Democracy in education; a social interpretation of the history of education

Preface

Educational experiment and reconstruction no longer need an excuse; all that they need is illumination. This will come from a number of sources, one of which must be history. It is said that ' ' history proves nothing, ' ' which may be true; it is certainly true that history leaves many things to disprove. And history does reveal many phases of the educational problem which must be made the subject of critical investigation. History digs up the problems and shows their roots grown deep in old soils.

But history has been too freely presented as mere transpiring of events; or, if any lessons are to be learned from history, those are usually along the line of the ''vanity of human wishes. ' ' None the less, either from history or from the clear sky, we have become possessed of certain ideals, ideals which run counter to some of the assumptions of the past, and of certain traditional survivals of the past that still remain with us. The modern. Western world professes to have taken democracy as its political goal ; certain of the peoples of this Western world profess to have taken it also as their social goal; and all of them, or nearly all, feel the profound urge of that same ideal as an economic and industrial goal.

Nowhere, however, has democracy been taken as the educational goal. It has been, indeed, professed in America; but it has never been professed seriously enough to cause us to transform our traditional and therefore autocraticallyinspired educational instrumentalities into actual democratic institutions. History has not been interpreted as viii PREFACE

offering comfort to our democratic aspirations. The fate of democracies has ahnost always been pictured in dismal colors. To be sure, history does not prove that democracy will be, or must be, successful ; but history does show that human purposes have been powerful determinants of the long course of events, and democracy is now our human purpose.

The Great War has become the war for democracy. But while big guns may do valiant service for democracy again, as not infrequently in the past, it is of the very logic of democracy that it must some day be based upon intelligence and moral freedom, rather than upon force. Hence the ultimate problem of democracy becomes the problem of education. Two items become important, therefore. First, history must be so interpreted that the actual gains which democracy has made in the past, and the lasting problems which still face democracy, will stand out clearly in the consciousness of the democratic citizen, the one aspect of the subject for his cheer, the other to deepen his sense of responsibility. Second, education must be seen as something more than a school-room task, to be turned over to immaturity and impracticality for solution. The school must become an actually socialized institution, and education must find itself at home once more, as in the olden days, in the very life of the community.

This book attempts to interpret history and contemporary problems in education from this point of view. It is, of course, tentative and subject to continuous reinterpretation. It is over brief for such an inclusive aim ; but a book in the democratic spirit must leave something to the imagination of the reader. The handling of materials will show a frank and avowed interest in the cause of democracy; just as every history shows some sort of interest in some sort of outcome.

PREFACE ix

I have had the help of innumerable friends and some books. I do not dare enumerate all the friends who have offered suggestions. I shall mention two who have given critical assistance: President Edward 0. Sisson, of the University of Montana, and Mr. Clarence L. Clarke, of the University of Chicago, both colleagues of a former time. But neither of these is to be blamed for my errors, either of fact or of interpretation. My debt to Professor John Dewey is apparent on every page.

In general, this treatment is the result of nearly ten years of university teaching in the field of the history of education. The majority of the students of the history of education echo the remark of a superintendent of schools of one of our largest cities: "I don't see that the study of history has anything to contribute to the solution of our problems, however much it may have of interest in general." But my own excuse for this presentation may be illustrated by the statement of a former student who wrote in a paper, at the conclusion of the course in the history of education: "Up to the time that I took this course I felt it was the duty of a cultured individual to sit at the side of the road and watch the procession go by ; now I want to get into the procession." At a time in the history of the world when the demand is upon us all that we "get into the procession," this book, with its plea for a larger interpretation of democracy in education, may find for itself a place in the illuminating of the task and in the inspiriting of the toil.

J. K. H.

March 1, 1918.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

XII The Roman Contribution to the Larger

Folkways 107

Chapter I The Meaning Of History Fob Education

Education has been going on for a long time; our educational institutions, practices, and materials are the products of centuries of accumulation. We are the heirs of the ages, and we have inherited much, some of which has become unsatisfactory. We have copied from the past ; we have used customs and traditions of the centuries ; we have built substantial habits. But now we are looking for something more adequate to the task. America has been a land of inventiveness in the field of mechanics. Should not something of that inventive intelligence be available for use in the larger social and educational questions that confront us ?

But this inventiveness should not work in ignorance of the past. If we are dissatisfied with some of the practices and ideals of the past, that is no reason for uncriticallydiscarding all the past. The very possibility of successful inventiveness implies real acquaintance with what has gone before. If we are to be able to deal with our educational problems in a clear and intelligent manner, we must know something about how these problems have arisen ; we must see the various ways in which the great past has been effective in producing the present. We must get a long view of the general course of the world's experience. We must begin with :

The Beginnings of Human History. — We are being told that human history began in what is now called the ' ' group life ' ' of primitive peoples. All over the world in the past, and largely even to-day, we find such groups. They were, and are, people who live in very primitive fashion, without the tools that we have and use, and without the knowledge or broad experience which mark "civilized society." Some of these groups still live much like animals, in rude shelters, with little clothing, and with precarious provision for food. They "get along," except in the presence of severe crises, like the failure of all foods, or a fundamental change in their physical environment. As long as conditions remain fairly stable they live their simple life, and take little account of time ; they are ' ' adapted to their environment." Even in the midst of our more civilized social orders, we can find occasional communities which live in much the same fashion ; they are probably cut off from the main lines of travel and communication, are touched but little by the "current of events," and have settled down to a quiet life of fixed custom and habit.

In the community or group that is truly primitive there comes to be an almost complete marking out of the lines within which the life of the member may go on. Certain activities are proper; others shade off through the rather questionable into the highly improper. These ways of looking at conduct have not, however, been deliberately set up ; they are the products of generations of custom. ' ' Whatever is customary ' ' is moral ; the immoral is seen in any failure to keep to the customary line of action. And custom comes to have all the sacredness of a religious rite. It is not proper for any one to question the authority of the group-customs or traditions ; to do so would be evidence of innate disloyalty. Custom is as much a part of the actual order of creation as are the mountains or the stars.

Now in such a group, whether ancient and primitive or modern and secluded, as long as the conditions of living remain fairly fixed, these social relationships (expressed in custom and habit) remain fairly rigid : children have certain definite duties to their parents and all older people; marriage takes place between individuals having certain definite relationships to ea«^h other, and according to a very rigid ritual; leaderships in work and war are regulated by custom ; moral controls have definite modes of making themselves felt; and religious forms receive their full and regular share of the time and energy of the group. These practices and standards of loyalty, morality, industry, reverence, and obedience are the natural and rigid results of generations of subordination, selection, and survival; and they are found everywhere, in greater or less degree, among all primitive peoples. This whole range of custom and control has been given the expressive name of "Folkways," i.e., the ways of the folk.^ This is a convenient term and it will be freely used throughout this book to cover this general type of social organization.

How Life Goes on Under the Folkways. — If, now, we are to catch a full view of the development of education from the primitive period to the present time, we must come to a more complete understanding of the nature of the common life under the control of the primitive folkways. We have seen that these folkways are not intentionally organized; they just "grow up." They dominate the activities of the group. Children are born into them and grow up subject to them. It has been common to think of the life of the primitive man as being free ; but this is, in large part, a mistake. His life is freer than that of the modern man's

1 Siunner, "Folkways."

in one respect: he is concerned with fewer kinds of activities. But, on the other hand, these fewer kinds of activities are regulated by custom and tradition until each becomes a complete ceremonial. The individual member of the group is allowed no freedom of initiative in the making of new modes of activity, or in the remaking of old modes, From birth to death he acts as custom commands, without thought as to the reasonableness of the act and without care as to the value of it. Habit is the essence of this control. Of choice there is almost nothing, and of discrimination, nothing at all.

All the common interests of life are found within the group, however, and under the regulation of the folkways. Some form of industry is found everywhere, and the modes of this industrial life, as well as the rewards, are controlled by ancient custom. Political organization, in the sense of group control, is here, and its decrees are of hoary ancestry and unquestioned authority. Some form of marriage and family life is recognized as proper; religious rituals and ceremonials give sanction to all proper activities ; and, as we shall see, educational practices make sure that the social structure of to-day shall be perpetuated in the children of the group in their generation.

It is obvious that the authority of the folkways is definite and final. But it may not be so obvious that this authority is a great system into which the individual is born, which he is bound to accept without question, whose details he masters with difficulty, and which remains external to him, in the sense that he has had nothing to do with its development, that it does not express his own personal desires or impulses, and that he can do nothing to modify it. He takes it on from outside himself, he surrenders his own life to its control, and he helps to pass it on, unchanged, to the next generation. It must be noted, too, that the group itself is not free; the present group is but a link in the chain of the generations, past, present, and to come. The folkways are the possession of the whole group, — the permanent group, not this present group. They are entrusted to this present group for its salvation. They must be preserved intact and transmitted to the next generation, for the very existence of the next generation will depend upon the faithfulness of this transmission.

It must not be thought, however, that all these distinctions and conditions are clearly in the minds of the members of the group. They are not. The primitive man lives, even as we do, in the midst of conditions and under the sway of regulations of which he is only dimly aware. The history of civilization is the story of how the race has slowly fought its way into some more complete understanding of its own aspirations and the conditions of their realization. We may picture primitive man as a being of almost incalculable possibilities standing on the levels of first achievements, satisfied with the mere beginnings of social development, totally ignorant of the larger world lying about him which the ages of science will discover, — which has become, indeed, commonplace to us of later generations. That first level of attainment seemed to the primitive man an all but complete world. There were, to be sure, some mysteries about him which aroused his fears and compelled his prayers. But, on the whole, it was the world to him. He had probably some ancient story of the origin of things: this world was created, and filled up (as a finished house is filled with furnishings) with the various objects of experience, plants and animals, man and his fixed institutions, the folkways and all social relationships. "Whatever is, is right." His security depends upon the permanence of his world and the finalitj^ of existing arrangements; and his authority is of the very nature of the universe itself. This is the world of the primitive man; this his implicit philosophy.

The Significance of Crisis in the Primitive World. — We have noted that as long as the conditions of living remain stable these folkway organizations of society remain fixed and final. But the conditions of living do not remain stable for very long. Crises of various sorts arise. These crises are of three general sorts. First, there may come some fundamental change in the character of the physical environment. Earthquakes may make the land uninhabitable ; volcanic eruptions may do likewise ; climatic changes may destroy the food supplies ; epidemics may destroy the populations. Such experiences have been common in the history of groups. In the second place, a crisis may be precipitated by conflicts between two groups, which would lower the food supplies and probably result in wars. In the third place, an unusual individual may arise within a group and break through the old conditions. But whether through the operation of physical changes in the environment, through the shock of warring social groups, or through the leadership of an unusual individual, crises do arise. They are more or less complete in their destructive results and in their opening of the way to new developments, either toward progress or toward regress ; and they thus make possible what is called "history." Of course these crises are feared by primitive peoples; they are undesirable experiences. The savage is almost always what Professor James called "tender-minded." He wants security, freedom from uncertainty; he wants a world in which all questions have been answered, which taxes his mind in no unusual way, a world from which all change has been eliminated, into which eternal changelessness has come!

Now out of the folkways of this primitive world we may trace all our modern institutions, our traditions of knowledge, our prejudices, our superstitions, and our general social attitudes. Those ways of organizing the common life impressed human experience with qualities that are held by some to be ineradicable, giving to "human nature" the quality of " unchangeableness. " Such a theory probably goes too far; but it is certain that "human nature" has been so definitely "set" by those experiences that the most profoundly critical shocks are necessary at times to produce constructive impression in favor of new modes of activity. Thousands of years have been required for the task of breaking through the absolute certainties of the primitive world into the dawning freedom of modern science with its attitude of endless infjuiry. The crises of history have slowly enabled the race to rise to the view that security may be less dependent upon "certainty" than upon the recognition of the endless round of change; and that progress depends upon escaping from "certainties" that are_jD.Q._longe_r true. These crises have many varied aspects in the social world; they may be economic, civic, hygienic, moral, or the like. But whatever the nature of their origin, they all represent problems, difficulties to be solved. The solution of problems implies the expression of a special kind of mental activity: critical intelligence. As we shall see in later sections, the most significant outcome of the experiences of crisis in human life has been the development of intelligence and the gradual building up of the intellectual attitude, as over against the attitude of habit and custom. History is, as we shall see, the story of the continuous movement of the race toward more efifective folkway controls, on the one hand, with an occasional experience of crisis, involving the possible application of critical intelligence in the reconstruction of stable conditions of existence.

Extent of the Folkway World. — In the beginning all human society was under the dominance of these folkway controls. All peoples seem to have passed through the folkway stage. Many have risen slightly above this stage in the course of centuries, organizing their larger social attainments upon what we shall later call the ''Oriental" level. Some groups have fallen more deeply into the folkway control, until their life has become almost wholly mechanical. Very few peoples have ever escaped from the folkways, taking the race as a whole. Geographically, whole continents seem still to be held in this sort of regimen. Psychologically, all children come up through this experience, for most families are still organized in the folkway fashion, and must ever be so organized, at least to some extent. Most neighborhoods are still largely primitive, feeling the pressures of old customs and traditions; small towns are likely to exhibit this level of development in some measure ; city neighborhoods tend to become ' ' provincial." There is a "fringe" in the mind of each of us that is largely traditional, firmly fixed in habit, as is bound to be the case; and there is a large mass of tradition, prejudice, custom, and intolerance in the background of oui common social organization. All this may seem very disagreeable doctrine, but it is the story of humanity's beginnings, whether of the race or of the child ; and so obvious is it that it was recognized by Aristotle as having fundamental meanings for the development of society. He calls attention to various phases of it. Perhaps the most significant comment he makes upon the fact is to the effect that the individual who otherwise than by mere accident is not a member of a social group is either a brute or a god ; all human beings are members of groups.

Escaping from the Folkways. — The race did escape from these primitive folkways; that is historic fact. And the long story of the struggles by which escape became possible, and by means of which new types of social organization have arisen, is the substance of our study. Here it is necessary to point out that escape from such authoritative control may mean two very different things. It may mean finding the larger freedom of a real world of intelligent living, or it may mean opportunity for the complete disintegration of individual and social living. Both these results have appeared in history. Yet there is no reaching the former result without running the risk of the latter. Freedom involves the chance to go wrong ; a " going right ' ' that is imposed from without is not freedom. And some ages have been like some individuals: they have struggled with uncertainties, having broken with their old customs and refusing to return to their former "certainties." Habit is strong upon us. Outside of habit lies the unknown, peopled with strange creatures, products of ignorance and fear. Yet at times we find ourselves compelled to go forward. Columbus, Luther, Galileo conquer their fears and dare the unknown. Impulse, energy, and initiative are strong within us under proper conditions, and we leave the old, we remake old institutions, we develop new programs, freedom, science, and democracy.

The first real escape from these old, primitive controls, as we shall see in detail later, took place in Greece. The Athenian Greeks were compelled by the conditions of their living to expand their folkways until these gave way under the strain. Confusion followed. The conservatives felt that the age was degenerate, lost to all reverence or control. And there were those, the Sophists, who took advantage of the conditions to make "confusion worse confounded." But always humanity seeks escape from confusion in the effort to reestablish order. Out of this breaking down of the old authority and the effort to set up new controls arose that most wonderful period in the history of the race, the Age of Pericles. But internal uncertainty was supplemented by external danger. Wars followed among the Greek states, — Sparta against Athens, Thebes against Sparta, Macedonia against Thebes, — until, under Alexander, there was peace for a moment. During periods of peace society has always tended to develop new folkways; but the age of Alexander was too brief for this, and there were too many diverse peoples to be coordinated. After Alexander, confusion again prevailed until the "coming of Rome." The Roman Empire introduced an age of organization, and Roman Law went far toward restoring a condition of universal order, with fixed modes of control. Indeed it may be said that, in some respects, this tendency went too far ; for one of the results of it was that men came to feel that life had lost all its personal value and significance, being purely mechanical. Into this mechanical civilization came primitive Christianity, with its message of the value of the personal life and the "infinite worth of the human soul." A great conflict appeared between the old mechanical conception and this new personal and moral conception. But the threat of barbarian invasion from the North made organization necessary; and Christianity took form in the Church, an institution that grew to be closely modelled on the plan of the empire itself. This more complete organization of the forces of civilization helped to carry some of the old ideals and values through the ages of barbarism and confusion, and helped to make possible the gradual assimilation of the Germanic tribes to the old civilization of the South. For a thousand years Europe was engaged in this task of converting the barbarians of the northern woods into citizens of the social order. The result of this thousand years of effort is seen in what we may call "medievalism," a great

MEANING OP HISTORY FOR EDUCATION 13

world order, worked out in theory and largely also in practice, inculcated into the habit of the people and made to appear as the final statement of the nature of the world and human life. This ''medievalism" was, in effect, a new and larger "folkway," fitted to the conditions of this new age.

But such a complete statement of the world is possible, just as the primitive folkways are possible, only so long as the conditions of living remain practically stable. Toward the end of the Middle Ages the world of physical existence was made over. New continents were discovered, new outlets for human energy found. Finally a new universe, the Copernican, took the place of the old universe, the Ptolemaic; and "medievalism" disintegrated before the eyes of its defenders. Men's interests shifted from "final" things to more personal experiences in society and nature. Reformation purged religion of some of its older absolutism; autocracy found itself challenged by the new political motives of democracy ; authority began to break down under the challenge of criticism and science ; and old social castes began to disappear as serfs became free workers in the growing industrial revolution. The Modern Age came in, the age of inquiry and science, of freedom and democracy, of uncertainty and courage. We are in the midst of that age, not at its end. "We are beset with its problems, not born into final folkways. We are developing the tools of understanding, not learning old answers.

Yet we tend all too easily either to fall back upon the past, and thus practically to bury ourselves once more in old folkway conditions, or else we deny all value to the past, and by sweeping away all its meanings we destroy ourselves on the bleak plains of ignorance. "History proves nothing," except how history has been made. The student of education needs to know human history, not primarily for the sake of facts as facts, but for the sake of the light thus thrown upon the great problems of civilization that still confront us and the processes involved in the solution of those problems, — which is the problem of education. The folkways know only the kind of education which is implicit in all custom-controlled, unthinking, unprogressive groups. The present must know a different kind of education. The intervening centuries have witnessed many experiments, many failures, and many advances. These are the serious meanings of the study of history, meanings not to be denied.

The story of these experiments, these failures, and these advances forms the main trail of this study. This trail does not follow a straight line through history, for the race has not known whither it was going, and experiment implies error and wandering and failure. Nor has this educational interest been isolated from other lines of human development. Human life is largely unified, and all lines of interest are interrelated and interwoven. The history of education is the story of the progress of the race in its search for new adjustments of its social life in the presence of changes in the natural and social environment. These adjustments, in so far as they have significance for us, have introduced new intellectual elements into the experience of the race. There has been a gradual accumulation of these intellectual treasures, in the way of the sciences, the arts, and the philosophies. In the very midst of these accumulations of experiences and their statement in intellectual terms, there has gradually developed, also, the theory of development, the theory of the process of development, the philosophy of development. That is to say, we are not only becoming aware, as the folkways were not, of the fact that civilization changes ; we are coming to an understanding of the methods of those changes, until we seem in a fair way to an actual mastery of those conditions and their ultimate control. At any rate, the history of education, which begins in the common, customary unintelligence of the primitive world, shows enough development of understanding and mastery of the conditions of developing experience to point hopefully to the coming of a day of actual intelligence, of science and control, of freed humanity and democracy; not, indeed, as final terms in a finished process, but as the moving ideal in the continuous struggle of humanity, an ideal not lightly won or held, easily lost, kept for the inspiration of the largely-remaining task only by the exercise of that "eternal vigilance" which is the price not alone of liberty but of all our other common democratic aspirations.

We turn now to the discussion of the actual processes of education in the primitive folkways, and then, breaking through their binding customs, we follow the trail until we come out upon the present, into the very midst of our social and educational problems, with the expectation that these studies will give us a clearer perspective as to the nature of those problemis, and, therefore, real help in their solution.^

1 Bibliographical materials for further reading or study along these lines are noted in the appendix.

Chapter II The Methods Of Education In The World Of The Folkways

If, now, we have come to have some understanding of the nature of the first organization of society under these folkway-bonds, we are in a position to undertake a study of the ways in which education went on in that group life. It is important that we should see these things rather clearly, because all our human progress has come out of these old conditions and because very much of that old follnvay life still clings to us. We have not yet escaped fully into a life of organized intelligence; we are still largely dominated by old folkway traditions and customs. We move slowly out and up from those lowly beginnings. Education is the most effective help in this long process. And if we are to understand the problem of education in the present, and that means the problem of civilization in the present, we must see how education began in the customs and habits of the primitive world, and then follow its essential windings and struggles into the complicated situation of to-day. The present is largely the accumulation of the folkways and folkway-changes of the past. If we are ever to escape from mere custom, mere folkway, into a life intelligently organized, we must learn the meaning of and the persistence of habit and custom in individual and social living.