The reorganization of our schools; some educational postulates and practical suggestions as to the organization of schools

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COPYRFGHT DEPOSflV

Preface

If the author has read aright the signs of the times, as they appear in educational conferences and in popular discussions, there is now a really urgent demand for practical and reasonably definite suggestions as to the reorganization of our schools. There is especial need for a definite plan that shall show how to retain that which is essential to the general education of every future man and woman, at the same time that a place is found for^ the various forms of special^ technical or other vocational training that may he necessary for the individual hoy or girl.

A year spent in studying not merely the schools, but the economic, political and social conditions underlying and overlying the school system of Germany has convinced the author that Europe at its best has not found a solution for the most pressing of our educational problems. The first problem for our educators to solve is that suggested at the close of the preceding paragraph; a problem that is all the more serious because the ardent advocates of general culture, on the one hand, and of practical efficiency, on the other, alike refuse to face it, while the practical schoolmen of our own country, following the lead of Europe, seem generally to think that they have disposed of the difficulty when they

VI PREFACE

can say that their schools are prepared to give either general culture or technical training, or, in some cases, will give a mixture of both in such proportions as the pupil or his parents may elect, — thus relieving the educator of his special duty to society and to youth, by unloading his most weighty responsibility on to the shoulders of the ignorant boy or girl or of a parent that may be no less ignorant.

Deeply impressed by this social problem of the educator, and hardly less so by the psychological problem of how to plan the worh of the school to meet and make the most of the several stages of the young being's physical and, mental development as he passes from early childhood to late adolescence, the author, on his return from Europe, sought to withdraw wholly from the field of ^ ^higher" and ^ ^normal" education, and to obtain a position in which he could work directly at the problems of elementary and secondary education. During four years as principal of the high school of I^ebraska's capital and educational center he was enabled to put to the test much of that which is suggested in the following pages for the "secondary transition" (or intermediate) department and for the "adolescent" department (or high school proper). He has not yet been able to make the same rigorous test, under his own direction, of the whole of that which relates to the play school, primary transition department, and the elementary department (or "grammar school", as it is called in many of our cities), although much of

PREFACE ^^^ this he has observed in successful operation in one school or another in America or Europe. A great part of what is here suggested has been presented to bodies of teachers and school administrators in different parts of the United States, and practically all of it has been presented in the form of lectures to the summer school of the University of :N'ebraska and to the pedagogical department of Clark University. The reception accorded it in the limited fields indicated and the comments of able, practical educators has encouraged the writer to believe that the time is ripe for the publication of this essay in educational organization.

While the purpose of the author's work is primarily practical, yet he is unwilling to put it forth without a brief presentation of the educational philosophy underlying it, and he trusts that the eight postulates preceding the plan of organization will not be thought to detract from the practical nature of the work. While a few ultra-practical schoolmen might be better pleased if this introduction were omitted, the author is reasonably confident that the greater number of school administrators and teachers will feel that the preliminary theses add to the value of the work, and of course they will make it more available as a basis for reading-circle work and normal-school discussion.

F. W. S.

Los Angeles, California.

SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS

Postulates

I. Purpose of education to enable members of society to attain highest possible development page 1

Corollaries la page 1

h page 1

2 page 1

Kemarks in elucidation of postulate page 2

II. The human being a psycho-physical unit page 6 Eemarks page 6

III. Three stages of individual development and two transitional periods, of great significance for the organization of education page 7 Eemarks page 9

IV. Correspondence betw^een development of race and of individual significant for education page 10 Kemarks page 10

V. Education should be influenced, but not dominated, by the inherent tendencies of developing youth, page 11 Kemarks page 13

VI. In education the policy of the open door should be maintained page 16 Kemarks page 16

VII. The best education is the most economical, page 17 Remarks page 17

VIII. Now is the time for practical reforms in the school page 18 Kemarks page 18

Practical Suggestions

I. General Plan of Organizing Schools, with the psycho-physical development as the basis of classification, with constant opportunity for readjustment, with a minimum of work for the less gifted, with much individual work within the classes, and with the possibility for outside work in cultivation of a special interest throughout the school course page 19

X SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS

§1. In general page 19

§3. Economy of this Plan Compared with the Plan Usually Followed page 22

§3. Enfranchisement and Stimulation of the Elementary School Teacher, not bound to an iron schedule for an arbitrary period, with uniform results for all pupils, but entrusted with the guidance of the development of a group of children throughout a natural period of their psycho-physical development, page 25

§4. Benefits to Different Classes of Pupils page 30

§5. No Exceptional Demands upon Teacher, expert supervision being assumed page 37

§6. Plan to be considered with reference to the content of the curriculum, etc., of the several departments of the school page 43

IT. Scope of the Several Departments of the School

§1. The Play School page 43

§2. The Primary Transition Department page 52

§3. The Elementary Department

A. General view page 53

B. Curriculum

1. Reckoning and Mathematics page 54

2. Language page 56

3. Economic and cultural development of mankind, or History page 58

4. Geography (connecting 3 and 5) page 59

5. Nature Study, or Elementary Science, page 60

6. (a) Art and (&) Manual Training page 60

7. Physical Culture page 61

C. Usual Daily Program: Discussion page 61 Table page 68

§4. Secondary Transition Department

A. General View page 69

B. Curriculum

1. Required Courses

a. Science page 75

h. History (and Government) page 81

SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS XI

c. Literature and Esthetics page 84

d. Physical Culture page 90

e. Art page 90

2. Elective Courses (either practical or cultural)

3. Optional Course page 91 C. Daily Program page 91

§5. Secondary Department, or Adolescent Department

A. General View page 93

B. First Year's Work

1. English page 94

2. History page 94

3. Laboratory Course in Science page 95

4 and 5. Physical Culture and Art page 96

6. Elective Work (vocational or cultural) page 96

C. After the First Year page 99

III. Adaptation of Plan to Several Classes of Young People

§1. Girls page 104

§2. The Normal Child

In the Play School page 107

In the Primary Transition Department page 107

In the Elementary Department page 110

In the Secondary Transition Department page 110

In the Adolescent Department page 110

§3. The Child of Slow Development page 113

§4. The Precocious Child page 115

§5. The Young Person Who Enters School Very Late

page 116 §6. The Industrial Worker and the Evening School

POSTULATES

I. The purpose of education is to assist the individual to make the most of himself, and thus do most for others; to enable him to grow into the largest life possible for one having so rich an endowment as that with which he is provided at birth.

Corollaries of this truth are:

la. The child himself must be studied in order that education may fit his needs and adapt itself to his several stages of development, b. Since, at any given stage of its development, the being that is, is the outcome of the development of an earlier stage of life, and as long as its development is incomplete its present condition must be considered with reference to the later stages through which it is to pass, it follows that, to interpret aright the life of the individual child of today, we must study his past and that of the ancestral forms of life out of which his has developed, and we must consider also all that is known of the later stages of development of similar beings. 2. Information, carefully prepared, must be given to the child, in addition to whatever else may be done for him in the effort to provide him with a suitable environment for such a development of all the nascent powers of mind and body as will most enlarge his life. Because as far as possible every individual of each succeeding generation should be given the vantage ground afforded by a general knowledge of what has so far been achieved by any of the human race, a very important part of the business of the educator is to summarize what men have so far learned in art and science and philosophy, and to impart a hnowledge of the principal results of these achievements of mankind to the individuals of the rising generation, even though it may be impossible to explain to the greater number of the latter how these facts and truths were first brought to light.

Remarks in elucidation of the postulate : — To speak somewhat more in detail, although it may be difficult to make the necessary distinctions as clearly as they ought to be made, we should, I think, recognize that the purpose of education is neither, on the one hand, to make the individual life an ideal one, in the sense of bringing it into conformity with an a priori ideal having a definite content, nor, on the other hand, to fit the individual to play a prescribed part in that particular organization of society into which he happens to be born. Such educational ideals are too static. The one assumes that we already know the content of perfection of life; the other, that the present organization of society is a final form to which not alone the present life of the individual, but that of all future individuals, must be conformed.

It does not seem to me safe to assume that fitness for one's immediately present environment is the norm by which to judge of human progress or of height and completeness of development in general. The degenerate, sightless and limbless parasite probably has such fitness in the highest degree ; but with this perfect adaptation to its narrow special environment the power of adaptation to a larger and more varied environment is gone. The educator's work should no more be determined by a narrow interpretation of the theory of evolution by natural selection than it should be prescribed by a traditional or a purely metaphysical ideal of a perfect life. What seems to be desirable is what might be called a rational opportunism, the application of enlightened common sense to the preservation of a sort of moving equilibrium. I^ot less truly a part of man's nature than his inherited instincts is the highly developed reason by which he is enabled not alone to adapt his conduct to quite new experiences, but also to learn things not immediately necessary for his next step in life ; and, as a result of this, to modify his immediate environment or to pass from it into one that his cultivated insight leads him to believe will make possible for him a larger life, i. e., one that may be less in harmony with that immediate

4 THE REOKGANIZATION OF OUR SCHOOLS

environineiit in which lie was "born, but that will be in more perfect harmony with the universal and apparently unalterable habits of the Universe at large, SO far as he has learned them, and that will thus, by reason of a more perfect unity between his individual life and the universal existence, give him the largest, the most divine life possible for man.

Studying the phenomena of life in the full light of instinctive and rational experience, we cannot but learn much as to the conditions of a satisfactory life ; and each one of us, whether as private individual or as teacher, is answerable to society as well as to his owQ conscience for the application of what he thus learns. To me personally, it seems that such a studv of life, of nature, human and non-human, makes it evident that human happiness is the ideal for human effort, and that the greatest happiness, quantitatively considered (if that conception be legitimate), not alone for the race at large, but also for the individual, is also the highest happiness, ethically considered ; that, in other words, our happiness is measured by the largeness of our love, and this means the breadth of our sympathies, which in turn is dependent upon the widest possible extent of knowledge, requiring the fullest possible symmetrical development of the potentialities of our nature, psychical and physical. The largest possible development of our nature does not mean the fullest possible development of each individual tendency that exists in a human being, each trait being considered by itself; for the greatest possible development of any one trait, either physical or niental, would doubtless mean a corresponding suppression of many others: but the largest possible development of the whole nature requires the maintenance of a certain symmetry and proportion in the cultivation of our special instincts and abilities. Only so great a development of each of these is normally desirable, as is consistent with the largest possible development of the whole nature. It seems to me that this principle, administered in the light of experience and reason, is quite satisfactory. It is true that the recognition of this principle makes restraint as well as encouragement a part of the work of education, and leaves it to the educator's discretion, in the light of his whole experience, emotional, instinctive and rational, to determine w^hen and where to apply the brake and when and where to encourage the child's impulses. But, that science or philosophy should be expected to give us an unerring rule providing specifically for every detail, and informing us in advance just exactly to what extent we should encourage and to what extent restrain the several natural tendencies of each individual, seems to me as childish as to demand the moon for a plaything. He who expects from the study of nature, of evolution, of the spontaneous activity of the universe, to derive such a formula, has profited very little from the hard won knowledge man has so far gained of the constitution of the universe: for that knowledge points to

6 THE KEOEGANIZATION OF OUR SCHOOLS

the truth that ^'eternal vigilance is the price of liberty/' or, in other words, that in the evolution of humanity man's reason as well as his instincts have been developed, and that he must use the former continually, as well as the latter, to adjust his own adult life and the life of his offspring to, and to keep them in adjustment with, the environment formed by the complex universal existence of which these individual human lives are a part.

II. The human being is a psycho-physical unit in which the association of mind with body is so intimate, the connection so close, that neither can be acted upon independently of the other : physical changes involve mental changes ; physical culture involves the cultivation of certain mental states ; and mental, moral and spiritual development are possible only through the exercise of physical powers.

Remarhs: — While it is true that one may cultivate certain physical powers to an extent prejudicial to certain of the higher psychical powers, or' certain psychical powers in such a way as to neglect and injure many physical powers, — just as one may cultivate one physical power to the prejudice of another physical power, or one kind of psychical activity to the prejudices of other kinds of psychical activity, — yet in general the highest human development is dependent upon the symmetrical development of mind and body, a high degree of perfection in the former being dependent upon the most perfect and

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symmetrical development of the latter; so that even if the development of our bodily powers, if physical culture were not in and for itself a highly desirable end of education (which, however, it is), it would still be the necessary concern of the educator as a sine qua non for the best mental development.

In this connection it is pertinent to quote two statements that have been forcefully put by Mr. Cephas Guillet in his article on ^'Kecapitulation and Education" in volume VII of the Pedagogical Seminary. The first is certainly suggestive even if its truth has not yet been perfectly established ; and the second seems to me, at least, to be as certain as any truth can be that is neither given us by intuition (as is the fact of self -existence) nor capable of a mathematical demonstration. On page 429 Mr. Guillet says that ^'Biology teaches us that it is the overspecialized species that have always succumbed in the struggle. Man owes his preeminence to the fact that he is born an immature and generalized form and long retains this condition of plasticity.'^ The other statement (on page 433) is that "Every part of the living body is also in effect part of the soul, and the atrophy of any part of the body involves the partial paralysis of the soul."

III. It is of great significance in education that the study of human beings at different stages of development has made evident not only that (a) individuals differ greatly in various psychic and physical particulars and capacities, but that

(h) the same individual differs greatly at different stages of natural development, and that (c) notwithstanding the individual peculiarities there is a general likeness in the mental and bodily powers of all normal members of the same race at corresponding stages of development, and that, finally, there are at least three fairly well marked stages of psycho-physical development falling within the commonly recognized periods of systematic school education, separated hy two transition periods, which stages of development are so distinct as to suggest that they should he made the bases of the organization and grading of our school system.

These stages of psycho-physical development are: —

A. The period of quite rapid growth prior to the "second dentition" and the approximate completion of the growth of the brain in bulk — which might be designated as the period of childhood proper.

a. The transition period of retarded growth and comparative delicacy, at the time of the "second dentition", most marked generally in American children about the eighth year.

B. The period of slow but steady growth, following the establishment of a new equilibrium after the completion of the transition period just mentioned, and lasting until puberty. Thi^ appears to be a period especially favorable to the establishment of useful automatisms, and might be designated as the period of boyhood and girlhood proper. h. The critical transition period of pubescence, said to come generally in the United States in the case of girls about the fourteenth year, and in the case of boys about a year later. C. The period of adolescence proper. Remarks: It would perhaps be well for the educator to regard the year in which puberty is actually attained and the year or two immediately following as constituting a special stage of development, differing considerably from that of later adolescence, as well as differing radically from that of boyhood or girlhood preceding it. This stage is unquestionably the most critical stage of human development with which the teacher has to deal.

It seems hardly necessary to add that no one maintains that these periods are marked off by perfectly sharp lines ; it is not maintained, for example, that the general state of mind and body of a girl during the few months immediately preceding her first menstrual discharge is less like the mental and physical state of the same girl three months after the first catamenia than it is like her psycho-physical condition on her tenth birthday. E'evertheless, although the boundaries are not sharp, the stages are fairly distinct and of great significance; and it is well to notice that under our present system of public school organization in the United States the three stages of development above referred to as (1) childhood proper, (2) boyhood and girlhood proper, and (3) adolescence, correspond roughly to the primary school, the "grammar", or intermediate school, and the high school. But unfortunately the correspondence is only roughly approximated, and to say nothing of the lack of any clear line of distinction in method between the instruction in the kindergarten and primary school, on the one hand, and that in the upper, or "grammar school" grades, on the other (the division in fact coming rather between the kindergarten, where there is one, on the one hand, and the primary and grammar grades together, on the other), it is a patent (and I think a very unfortunate) fact that the higher grammar-school grades deal chiefly with adolescents.

IV. The comparative study of the mental and physical development of men and of sub-human animals, of races and of individuals, in the light of the doctrine of evolution, has suggested certain interesting truths as to the meanings of mental and physical phenomena, which it is foolish to ignore, even though it be granted that these suggested probabilities have not yet been demonstrated to be true. Remarks: It is not only unwise to ignore the possibility that there may be great significance in some of the correspondences between the develop- 7nent of the race and that of the individual, but it is silly to assume (as has been assumed by one or more

THE KEORGANIZATION OF OUR SCHOOLS 11

writers) that if these correspondences be significant it is incumbent upon us to read them in only one way, and to interpret the development of the race in the light of that of the individual, but not the development of the individual in the light of that of the race. If the correspondences are significant, we can not only learn something as to the development of the race from that of the individual, but also something as to the development of the individual from our (admittedly imperfect) knowledge of the development of the race. Even though an enthusiastic student of genetic psychology may sometimes ask us to go with him a little too fast and too far, ive must, nevertheless, if we are open-minded seekers for light, reckon witli genetic psychology in looking for solutions of educational problems. Although the ^^recapitulation" theory^ may be unproven and the ' 'culture epoch" theory f may have been assumed w^ith too much definiteness by some enthusiasts, and although the existence of "nascent stages":}: may be less satisfactorily established than the law of gravity, yet the educator that ignores these theories is turning his back upon a possible (to speak very conservatively) source of light, and in doing so is unfaithful to the duty his vocation lays upon him. V. The acceptance of postulates III and IV does not at all require the educator to follow slavishly

* See Cephas Guillet on "Recapitulation and Education" in the Pedagogical Seminary, vol. VII.

fSee the writings of the American Herbartians generally, such as De Garmo's "Herbart and the Herbartians" (Scribners).

t See the writings of Dr. G. Stanley Hall.

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the tastes, inclinations and impulses showing themselves in the child at a given stage of development, but it does require that the educator should carefully study these tendencies, in order to avail himself of the light thus gained to take the line of least resistence in assisting the child to such a development of the potentialities of his nature as shall make possible for him a large, rich, beautiful, serviceable and happy life; that is to say, in order to give the child such an education as shall enable him to so far harmonize his life with things a& they are, physical and social, as to be capable of advancing freely, along the line of development suggested by his individual genius, into the largest life possible for a being having the endowments of humanity.

Remarks: This means that the possibly cruel and savage impulses of a child at a given stage of development, while they should not be encouraged,* are yet to be considered by those whose duty it is to guide the child's development; these and all other instincts and natural inclinations of the child being used in his education, sometimes as suggesting methods of approach to valuable knowledge and

* Calling to mind President G. Stanley Hall's well known tadpole illustration, it may be sug-gested that biology has taught us in the case of certain batrachians that where the conditions are too favorable to the exercise of the organs adapted to the creature's early, water-inhabiting stage of development, it may never fully mature into the land-living stage of development characteristic of the genus to which it belongs, but may carry gills to the day of its death.

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achievement, at other times as affording points of departure for training in self-control, balance and

poise of life.

The work of the teacher is perhaps best indicated by the term guidance. While the teacher's function, most assuredly, is not to drive the pupils along a beaten educational highway, and probably it would be a mistake to conceive of the function of the teacher even as that of one who should lead the young to follow in his own footsteps, yet the teacher's business is to GUIDE, to accompany the young in their voyages of discovery into the by them as yet unexplored universe which lies all about them, to give them the benefit of his previous partial exploration of that which is to them wholly terra incognita, and to point^ out to them the shortest path to those points of vantage giving broad vistas from which the young explorer can most intelligently plan his own future excursions.

It might naturally be supposed that the scion of the most highly evolved genus of living beings of which we have any knowledge, the marvelous complexity of whose organism surpasses the most wonderful miracle of which the poetic imagination of man has ever conceived, would be provided at birth with a nervous system so moulded by the experiences of the stock from which his life buds forth, that the successive instincts that find expression as his life develops to maturity would of themselves go far to make his life a satisfactory one, even in the absence

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of any consciously directed education on tlie part of his elders. But we should remember that in the economy of nature it is quite possible that the parental instincts of the adult may be substituted for instincts of self -direction in a being whose infancy is to be long continued; so that, freed from the care and strain of self-preservation and self-protection, the immature being may long retain that high degree of plasticity and educability through which alone it can gain the benefit of the many and important new experiences of diiferent individual members of the highly evolved and very delicately and complexly organized race to which it belongs — experiences that may have been too recently gained and too rapidly accumulated to have made a definitely heritable impress upon the nervous system. In the light of. this reflection it would seem that to leave the child to be wholly guided by his own individual instincts would be to force what from the standpoint of civilization must be regarded as a precocious maturity upon him, and thus to deprive him of the present enjoyment and future benefit of the prolonged youth for which nature has made such ample provision, the result of which deprivation must be a stunted human product, whose psychic growth would be greatly diminished, if not wholly arrested on a low plane of development. In such a mistaken application of the idea of loyalty to nature, in thus trusting the child's development wholly to his own instincts at every stage of development, we should

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really be acting in disregard of and in opposition to the method of nature, which has made large provision for the development of humanity through the parental instinct of guidance and by means of the power of mental abstraction that mankind has acquired, which makes it possible to communicate a great part of the results of recent individual human experiences to those who have not themselves had these particular experiences, who may never have them, but who may nevertheless be benefitted by the knowledge that has been gained through them. We too often forget that civilization is itself a natural product of human development, although one communicable rather by tradition, by education, than by inheritance.

An admirable illustration of the pedagogical value of the instincts and inclinations in the child that appear to repeat those of an earlier stage of adult human development, is offered by the use that may be made of this similarity between the development of the race and of the individual, to teach the child, (almost unconsciously to himself, but in the most real and vital and convincing manner) the history of the development of the human race to its present stage of culture, by presenting to the child, by description and illustration, the successive stages of the development of the human race towards its present grade of civilization, at those stages of his own individual development from infancy to maturity, at which he is best fitted to sympathize with, imitate,