. The formal agencies of instruction are but specializations of social activity which render the imitation of certain important elements of a people's culture less open to chance; in other words, the formal means supplement, at certain points only, the action of undirected imitation.

The Place of Imitation. — Many observers tell us of the great imitativeness of the children of the primitive races. This readiness to copy everything seen is apparently the main method of learning among the Baganda, an African people. In Roscoe's careful study of these tribes no mention is made of any for-

ORIGIN AND FUNCTION

mal attempts to teach the children anything but to count. The simple daily intercourse of the children with the rest of the community is probably the main avenue of their learning. As to their power to imitate Roscoe says they "may be seen making toy guns after the pattern of those used by their fathers. Those toy guns are so well made that, when the triggers are pulled, they make a sharp report. Bicycles have been cleverly imitated by boys, with wheels and spokes made of reeds. Once an idea has been presented to them they are quick to seize it, and, with but a few tools and the common materials around them, to turn out the most cunningly devised articles." Dudley Kidd, writing of the Kafirs, says: "Faculties, such as cunning and imitation, seem to be developed in black children at an even earlier age than in the case of white children. No farmer's boy in England could make such excellent bird-traps at the age of three as the Kafir child can."

Much of the material culture of his tribe the savage child can thus pick up by mere contact with those older than himself. He sees and participates daily in almost every phase of the tribe's economic and social life. There is nothing remote or unusual about anything. It is all there before him and he can try his hand at it as he pleases. The value of all the tribal knowledge and skill is also immediately apparent. Everything he learns fits in directly with the life he leads day by day. Among the Kafirs "the smallest children are taught to be polite, and this constitutes their first lesson. Obedience to parents hardly needs to be taught, for the children notice how everyone in the kraal is instinctively obedient to the old men; the children catch this spirit without knowing it."

The Beginnings of Formal Instruction. — But, important as imitation is, it is generally supplemented by some formal instruction, even in barbarous societies. The religious rites and the myths are usually too complex to be acquired and understood through imitation alone.

Among some of the Australian natives it is said that "the old men in their leisure time instructed the younger ones in the laws of the tribe, impressing on them modesty of behavior and propriety of conduct, as they understood it, and pointing out to them the heinousness of certain crimes." Familiar social communication within the family and neighborhood was not only the first and simplest avenue of formal education: it has remained, in all ages and in all stages of culture, one of its most important means. The more formal agencies have been but special developments from this broad matrix of social intercourse. Social intercourse gives the setting, the background, and determines the relationships of the formal agencies. It fills in the gaps and makes up the deficiencies of that type of instruction.

The Function of Formal Instruction. — .Formal education, neither in the beginning, nor ever, for that matter, has been concerned with imparting to the child all the culture of his people. It has centered, rather, around certain customs and religious beliefs, that seemed too important to be left to chance. It was and is in the daily life in the group, however, that the child gained a living appreciation of what he re-

ORIGIN AND FUNCTION

ceived through formal instruction, if, indeed, the latter was to have any meaning at all.

When formal instruction is given to the savage child it is usually an undertaking which occupies the attention and energy of the whole tribe. The initiation ceremonies, common among most barbarous peoples, represent the beginnings of schooling, and they are of especial interest to us in this connection, because they are so clearly social undertakings. The initiation ceremonies constitute the course of instruction given the savage boy as he approaches maturity. By them he is prepared for the duties of manhood, which consist, not merely in his being able to take care of himself, but also in his being a worthy member of the tribe and sharing in the various obligations it imposes upon all adult members.

These ceremonies are usually performed at some stated time of the year and may continue for weeks or even months. All the older members of the community are the teachers. The whole tribe unites in the important social function of testing and teaching its boys. This is strikingly illustrated by the elaborate ceremonials of the aborigines of Australia. At these times the old men set a time, take the boys of proper age, and put them through various mental and physical tests, in addition to instructing them in all the legends and customs of their people. The endurance of the boys is tested in many trying ways, such as going for days without food, undergoing severe physical pain, to see whether they have sufficient hardihood and self-control to be admitted to the society of adults and bear their share of the responsibilities of tribal life. No special class in the community is set apart as teachers, unless it be the oldest men. Literally the whole social group takes a hand in the instruction.

The Aim of Primitive Education. — One acute student of the primitive races says : "The educational system of the savage was designed to secure the solidarity of the group, not to convey a body of exact knowledge. The formal instruction was mainly moral; the occupational practice was picked up informally. The food regulations of the Australians are a striking example of the thoroughness with which moral instructions were imparted."

It is manifestly of supreme importance that a primitive tribe should form a well-knit collective life, bound together by common customs and common interests. Likewise it should be composed of men and women able to endure privation and hardship, and loyal under all circumstances to the interests of the whole group. Consequently in large part the initiation ceremonies are devoted to impressing upon the youths the sanctity of tribal custom, and in inspiring in them a profound respect for the older men and women as representatives of the social life. Respect for the old men is illustrated by the following words of Spencer and Gillen, with reference to the Central Australians: "It may be noted here that the deference paid to the old men during the ceremonies of examining the churinga [sacred objects] is most marked; no young man thinks of speaking unless he be first addressed by one of the older men, and then he listens solemnly to all that the latter tells him . . . The old man, just referred to, was especially looked up to as an oknirdbata, or great instructor, a term

ORIGIN AND FUNCTION

which is only applied, as in this case, to men who are not only old, but learned in all the customs and traditions of the tribe, and whose influence is well seen at the ceremonies — where the greatest deference is paid them. A man may be old, very old, indeed, but yet never attain to the rank of oknirabata."

Schools as a Social Division of Labor. — The development of formal agencies of instruction, the beginnings of which we have pointed out in the initiation rites of savage tribes, may be regarded as one of the many divisions of labor which become needful as society develops from the primitive to the civilized level. The school, as an institution, and teaching, as a profession, are but phases of the inevitable growth in complexity of a progressive social organism.

Education and Evolution. — Education has been, from the beginning, a social necessity, so thoroughly grounded in human need as to be almost, if not entirely, instinctive in its origin. Its development has been closely associated with the changes which we call, for want of a better term, social progress. Indeed, were it not for the educability of the child, and were it not for the readiness of the adult to instruct him, progress of any sort would be infinitely slow, if not altogether impossible. It has often been pointed out that the development of conscious, intelligent life has wrought a radical change in the character and method of evolution. Through all the untold ages lying back of the human race, progress was inconceivably slow. To our limited range of vision and to our still more limited understanding of the underlying causes of development, the whole course of the development of living forms on our planet seems to have been little better than a blind struggle. Of course we may feel that, underneath it all, there has been an intelligent purpose, and that this purpose has wrought order out of chaos, has brought up the higher from the lower, and led all forward to the working out of some high plan. Whatever our philosophy of life and its development may be, we at least can see that the steps forward in the lower orders of life have been by most minute gradations, and that every point gained was accomplished with a prodigal wastefulness, both of time and of life itself.

In striking contrast with these processes by which that which was worth while was preserved in the plant and in the animal, stands the course of human development. Man, equipped with at least a clearer self-consciousness than the brute world, and certainly with a power of choice and a capacity to utilize his environment far beyond that of any form beneath him, has become more and more a positive agent in the evolutionary process. To be sure he is still subject in very definite ways to the natural forces which produced him. There are limitations to his control which will probably always continue to operate. But, even though he cannot take everything into his own hands, he can do something, and the story of human progress, as we know it, is largely the story of what man can accomplish by even slightly modifying the action of natural forces. Slowly but surely the physical environment has been made over, and the world has been subdued. The forces of nature that once terrorized and afflicted, while not entirely mastered,

ORIGIN AND FUNCTION

have at least been made to minister to his comfort.

A variety of factors have cooperated to make these things possible. Among them have been a superior capacity of memory and a corresponding ability to compare the results of experience, and to profit by them. Each individual now has, on the whole, done comparatively little, but there is always the possibility that the little that he is able to do will be preserved and that others may add their little to it, consciously, purposely, and not blindly. The results of experience, instead of being wasted altogether, or accumulating by infinitely slow gradations through natural selection, may thus gather and become available with comparative rapidity. When it seems to us that the majority of men are blind and that their behavior is guided by impulse rather than by wise understanding, we can reassure ourselves by the reflection that even thus the period of time covered by the human race is but a day in comparison with the unmeasured ages which have preceded.

The Method of Education. — Halting though man's advance seems to be, it has been rapid in comparison with the progress of life on pre-human stages. In a large and real sense education is the instrument which has made this possible. It is the agency through which conscious purpose and choice have operated toward progress. The means by which this has been accomplished in times past have been the giving to each child, as far as possible, the experience of adult society. In this way each generation presumably starts off with approximately the same equipment as the previous ones. In the course of its further growth it may possibly learn more, and thus, little by 2 g little, the fund of culture grows. It is only a part of the business of education, however, to assist in the acquisition of knowledge. It has always attempted also to train, to discipline the child, to cultivate in him capacity and power.

The method of accomplishing these latter ends, however, is far less perfectly worked out than that of instruction in the lore of the past. The development of power is supposed to come through the acquisition of knowledge. But this is not necessarily the case. We are only beginning to appreciate the possibilities of education if it may but enlarge the scope of its efforts and put the development of efficiency in the child upon a scientific basis.

Knowledge, discipline, efficiency, how then are they to be secured? What means are open to us that we may utilize to the best advantage the capacities which each new generation brings with it? These questions suggest a new and larger view of education. To answer them properly requires a clear appreciation of the many social relations and functions of the educative process.

Chapter II

Tlie Social Aim. — From what has been said of education as a social enterprise and of its necessity as a means, both of maintaining existing culture and of promoting social progress, we may naturally conclude that some sort of social end or aim should be at the basis of all educational endeavor. In earlier times this fact was only dimly appreciated, and, even to-day, it has scarcely descended from the realm of vague theory. The need, however, of a thoroughly concrete, practical conception of the social end of education is thrusting itself upon us. Already many and diverse forces are grappling with the problem of giving our children a really adequate preparation for modern life. There is the greatest need that the serious student of education should think through the present situation, complex though it is, and baffling though its tendencies are, and attempt to evaluate what is being done and interpret it according to some unifying principles.

While it is true that direct and fearless attempts to meet an insistent need or solve a pressing problem isually precede scientific interpretations, it is necesiry for reflection and interpretation to follow closely, these first endeavors are to bear good fruit. Reection and theory are not something apart from acton, as we often hear. They are most necessary that

ii action may be really successful. Successful educational work must depend, therefore, both upon determined and energetic action and upon clear, penetrating insight into the situations in which we work, the needs of these situations, and the relationships of these needs to the still larger problems of our modern social order.

Reasons for Individualistic Ideals. — There has never been a time when true education did not have a social function and a social end. How, then, can we explain the individualistic conceptions of education which have been common in the past? Chiefly on the ground that the social environment in which children lived, and the duties which this environment carried with it, supplemented the methods and ideals of formal instruction. Considering the narrow philosophy of the school master, the product was usually better than might have been expected.

It is really not strange that individualistic ideals should underlie much of our educational practice. The individual child is always before the teacher. His individual and peculiar difficulties are always claiming her attention. The teacher's immediate problem is to train this individual in order that he may, as far as possible, have good habits of speech and of conduct; that he may know at least a little of arithmetic, of geography, of history, and so forth. If she is a person of high ideals, she hopes, as a result of his school study, that he may acquire a trained eye, hand, and ear, a sound judgment, a love of the beautiful and the good.

With attention centered on the problem of instructing and training the individual pupil it is easy for the teacher to conceive of the goal of her work as the harmonious development of all the capacities of the pupil, or, if this be too broad a program, then the training of a part of his powers, so that he may be able to make a living for himself, or engage in some honorable work.

It is not merely, however, because the attention of the teacher has been centered on the individual pupil that the educational aims of the past have tended to be individualistic. This point of view has largely dominated every phase of life. The church has often held the salvation of the individual soul as its ideal. The industrial world worshiped and still worships individual success. Society in general idealizes the hero, the great man, the man of prowess, physical and intellectual, the person of superior personality.

All this idealization of individual success came about, not because man was not a social being, but because social relations and social dependence had not come clearly to consciousness, because in the simpler life of the past these relations did not thrust themselves upon people's attention. They were matters of course — they took care of themselves. The child received his training in social relations and duties in simpler and more informal ways outside the school. As was noted above, however, formal instruction developed among primitive peoples to meet the deficiencies of informal social intercourse. It was devised as a means of insuring that the child should learn certain things which he would not be able to learn satisfactorily if he were left to pick up things for himself by imitation and simple contact with the life that was going on daily about him. As culture increased in complexity, more and more of the burden of education had to be shifted to formal agencies, specifically to the school.

A New Point of View Needed. — Precisely this sort of situation is rendering it imperative to-day that these old individualistic conceptions of education be reconsidered and that a new type of endeavor be undertaken by the school.

It is clear to us to-day that none of these individual excellences would have any value, or, indeed, mean anything, except as our pupil lives and works among other people. Of what worth are knowledge, skill, culture, except as they enable him to live more efficiently among his fellow-men? His whole life is inevitably bound up with other people. What is good and wise for him must be good and wise for others. His welfare or success can in no wise be separated from that of his associates. Thus the common welfare furnishes the standard for estimating the efficiency of the educative process in each and every individual capacity.

Social Training of the Child. — Individual capacities each child has, and the object of education is to train them. There is no other course open to the teacher than to begin with this same individual pupil. He, with his plastic mind and muscles, is the inevitable raw material. The question is not shall the child be trained, but rather how shall he be trained. If he is to be an active member of society, shall he be trained with this object in mind, or shall the development of each capacity proceed as if he were a self-sufficient, isolated unit, living entirely unto himself?

Live and work with other people he must, and, if the school does not give him suitable training, he will have to get it in other ways if he gets it at all. He may never get it, or he may get it only imperfectly. That is, while living with other people and working with them, he does so with friction and difficulty, not realizing either for himself or for the community the maximum of good.

Social Training in Home and Neighborhood. — As we have stated before, the social values of education were in the past secured in many ways outside of school. Life was complex enough, it is true, and presented many difficult social problems, but these problems were largely met by man's instinctive social equipment. The primitive ideals of the family and of the neighborhood were in the main sufficient to meet and solve such problems as thrust themselves upon people's attention. In these small social groups the conception of social unity, and such ideals as loyalty, kindness, truthfulness, lawfulness, were largely instinctive. They have, from time immemorial, characterized such intimate human associations. The family and neighborhood groups were necessary to the most elementary phases of social development, and no family or neighborhood could endure that did not develop as fundamental instincts in its members these ideals of mutual helpfulness, kindness, and truthfulness. These are elementary qualities of human nature in all small groups of people the world over, both barbarous and civilized. They are found conspicuously in the lowest levels of culture, and they are found among ourselves in all those situations which bring us into intimate personal acquaintance and daily association with one another. Mankind's whole code of morals and theory of right conduct have been built up upon the basis of these elementary virtues of the home and the neighborhood. As long as the life of the individual was lived largely in these simple situations, as long as, there was little to carry him outside of them into far-reaching relationship with the world at large, he found in this family and neighborhood life a fairly adequate socializing medium.

Recent Growth of Human Relations. — The last century, however, has immensely increased the reach of human life. Man's vocational activities have broadened in their scope. More and more has he been led out of the narrow, primitive relation of family and neighborhood and drawn into contact with larger and larger groups of people. This increase in the scope of our relationships has vastly extended the influence of our simplest acts. Our conduct, whether good or bad, to-day affects not alone the little narrow groups in which we live, but even people whom we may not know intimately, or perhaps never see at all.

Under the influence of these conditions every type of industry has developed new phases and problems, the family shows signs of radical modification, the old-time neighborhood is already, in many localities, a thing of the past. In a word, present-day life throws the individual into a host of social relations and arouses him to a consciousness of a host of knotty problems that never appeared in the primitive community or family.

Difficulties of Social Adjustment. — While, therefore, the old-time society educated its children informally, the new social order presents such difficulties of social adjustment that the present-day child is scarcely able to fit into it, and live a really satisfactory life, unless these new social relations are made a more conscious element in his formal training. He needs, in other words, a distinctively social training. The social relations and opportunities of school and neighborhood must be utilized to prepare him for the complex life he must live. And all this not merely that he may be more efficient as an individual in this larger life, better able to make his own personal way in more intricate surroundings, but that he may be better able to carry over into his broader relationships the elementary virtues of the home and of the neighborhood. Indeed, more and more it becomes apparent that modern society needs to be humanized and moralized, if it is to endure, just as this was needful in the simple primitive community. The moralization of the primitive community was accomplished without any definite reflective purpose. It gradually developed under the influence of natural selection, just because it was impossible for these little groups of people to survive except as they were bound together by a sort of elementary consideration for each other. Their goodness was as natural and instinctive as was everything else that pertained to their lives.

Economic Development Precedes Social. — Modern society, however, is the result of a more or less definite conscious evolution. If it has not been guided by any broad, comprehensive aim, in which everyone has participated, it has at least been made what it is by a vast number of partial purposes, which are largely economic. The maladjustment of human energies and resources is in the main due to an excessive development along economic lines, accompanied by a great increase in population, without a corresponding development of those ideals of social relationship which, in the simple primitive community, coordinated and kept a proper balance in these other phases of life. In other words, the social nature of the modern man has not grown fast enough to keep up with his economic progress. The problem that confronts us to-day is that of extending, and, if necessary, reconstructing, the social ideals of a simpler social order, that they may dominate the life of the modern world, with its greatly diversified activities and the hosts of problems that have grown out of these multiplied and enlarged interests.

The same sort of conscious purpose which has wrought the changes in the economic life must appear in the development of a social morality which is adequate to these new conditions ; a social morality which can unify diverse and conflicting interests and conserve human welfare in the midst of the great modern machine of production, distribution, and consumption, which man himself has constructed; a social morality which will, in a word, save man from the monster of his own creation.

Readjustment Through Education. — All of this must be accomplished through education, meaning by education the entire process by which human nature is trained and instructed. And this education must be largely wrought out through the school. The ideal of a social life adequate to modern conditions of living must take its place as an object of explicit and conscious training, just because it is too complex and difficult to attain in any other way. In fact such an ideal may be regarded as including all others. Properly interpreted it is the real ideal of all education.