Project work in education

Front matter

Class iJBjjoaa^

Book^ ' - Z

CopigiitNi

Part I Project Work As A Method

I. The Evolution of the Principles underlying THE Project Method i

11. The Transfer of the Principles to America . 27

III. Modern American Principles of Education . 36

IV. The Project Method in the Modern Public

V. Project Work in Trade Education .... 89

Part II Project Work As A Subject

VI. The Evolution of the Project Subject . . 99

VII. The Broader Conception of the Content of

THE Project Subject 117

VIII. The Necessity for More Direct Teaching of

THE Project Subject 140

IX. Summary 160

Outline 163

The life of man is a practical thing, not in any narrow material or utilitarian sense, but in the broadest spiritual meaning of practicality. His life is finally measured in terms of action or influence on action. His sensibilities and attitudes, his aversions and enthusiasms, gain their ultimate worth through the deeds to which they commit him. His intellectual life is merely academic or powerfully dynamic just to the extent that his thoughts and their arrangements accurately represent the realities with which his technique of life deals. The process of education, therefore, is and ought to be highly concerned with bringing his emotional and intellectual training into correct relation with his technique of working and living.

The wise educationist has perceived that this view of education and life is bound to reconstruct his conception of the means of giving educative experiences. He reahzes that the subjects which constitute the traditional courses of study are more or less isolated treatments of the real world whereby knowledge is resolved into separate parts by artificial though logical boimdaries. However useful these classifications of knowledge may be for scientific discovery or for keeping knowledge available for the uses of mature minds, it has become increasingly apparent to the psychologist of childhood that these groupings of information are not adapted to the most effective development of the immature and growing mind whose interests are quaHtatively different and whose experiences are more meager than those of the average adult.

The dissatisfaction of American educators with traditional teaching by isolated subjects has thus far expressed itself in two constructive movements which have in turn dominated the thinking of those concerned with elementary education.

The first of these two widespread reconstructive movements began with the advent of Herbartian doctrines which were reinterpreted, modified, and amplified in increasing but never completely satisfactory ways. The approximately isolated school subjects were to be tied together by "correlation.'' They were to be rescued from the humdrum of equal valuation through "coordination" and "concentration." First one subject and then another was to be made the center of the curriculum and the child's intellectual activities. In its practical operations in the classroom of the unexceptional teacher the movement proved an unsuccessful makeshift. It did not attack the existing difficulties in a sufficiently fundamental way. The original subdivisions of subject-matter were left untouched, and intervaluations and connections which the doctrines

vi of "correlation," "coordination," and "concentration " could evoke were too artificial and too slight to be effective.

The second of these far-reaching reconstructive efforts to avoid the artificial intellectual experiences consequent upon teaching young children by hardand-fast subjects was not disconnected from the first movement or uninfluenced by it. Its dominant methods, however, are so considerably different as to mark it off as a distinctive impulse and process in American education. Its developing presence is manifest by the terms currently used to describe its varied intentions and methods. Thus at an early stage the lack of intellectual initiative and resource in children is to be overcome by "teaching children to study." A little later the emotional dullness of the school is to be conquered by new methods of "motivation." Still later, instruction through the "problem" becomes important. And now we hear of "project teaching."

Each of these phrases indicates an effort to overcome some prevalent defect in the teaching situation. "Project teaching" is the more inclusive swing of a current movement which is trying to organize education on a practical psychological basis. The claim is made that it does this in many ways. A few of the major contentions may be mentioned, (i) The study of vitally related facts in isolation from each other is overcome by studying truths as required and related

vii by the need to solve problems connected with the execution of desirable projects. (2) Personal initiative in the finding of needed facts and discriminating judgment in determining the relative worth of facts found are two powers which are stimulated and developed by the perfectly natural need of the child to solve a problem or execute a project in which he is interested. These powers or abilities have been difficult to evoke under traditional methods of teaching.

(3) Worldng and living attitudes are provoked and corrected in connection with actual realities and working aspirations through project teaching. Thus there is no false development of the emotional life such as is the case when sentiment is created out of connection with unescapable truths and effective skills. Motivation becomes real rather than artificial, self-stimulated rather than externally imposed.

(4) The need of high standard skills in doing is readily appreciated and practice work heartily accepted by students when they see that faint skill, or no skill, leads to obvious failure and that ample and refined technique in execution leads to marked success.

The above are some of the claims for "project teaching." They are too important to be ignored. They promise a rectification of many defects. The fulfillment of that promise depends partly upon the soundness of the psychology assumed by the claimants, and partly upon the skill of the experimentalists

viii in providing an ample organization of appealing projects which will stimulate the child to make those acquisitions of knowledges, attitudes, and skills useful to superior adults living in a responsible society. The hope is not held out that everything necessary can be, or ought to be, taught through the project. Unquestionably the method will be more useful with young rather than with advanced students. With the former it will doubtless make haste slowly, but with the more mature, who can see connections with the swiftness of logical imagination, the over-employment of such a method may mean intellectual retardation. Every approach to teaching has its strengths and weaknesses, and the wise schoolmaster will heed both. In this novel revival of a very fundamental and ancient way of learning, which schools had forgotten, it is rather startling to note how much learning and teaching through the ^'project" promises. Yet little will come out of this extension of practical ways of teaching into the schools unless the historic backgrounds of its advent into school theory are understood, its psychological implications comprehended, its particular opportunities appreciated, and its concrete procedures mastered. The book presented has been written with these essential requirements in mind.

Henry Suzzallo

Seattle, Washmgton April 26, 1920

Preface

American education has been quite generally characterized by a tendency to seize upon and to overemphasize, temporarily, certain aspects of the total problem. This tendency to over-emphasis opens the way for a given aspect to become detached and to be regarded as more or less indepenc^nt. It thus gets out of perspective, and is likely to be looked upon as a separate, specific, new invention which is "in the fashion," and which one must therefore know and use; but which is, perhaps, to be discarded for the next innovation that comes along. Or, if it is not to be totally discarded, it is at least to become seriously submerged in the next new thing.

It is common for the progressive teacher who has been out of touch with the march of events for even a short time, to ask, upon returning, "Well, what's the cry now? " Then she hears that it is object teaching, or Grube method in arithmetic, or school excursions, or interest (motivation), or elimination of subject-matter, or standardization, or some other "ism" or "ation" which has caught the current for the time being. The result often is that the teacher in question plunges with her accumulated enthusiasm into the new thing/without relationship and balance, and tends to emphasize it as a more or less mechanical

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PREFACE

surface device, rather than as a flexible outgrowth of the deep principles in which it is really rooted.

It is not that the relation to principles is not seen by those who originated the idea. The whole process usually starts from the presence of the principle (whether intuitively or logically arrived at) in the mind of some thinker or group of thinkers. But the principle must get into action in a more or less concrete and detached manner, and in the minds of those who think less, the connection is very hkely to be lost.

The condition just discussed is evident in regard to the "project," "project method," "project teaching," or whatever other name may be given to the idea involved in such terms. This idea has grown out of the profound insight (sometimes intuitive, and sometimes logically conceived) on the part of a few leaders. Kept in right relationship to the problem of education as a whole, it has even greater possibiHties than have yet been claimed for it. Yet it is surely tending to become detached as a fashion, as a device, used more or less blindly, and without full realization of its significance and power.

Some teachers tend to look upon the "project" as a method — as a means of getting work done in almost any subject, as a device for interesting children in the subject, or for the correlation of subjects, etc. Other teachers look upon it as the central element in a new subject J or even as a new subject in itself, which sub-

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PREFACE

ject is, in some more or less indefinite way, to take the place of manual training and domestic science and art, under the name of "Industrial Arts" or other similar title.

What is the relation of the "project'' work to the problem of education as a whole? Is "project" work a method or a subject, or both? These questions must be discussed and answered for the rank and file of teachers if "project" work is not to be allowed to become detached in the nature of device, and gradually shelved for the next thing in fashion.

It seems possible to show that the so-called "project" work is both a method and a subject, and that the idea consistently appealed to could be made to interpret and to relate much that is hazy and apparently unrelated in American education. "Project teaching" has become a method because in all good schools ^^ project'' work in all subjects is a direct and inevitable result of the working-out of the most fundamental of modern educational principles. It is a subject because ^^ project'' material can be so organized as to fulfill a specific need not m^t by any other school subject. It is a need which has never been fully realized, expressed, or incorporated into the school program, but which must be definitely incorporated if democratic education is fully to succeed. To incorporate this subject will not necessarily involve an increase in the number of school subjects. Rightly handled it will tend to reduce rather than to increase

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PREFACE

overcrowding of the already full curriculum. The new subject will have relation to manual training and to domestic science and art, and it will have a relation to the newer "Industrial Arts" courses. But it will have a significance not specifically found in any one of these courses.

What the fundamental principles in modern education are, and how they make "project'^ work inevitable as a method in all subjects, it is one of the problems of this book to make clear. The other problem is that of showing the body of material for the new school subject, and of justifying its substitution for its more indefinite existing representatives.

PART I PROJECT WORK AS A METHOD

THE EVOLUTION OF THE PRINCIPLES UNDER- LYING THE PROJECT METHOD

One of the best ways to get principles in mind, to assimilate their real significance, and so to be able to use them to interpret a given situation, is that of tracing their development through their simple and gradually more and more complex stages. This plan provides the key to the significance of the principles, and furnishes the repetition necessary to a familiarity with them. Seeking, therefore, a grasp of the principles of modern education sufficiently comprehensive to clarify the idea of the place of the project in that education, it is worth while to turn to a brief consideration of the evolution of educational principles.^

But since the aim of the historical survey is just that of interpreting the modern project movement, it is necessary to go back only to some point of departure subsequent to which all of the essential prin-

* The historical material is largely from the work of Graves. I ciples are involved. Such a point is found in the eighteenth-century reforms advocated by Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Froebel, Herbart, and some of their less well-known disciples. Of course the members of this group of thinkers, who have practically "set the pace'^ for modern education, were in their turn influenced by other thinkers in the generations before them; but it is not necessary to the present purpose to outline those influences. It is only necessary to turn at once to the masters named — the masters whose wonderful, but largely intuitive, insight is being continually verified by the slower, but more finally reliable, methods of later scholarly research.

In the times referred ^to, the prevailing education, in spite of the efforts of certain far-seeing scholars of previous centuries, was Church-controlled, aristocratic, expensive, almost exclusively linguistic in content, and formal and individual in method. Stated more concretely it may be said that the Church still had a tendency to dominate even the State. Only the higher classes of the people were educated, education was not free, and the memoriter study of Latin and Greek classical literature provided the bulk of the curriculum. This literature was taught largely from the point of view of the individual, and in a mechanical (grammatical) manner, with much more regard for the mere form than for the content.

To-day education is largely State-controlled, non-sectarian, democratic, free, much enlarged and enriched in content, and less formal, mechanical, memoriter, and more social, thought-provoking, and scientific in method. It is the evolution from one of these conditions to the other with which this section is concerned as a brief preliminary to a later pointingout of the relationship of this evolution to the increasing prominence of the project idea.

The reforms of this evolution have been at least threefold in character. They have been sociological, psychological, and scientific. Defined very loosely the sociological movement is the trend toward regarding education as a social function, and the aim of education as social improvement or the so-called "social efficiency." The psychological movement is the trend toward basing education upon a clear knowledge about, and a correct utiHzation of, the mind of the learner. The scientific movement is the trend toward the introduction of natural science and its immediate usefulness as a substitute for the older linguistic education with its exaggerated formal discipline theory — its theory that through the study of language, power v/as definitely stored up and could be used in other chosen connections. The scientific movement also has another aspect in the development of scientific method, which method is slowly but surely making itself felt in all phases of human life. It leans toward the appHcation of that form of induction which makes intelligent use of the hypothesis, confirmed on the basis of actual data. As a method it is held to be convertible. That is to say it is considered usable in various connections for the solution of various types of problems.. Hence it represents that enlightened aspect of the formal discipline theory which claims transfer of method rather than transfer of specific power.

For the purposes of this discussion it is unnecessary to try to keep the types of reform (sociological, psychological, and scientific) entirely separated. Indeed, it is quite clear that it is impossible fully to separate them, since at times each becomes an aspect of the other. But in spite of this fact the three main lines may form a sort of supporting background upon which to weave the discussion.

A. ROUSSEAU

Focusing temporarily upon Rousseau and his theories, it is plain that the key to his influence and real importance lies in his intention to awaken the people from their apathy in regard to education as a remedy for social ills — as a universal means of propagation and realization of social programs. This position at once minimizes mere knowledge as the aim of education, and stands for doing, for efliciency in action; and it plans to use both knowing and doing in the service of a series of consciously held social ideals. In it there is implied the relation of philosophy and education. Unless social development is to be left to haphazard chance only, some one must have a conscious social philosophy — a conscious social program. Then education may be used as a means for the carrying-out of this program. The philosophy behind the program should, in so far as possible, of course, be backed up by a knowledge of systematized social facts (social science) ; but, in the long rim, what one attempts to do with the facts depends upon his social philosophy or set of more or less consciously formulated social ideals which he conceives to be consistent with themselves and with life. Sometimes, it is true, only certain leaders of a society are conscious of the real aims (ideals), and, by means of a subtle process of suggestion, lead the masses of the people, through the natural human tendency to uncritical concerted action (crowd psychology), to accept and to act upon them. The root of the action is still in thinking, in point of view, in ideals, in philosophy, but it is in the thinking of the few who manipulate the many.

It was this autocratic, aristocratic, unfair manipulation of the many by the few, which finally caused the revolt of Rousseau. His social ideals (his new social philosophy) became a revolt against civiKzation itself, even to the extent at first of repudiation of society, and return to extreme individualism and "state of nature." Later he softens this and finds the ideal state not in the "state of nature," but in a ^^ society where simplicity and natural wants control, and where aristocracy and artificiality do not exist" (Graves). But he had really to give up going even this far, and in his Emile merely tries to show "how education might minimize the drawbacks of civilization, and bring men as near to nature as possible" (Graves). The education advocated in the Emile is really aristocratic, contradictory, and in many ways absurd. Yet its influence, in its essence, has been toward the ideals which Rousseau earlier enunciated — toward the overthrow of aristocracy, artificiality, non-understanding, arrogance, and exploitation, and the encouragement of democracy, simplicity, cooperation, and the rights of the common man (individual), and of common men (social).

But it is, perhaps, for his intuitive psychological insight, and for his attempt to found pedagogy upon child psychology, that Rousseau is to be most admired. This intellectual theorist who could not put his own theories into operation; this father who refused to father his own children; this thinker whose thoughts often contradict each other, and often lead him into absurdities; this psychologizer whose times provided only a formal and a now discarded psychology — did, nevertheless, out of his intuitive appreciation of the child mind, out of his ability to see the world through the child's eyes, lay down the essentials of modern psychological procedure. In spite of the impracticability and the absurd contradictions in his total work, the truth lifts its head and is not to be mistaken.

His first and foremost psychological contribution 6 was emphasis upon the fact that although education was to be used to further a social program, yet it could not begin on the basis of that program — on the basis of adult preconceptions as to what the child should know and do in the future. It should rather take the child as a center, and begin on the basis of what is given in the child. First and foremost it should be recognized that the child is not merely a miniature adult, but that he has an individuality and a nature of his own. In Rousseau's time children were dressed as adults, given the manners of adults, and in every way considered from that point of view. He proposed that a shift be made to the point of view of the child; that the child be regarded as a child; and that it be recognized that the child reaches adulthood only after starting with an original equipment of instincts, impulses, and tendencies, and proceeding through a natural change or development, more or less definitely divided into periods. To this natural foundation, and to the natural process of development, physical, mental, and moral, education cannot (with the best results) be antagonistic. These things should be reckoned with. They should be seized upon and made alHes if education is to be most successful. The foundation must be recognized, and the process uninterfered with, if the best success is to come. The child must be shielded from being forced into adult methods of thinking and acting, since such methods are not suitable to him.

Rousseau also pointed out that the method of development from childhood to adulthood is through interaction of the natural child with his environment. The child is developed (changed) through his experience; and experience is defined as everything that happens to him through his contact with his environment. But while this plan recognizes the "natural" process of development in the child, and stands for non-interference with that process, its very essence is, nevertheless, a policy of interference with the direction of the development. That direction is to be toward those ideals which the adult, in his more or less conscious philosophy of life, holds for the child. The child is to be guided into those ideals, and not merely forced into them through an external fashioning, or plastering on from without. There is, -'rather, to be such manipulation of the environment that the interaction of the manipulated environment, with the recognized equipment and personality of the child, results in development in the channels desired. It is well to keep in mind this difference between (i ) a policy of recognition of original equipment, and of non-interference with natural processes of development, and (2) a policy of conscious, judicious, guiding interference, intended to direct the development toward certain ideals which the adult hopes may in time become consciously pursued by the child himself.

In thinking about what natural tendencies of the 8 child were to be reckoned with, to be seized upon and utilized, Rousseau in his original revolt against society, and his consequent return to extreme individualism, neglected one of the most primitive and important — perhaps the most important — of them all. This was the tendency instinctively and uncritically to act in concert with the group. To it the race in its early history probably owes its survival. In it is found the guarantee of future, more conscious and intelligent, sympathy and cooperation. It is characterized in itself, however, by an uncritical acceptance of suggestion, by an unthought acquiescence and crowd psychology. Uncontrolled it gives little hope of being the means of modern progress. Perhaps this is why Rousseau in the Emile put off an emphasis upon social conformity until very late in his pupil's life. It was natural for him to recognize and to pro^ mote individuality, and he discovered that founded in another deeply rooted, primitive tendency — the tendency to solve problems which seemed real problems to the individual, the tendency to vary instead of to conform, the tendency to invent, to meet new situations, the tendency to think. This thinking becomes the balance wheel for an uncritical conformity. In seizing upon it, Rousseau unerringly seized the key to the whole situation. He recognized its connection with motor activity, and with play; and threw his influence in the direction of these desirable allies of education.

As to the materials of education, Rousseau, in his preference for "nature," naturally turned to the environment. It was the soil, the crops, the trees, the animals, birds, and insects, which should furnish the experience necessary to development. This emphasis upon the utiKzation of the natural environment made Rousseau one of the first advocates of the scientific movement, as he was also one of the first advocates of the sociological and of the psychological movements. He became an advocate of a curriculum containing much natural science (not yet very well organized) in contrast to the prevailing linguistic content. He advocated the immediately useful, in contrast to dependence upon the more bookish, formal discipline idea. In addition to this he advocated the turning of this more practical content in the direction of industry, and thought of industrial training as a preparation for personal support, as well as for the development of social understanding and cooperation. But he neglected the past and tended to rob the child of his social inheritance of history, literature, language, and book knowledge in general.

Basedow, as a disciple of Rousseau, made more specific some of the positions of his master, and tried to get them into practice through his "philanthropinic" movement. He advocated non-sectarian. State-controlled education (sociological); education practical in content (scientific), and playful in method (psychological). The movement spread rapidly in

Europe, but the principles were early forgotten and the movement became a fad, and died out without permanent action; but it aided, in the long run, Rousseau's influence upon his more permanently successful followers, Pestalozzi, Froebel, and Herbart.

B. PESTALOZZI

Pestalozzi became interested in Rousseau^s writings, and set out to raise his son on the Rousselian principles. He, however, developed and modified the ideas involved, and was the first to get them at least partially into practice. He carried over the idea of education as a remedy for social ills — as a means for the realization of social programs, based upon a social philosophy. Thus he tended to emphasize both knowing and doing, and not only knowing and doing alone, but knowing and doing in the service of certain more or less consciously formulated ideals. Moreover, he made practical inclusion in his plan of all children, a thing which Rousseau had conceived only in his earlier theory. In Emile he was committed to aristocratic education — to the training of the gentleman, and of the woman who was to be his wife. Pestalozzi, on the other hand, not only theoretically, but also actually, took to his heart the children of the poor. Yet, while he was willing to spend himself in a philanthropic effort in behalf of the poor, it is not clear that Pestalozzi had in mind a real democratic education which would permit any person

II to fall or rise according to his abilities. He did define education as "the harmonious development of all the powers and capacities of the human being." But he seemed to leave a place for caste, and to feel that the natural powers of those who were in low stations were to be so treated as to fit them for those stations only. The poor were thus to be educated for their natural place in the industrial world. Also, education of the poor was conceived as a philanthropic undertaking, and did not rise to the proposition of a commonschool education for all, at the expense of the State. Children were to learn a trade, and at the same time, as a sort of side issue, they were to be given intellectual and moral advancement. He did not conceive of free public schools as we know them. His point of view, however, even going only so far as it did, was revolutionary for the times.

Pestalozzi's psychology, and his attempt to found a pedagogy upon it, were, as in the case of Rousseau, intuitive. In their conclusions the two had much in common. Pestalozzi followed his master in making the child the center, and in arguing that education must be with direct reference to the natural development of the whole child, physical, mental, and moral. The child was to be considered as a child and taught as a child, and not according to adult ways and preconceptions. His endowment and his natural processes of development were to be reckoned with; and with regard to the processes, the same policy of non- 12 interference was to be followed. Hence the beginning was to be in the child's natural equipment of instincts, impulses, and tendencies; and development was to proceed through its natural periods to its adult conclusion. But in its totality the result was to be the product of the interaction of two forces — the natural endowment, and the influence of the environment. Education was not to be a veneer mechanically plastered on from without. It was rather to be a developmental blend of external and internal factors in the total life of the child.

But, although carrying out the policy of non-interference with processes, Pestalozzi was necessarily committed to the policy of specific interference with the direction of the processes (just as Rousseau was). For he planned, by tactful manipulation of the environment, to influence child development in the direction of his social program. As has been said, he, in common with Rousseau, thought of this manipulation in relation to, and conditioned by, the -nature of the child; but he made a very significant original contribution by thinking of it also in relation to, and conditioned by, the nature of subject-matter (subject-matter being understood to be organized experience, used for the purposes of directing child development). He thought of this subject-matter as ''psychologized" (to use Dewey's word) — as itself manipulated, until it was ready for reception by the mind ol the learner. To this end he began the process of analysis of each subject of the curriculum into i^ts simplest elements, and of arranging these elements in order so that a ^'cumulative effect" could be produced by presenting the analyzed material step-by-step in a series of graded exercises. His *'ab abs'^ in reading, and his "tables of units" in arithmetic have been household words in America, and whatever portion of these specific applications may have passed away has not carried with it any of the real significance of the principle, for the principle remains to-day as one of the valued possessions of good teachers.