THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION
by
ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
Part 14 out of 18
in different parts of the world. The continental European two-class school
system, the American educational ladder, and the English tendency to
combine the two and use the best parts of each, have been reproduced in
the different national educational systems which have been created by the
various political governments of the world. The continental European idea
of a centralized ministry for education, with an appointed head or a
cabinet minister in control, has also been widely copied. The Prussian
two-class plan has been most influential among the Teutonic and Slavic
peoples of Europe, and has also deeply influenced educational development
among the Japanese; English ideas have been extensively copied in the
English self-governing dominions; and the American plan has been clearly
influential in Canada, the Argentine, and in China. The French centralized
plan for organization and administration has been widely copied in the
state educational organizations of the Latin nations of Europe and South
America. In a general way it may be stated that the more democratic the
government of a nation has become the greater has been the tendency to
break away from the two-class school system, to introduce more of an
educational ladder, and to bring in more of the English conception of
granting to localities a reasonable amount of local liberty in educational
affairs.
SPREAD OF THE STATE CONTROL IDEA AMONG NORTHERN NATIONS. The development
of schools under the control of the government, and the extension of state
supervision to the existing religious schools, took place in the different
cantons of Switzerland, and in Holland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden,
somewhat contemporaneously with the development described for the five
type nations. The work of Pestalozzi and Fellenberg, and of their
disciples and followers, had given an early impetus to the establishment
of schools and teacher-training in the Swiss cantons, most being done in
the German-speaking portions.
In Holland, where the Reformation zeal for schools largely died out in the
eighteenth century, the organization of the "Society of Public Good," in
1784, by a Mennonite clergyman, did much to awaken a new interest in
schools for the people and to inaugurate a new movement for educational
organization. In 1795 a revolution took place in Holland, a republic was
established, and the extension of educational advantages followed. From
1806 to 1815 Holland was under the rule of Napoleon. A school law of 1806
forms the basis of public education in Holland. This asserted the
supremacy of the State in education, and provided for state inspection of
schools. In 1812 the French scientist, M. Cuvier, reported to Napoleon
that there were 4451 schools in little Holland, and that one tenth of the
total population was in school. In 1816 a normal school was established at
Haarlem. Both the constitutions of 1815 and 1848 provided for state
control of education, which has been steadily extended since the beginning
of the revival in 1784. Today Holland provides a good system of public
instruction for its people.
[Illustration: Fig. 210. THE SCHOOL SYSTEM OF DENMARK]
In Denmark and Sweden the development of state schools has been worked
out, much as in England, in cooeperation with the Church, and the Church
still assists the State in the administration and supervision of the
school systems which were eventually evolved. In each of these countries,
too, the continental two-class school system has been somewhat modified by
an upward movement of the transfer point between the two and the
development of people's high schools, so as to produce a more democratic
type of school and afford better educational opportunities to all classes
of the population. The annexed diagram, showing the organization of
education in Denmark, is typical of this modification and extension.
Finland should also be classed with these northern nations in matters of
educational development. Lutheran ideas as to religion and the need for
education took deep hold there at an early date (p. 297). A knowledge of
reading and the Catechism was made necessary for confirmation as early as
1686, and democratic ideas also found an early home among this people. In
consequence the Finns have for long been a literate people. The law making
elementary education a function of the State, however, dates only from
1866, and secondary education was taken over from the ecclesiastical
authorities only in 1872.
Similarly, Scotland, another northern nation, began schools as a phase of
its Reformation fervor. During the eighteenth century the parish schools,
created by the Acts of 1646 (R. 179; p. 335) and 1696, proved
insufficient, and voluntary schools were added to supplement them.
Together these insured for Scotland a much higher degree of literacy than
was the case in England. The final state organization of education in
Scotland dates from the Scottish Education Act of 1872.
[Illustration: FIG. 211. THE PROGRESS OF LITERACY IN EUROPE BY THE CLOSE
OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY]
The map reproduced here, showing the progress of general education by the
close of the nineteenth century, as measured by the spread of the ability
to read and write, reveals at a glance the high degree of literacy of the
northern Teutonic and mixed Teutonic nations. It was among these nations
that the Protestant Reformation ideas made the deepest impression; it was
in these northern States that the Protestant elementary vernacular school,
to teach reading and religion, attained its earliest start; it was there
that the school was taken over from the Church and erected into an
effective national instrument at an early date; and it was these nations
which had been most successful, by the close of the nineteenth century, in
extending the elements of education to all and thus producing literate
populations.
THE STATE-CONTROL IDEA IN THE SOUTH AND EAST OF EUROPE. As we pass to the
south and east of Europe we pass not only to lands which remained loyal to
the Roman Church, or are adherents of the Greek Church, and hence did not
experience the Reformation fervor with its accompanying zeal for
education, but also to lands untouched by the French-Revolution movement
and where democratic ideas have only recently begun to make any progress.
Greece alone forms an exception to this statement, a constitutional
government having been established there in 1843. Removed from the main
stream of European civilization, these nations have been influenced less
by modern forces; the hold of the Church on the education of the young has
there been longest retained; and the taking-over of education by the State
has there been longest deferred. In consequence, the schools provided have
for long been inadequate both in number and scope, and the progress of
literacy and democratic ideas among the people has been slow.
Despite the beginnings made by Maria Theresa (p. 475) in the late
eighteenth century, Austria dropped backward to a low place in matters of
education during the period of reaction following the Napoleonic wars, and
the real beginnings of state elementary-schools there date from the law of
1867. The beginnings in Hungary date from 1868. The beginnings of other
state elementary school systems are: Greece, 1823; Portugal, 1844; Spain,
1857; Roumania, 1859; Bulgaria, 1881; and Serbia, 1882. In many of these
States, despite early beginnings, but little real progress has even yet
been made in developing systems of national education that will provide
gratuitous elementary-school training for all and inculcate the national
spirit. In many of these States the illiteracy of the people is still
high, [1] the people are poor, the nations are economically backward, the
military and clerical classes still dominate, and intelligent and
interested governments have not as yet been evolved.
In Russia, though Catherine II and her successors made earnest efforts to
begin a system of state education, the period following Napoleon was one
of extreme repressive reaction. The military class and the clergy of the
Greek Church joined hands in a government interested in keeping the people
submissive and devout. In consequence, at the time of the emancipation of
the serfs, in 1861, it was estimated that not one per cent of the total
population of Russia was then under instruction, and the ratio of
illiteracy by the close of the nineteenth century was the highest in
Europe outside of Spain, Portugal, and the Balkan States.
THE STATE-CONTROL IDEA IN THE ENGLISH SELF-GOVERNING DOMINIONS. The
English and French settlers in Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritime Provinces
of Canada brought the English and French parochial-school ideas from their
home-lands with them, but these home conceptions were materially modified,
at an early date, by settlers from the northern States of the American
Union. These introduced the New England idea of state control and public
responsibility for education. In part copying precedents recently
established in the new American States, as an outcome of the struggles
there to establish free, tax-supported, and state-controlled schools, both
Ontario and Quebec early began the establishment of state systems of
education for their people. A superintendent of education was appointed in
Ontario in 1844, and the Common School Act of 1846 laid the foundation of
the state school system of the Province. In the law of 1871 a system of
uniform, free, compulsory, and state-inspected schools was definitely
provided for. Quebec, in 1845, made the ecclesiastical parish the unit for
school administration; in 1852 appointed government inspectors for the
church schools; and in 1859 provided for a Council of Public Instruction
to control all schools in the Province. The Dominion Act of 1867 left
education, as in the United States, to the several Provinces to control,
and state systems of education, though with large liberty in religious
instruction, or the incorporation of the religious schools into the state
school systems, have since been erected in all the Canadian Provinces.
Following American precedents, too, a thoroughly democratic educational
ladder has almost everywhere been created, substantially like that shown
in the Figure on page 708.
In Australia and New Zealand education has similarly been left to the
different States to handle, but a state centralized control has been
provided there which is more akin to French practice than to English
ideas. In each State, primary education has been made free, compulsory,
secular, and state-supported. The laws making such provision in the
different States date from 1872, in Victoria; 1875, in Queensland; 1878,
in South Australia, West Australia, and New Zealand; and 1880, in New
South Wales. Secondary education has not as yet been made free, and many
excellent privately endowed or fee-supported secondary schools, after the
English plan, are found in the different States.
In the new Union of South Africa all university education has been taken
over by the Union, while the existing school systems of the different
States are rapidly being taken over and expanded by the state governments,
and transformed into constructive instruments of the States.
THE STATE-CONTROL IDEA IN THE SOUTH AMERICAN STATES. As we have seen in
Chapter XX, the spirit of nationality awakened by the French Revolution
spread to South America, and between 1815 and 1821 all of Spain's South
American colonies revolted, declared their independence from the mother
country, and set up constitutional republics. Brazil, in 1822, in a
similar manner severed its connections from Portugal. The United States,
through the Monroe Doctrine (1823), helped these new States to maintain
their independence. For approximately half a century these States,
isolated as they were and engaged in a long and difficult struggle to
evolve stable forms of government, left such education as was provided to
private individuals and societies and to the missionaries and teaching
orders of the Roman Church. After the middle of the nineteenth century,
the new forces stirring in the modern world began to be felt in South
America as well, and, after about 1870, a well-defined movement to
establish state school systems began to be in evidence.
The Argentine constitution of 1853 had directed the establishment of
primary schools by the State, but nothing of importance was done until
after the election of Dr. Sarmiento as President, in 1868. Under his
influence an American-type normal school was established, teachers were
imported from the United States, and liberal appropriations for education
were begun. In 1873 a general system of national aid for primary education
was established, and in 1884 a new law laid the basis of the present state
school system. Though some earlier beginnings had been made in some of the
other South American nations, Argentine is regarded as the leader in
education among them. This is largely due to the democratic nature of the
government which, in connection with the deep interest in education of
President Sarmiento, [2] found educational expression in the creation of
an American-type educational ladder, as the accompanying diagram shows.
Large emphasis has been placed on scientific and practical studies in the
secondary _colegios_. The normal school has been given large importance,
and made a parallel and connecting link in the educational ladder between
the primary schools and the universities. The Argentine school system,
probably due to American influences acting through President Sarmiento,
forms an exception to the usual South American state school system, as
nearly all the other States have followed the French model and created a
European two-class school system.
[Illustration: FIG. 212. THE SCHOOL SYSTEM OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC]
In Chili, the constitution of 1833 declared education to be of supreme
importance, and a normal school was established in Santiago, as early as
1840. The basic law for the organization of a state system of primary
instruction, however, dates from 1860, and the law organizing a state
system of secondary and higher education from 1872.
In Peru, an educational reform movement was inaugurated in 1876, but the
war with Chili (1879-84) checked all progress. In 1896 an Educational
Commission was appointed to visit the United States and Europe, and the
law of 1901 marked the creation of a ministry for education and the real
beginnings of a state school system.
The Brazilian constitution of 1824 left education to the several States
(twenty and one Federal District), and a permissive law of 1827 allowed
the different States to establish schools. It was not until 1854, however,
that public schools were organized in the Federal District, and these mark
the real beginning of state education in Brazil. Since then the
establishment of state schools has gradually extended to the coast States,
and inland with the building of railway lines and the opening-up of the
interior to outside influences. The basis for state-controlled education
has now been laid in all the States, but the attendance at the schools as
yet is small. [3]
In some of the other South American States, such as Bolivia, Ecuador, and
Venezuela, but little progress in extending state-controlled schools has
as yet been made, and the training of the young is still left largely to
private effort, the Church, and the religious orders. The illiteracy in
all the South American States is still high, in part due to the large
native populations, and much remains to be done before education becomes
general there. The state-control idea, though, has been definitely
established in principle in these countries. With the establishment of
stable governments, the building of railroads and steamship lines, and the
development of an important international commerce--events which there
have characterized the first two decades of the twentieth century--early
and important progress in state educational organization and in the
extension of educational advantages may be expected.
THE STATE-SCHOOL IDEA IN EASTERN ASIA. In 1854 Admiral Perry effected the
treaty of friendship with Japan which virtually opened that nation to the
influences of western civilization, and one of the most wonderful
transformations of a people recorded in history soon began. In 1867 a new
Mikado came to the throne, and in 1868 the small military class, which had
ruled the nation for some seven hundred years, gave up their power to the
new ruler. A new era in Japan, known as the _Meiji_, dates from this
event. In 1871 the centuries-old feudal system was abolished, and all
classes in the State were declared equal before the law. This same year
the first newspaper in Japan was begun. In 1872 the first educational code
for the nation was promulgated by the Mikado. This ordered the general
establishment of schools, the compulsory education of the people (R. 334
a), and the equality of all classes in educational matters. Students were
now sent abroad, especially to Germany and the United States; foreign
teachers were imported; an American normal-school teacher was placed in
charge of the newly opened state normal school; the American class method
of instruction was introduced; schoolbooks and teaching apparatus were
prepared, after American models; middle schools were organized in the
towns; higher schools were opened in the cities; and the old Academy of
Foreign Languages was evolved (1877) into the University of Tokyo. In 1884
the study of English was introduced into the courses of the public
schools. In 1889 a form of constitution was granted to the people, and a
parliament established. [4]
[Illustration: FIG. 213. THE JAPANESE TWO-CLASS SCHOOL SYSTEM.]
Adapting the continental European idea of a two-class school system to the
peculiar needs of the nation, the Japanese have worked out, during the
past half-century, a type of state-controlled school system which has been
well adapted to their national needs. [5] Instruction in national
morality, based on the ancestral virtues, brotherly affection, and loyalty
to the constitution and the ruling class (R. 334 b-c), has been well
worked out in their schools. Though the government has remained largely
autocratic in form, the Japanese have, however, retained throughout all
their educational development the fundamental democratic principle
enunciated in the Preamble to the Educational Code of 1872 (R. 334 a),
_viz_., that every one without distinction of class or sex shall receive
primary education at least, and that the opportunity for higher education
shall be open to all children. So completely has the education of the
people been conceived of as one of the most important functions of the
State that all education has been placed under a centralized state
control, with a Cabinet Minister in charge of all administrative matters
connected with the education of the nation.
[Illustration: FIG. 214. THE CHINESE EDUCATIONAL LADDER]
Since near the end of the nineteenth century what promises to be an even
more wonderful transformation of a people-political, social, scientific,
and industrial--has been taking place in China (R. 335). A much more
democratic type of national school system than that of the Japanese has
been worked out, and this the new (1912) Republic of China is rapidly
extending in the provinces, and making education a very important function
of the new democratic national life. [6] In the beginning, when displacing
the centuries-old Confucian educational system, [7] the Chinese adopted
Japanese ideas and organized their schools (1905) somewhat after the
Japanese model. Later on, responding to the influence of many American-
educated Chinese and to the more democratic impulses of the Chinese
people, the new government established by the Republic of 1912 changed the
school system at first established so as to make it in type more like the
American educational ladder. The new Chinese school system is shown in the
drawing on page 721. The university instruction is modern and excellent,
and the addition of the cultural and scientific knowledge worked out in
western Europe to the intellectual qualities of this capable people can
hardly fail to result, in time, in the production of a wonderful modern
nation, [8] probably in one of the greatest nations of the mid-twentieth
century.
In 1891 the independent Kingdom of Siam, [9] awakened from its age-long
isolation by new world influences, sent a prince to Europe to study and
report on the state systems of education maintained there. As a result of
his report a department of public education was created, which later
evolved into a ministry of public instruction, and elementary schools were
opened by the State in the thirteen thousand old Buddhist temples. These
schools offered a two-year course in Siamese, followed by a five-year
course in English, given by imported English teachers. Schools for girls
were provided, as well as for boys. Since this beginning, higher schools
of law, medicine, agriculture, engineering, and military science have been
added, taught largely by imported English and American teachers. In
consequence of the new educational organization, and the new influences
brought in, the whole life of this little kingdom has been transformed
during the past three decades.
GENERAL ACCEPTANCE OF THE STATE-FUNCTION CONCEPTION. The different
national school systems, the creation of which has so far been briefly
described, are typical and represent a great world movement which
characterized the latter half of the nineteenth century. This movement is
still under way, and increasing in strength. Other state school
organizations might be added to the list, but those so far given are
sufficient. Beginning with the nations which were earliest to the front of
the onward march of civilization, the movement for the state control of
education, itself an expression of new world forces and new national
needs, has in a century spread to every continent on the globe. To-day
progressive nations everywhere conceive of education for their people as
so closely associated with their social, political, and industrial
progress, and their national welfare and prosperity (R. 336), that the
control of education has come to be regarded as an indispensable function
of the State. State constitutions (R. 333) have accordingly required the
creation of comprehensive state school systems; legislators have turned to
education with a new interest; bulky state school codes have given force
to constitutional mandates; national literacy has become a goal; the
diffusion of political intelligence by means of the school has naturally
followed the extension of the suffrage; while the many new forces and
impulses of a modern world have served to make the old religious type of
education utterly inadequate, and to call for national action to a degree
never conceived of in the days when religious, private, and voluntary
educational effort sufficed to meet the needs of the few who felt the call
to learn. What a few of the more important of these new nineteenth-century
forces have been, which have so fundamentally modified the character and
direction of education, it may be worth while to set forth briefly, before
proceeding further.
II. NEW MODIFYING FORCES
THE ADVANCE OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE. The first and most important of these
nineteenth-century forces, and the one which preceded and conditioned all
the others, was the great increase of accurate knowledge as to the forces
and laws of the physical world, arising from the application of scientific
method to the investigation of the phenomena of the material world (R.
337). During the nineteenth century the intellect of man was stimulated to
activity as it had not been before since the days when little Athens was
the intellectual center of the world. What the Revival of Learning was to
the classical scholars of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the
movement for scientific knowledge and its application to human affairs was
to the nineteenth. It changed the outlook of man on the problems of life,
vastly enlarged the intellectual horizon, and gave a new trend to
education and to scholarly effort. What the scholars of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries had been slowly gathering together as interesting
and classified phenomena, the scientific scholars of the nineteenth
century organized, interpreted, expanded, and applied. Since the day of
Copernicus (p. 386) and Newton (p. 388) a growing appreciation of the
permanence and scope of natural law in the universe had been slowly
developing, and this the scholars of the nineteenth century fixed as a
principle and applied in many new directions. A few of the more important
of these new directions may profitably be indicated here.
[Illustration: FIG. 215. BARON JUSTUS VON LIEBIG (1803-73)]
In the domain of the physical sciences very important advances
characterized the century. Chemistry, up to the end of the first quarter
of the nineteenth century largely a collection of unrelated facts, was
transformed by the labors of such men as Dalton (1766-1844), Faraday
(1791-1867), and Liebig into a wonderfully well-organized and vastly
important science. Liebig carried chemistry over into the study of the
processes of digestion and the functioning of the internal organs, and
reshaped much of the instruction in medicine. Liebig is also important as
having opened, at Giessen, in 1826, the first laboratory instruction in
chemistry for students provided in any university in the world. By many
subsequent workers chemistry has been so applied to the arts that it is
not too much to say that a knowledge of chemistry underlies the whole
manufacturing and industrial life of the present, and that the degree of
industrial preeminence held by a nation to-day is largely determined by
its mastery of chemical processes.
Physics has experienced an equally important development. It, too, at the
beginning of the nineteenth century was in the preliminary state of
collecting, cooerdinating, and trying to interpret data. In a century
physics has, by experimentation and the application of mathematics to its
problems, been organized into a number of exceedingly important sciences.
In dynamics, heat, light, and particularly in electricity, discoveries and
extension of previous knowledge of the most far-reaching significance have
been made. What at the beginning of the nineteenth century was a small
textbook study of natural philosophy has since been subdivided into the
two great sciences of physics and chemistry, and these in turn into
numerous well-organized branches. Today these are taught, not from
textbooks, but in large and costly laboratories, while manufacturing
establishments and governments now find it both necessary and profitable
to maintain large scientific institutions for chemical and physical
research.
The great triumph of physics, from the point of view of the reign of law
in the world of matter, was the experimental establishment (1849) of the
fundamental principle of the conservation of energy. This ranks in
importance in the world of the physical sciences with the theory of
evolution in the biological. The perfection of the spectroscope (1859)
revealed the rule of chemical law among the stars, and clinched the theory
of evolution as applied to the celestial universe. The atomic theory of
matter [10] was an extension of natural laws in another direction. In 1846
occurred the most spectacular proof of the reign of natural law which the
nineteenth century witnessed. Two scientists, in different lands, [11]
working independently, calculated the orbit of a new planet, Neptune, and
when the telescope was turned to the point in the heavens indicated by
their calculations the planet was there. It was a tremendous triumph for
both mathematics and astronomy. Such work as this meant the firm
establishment of scientific accuracy, and the ultimate elimination of the
old theories of witchcraft, diabolic action, and superstition as
controlling forces in the world of human affairs.
The publication by Charles Lyell (1797-1875) of his _Principles of
Geology_, in 1830, marked another important advance in the knowledge of
the operations of natural law in the physical world, and likewise a
revolution in thinking in regard to the age and past history of the earth.
Few books have ever more deeply influenced human thinking. The old
theological conception of earthly "catastrophes" [12] was overthrown, and
in its place was substituted the idea of a very long and a very orderly
evolution of the planet. Geology was created as a new science, and out of
this has come, by subsequent evolution, a number of other new sciences
[13] which have contributed much to human progress.
[Illustration: FIG. 216. CHARLES DARWIN (1809-82)]
Another of the great books of all time appeared in 1859, when Charles
Darwin (1809-1882) published the results of thirty years of careful
biological research in his _Origin of Species_. This swept away the old
theory of special and individual creation which had been cherished since
early antiquity; and substituted in its place the reign of law in the
field of biological life. This substitution of the principle of orderly
evolution for the old theory of special creation marked another forward
step in human thinking, [14] and gave an entirely new direction to the old
study of natural history. [15] In the hands of such workers as Wallace
(1823-1913), Asa Gray (1810-88), Huxley (1825-94), and Spencer (1820-1903)
it now proved a fruitful field.
In 1856 the German Virchow (1821-1902) made his far-reaching contribution
of cellular pathology to medical science; between 1859 and 1865 the French
scientist Pasteur (1822-95) established the germ theory of fermentation,
putrefaction, and disease; about the same time the English surgeon Lister
(1827-1914) began to use antiseptics in surgery; and, in 1879, the
bacillus of typhoid fever was found. Out of this work the modern sciences
of pathology, aseptic surgery, bacteriology, and immunity were created,
and the cause and mode of transmission of the great diseases [16] which
once decimated armies and cities--plague, cholera, malaria, typhoid,
typhus, yellow fever, dysentery--as well as the scourges of tuberculosis,
diphtheria, and lockjaw, have been determined. The importance of these
discoveries for the future welfare and happiness of mankind can scarcely
be overestimated. Sanitary science arose as an application of these
discoveries, and since about 1875 a sanitary and hygienic revolution has
taken place.
[Illustration: FIG. 217 LOUIS PASTEUR (1822-95)]
The above represent but a few of the more important of the many great
scientific advances of the nineteenth century. What the thinkers of the
eighteenth century had sowed broadcast through a general interest in
science, their successors in the nineteenth reaped as an abundant harvest.
The three great master keys of science--the higher mathematics, the
principle of the conservation of energy, and the principle of orderly
evolution of life according to law--so long unknown to man, had at last
been discovered, and, with these in their possession, men have since
opened up many of the long-hidden secrets of cause and growth and form and
function, both in the heavens and on the earth, and have revealed to a
wondering world the prodigious and eternal forces of an orderly universe.
The fruitfulness of the Baconian method (p. 390) in the hands of his
successors has far surpassed his most sanguine expectations.
THE APPLICATIONS OF SCIENCE AND THE RESULT. All this work, as has been
frequently pointed out (R. 338), had of necessity to precede the
applications of science to the arts and to the advancement of the comforts
and happiness of mankind. The new studies soon caught the attention of
younger scholars; special schools for their study began to be established
by the middle of the nineteenth century; [17] enthusiastic students of
science began forcefully to challenge the centuries-long supremacy of
classical studies; funds for scientific research began to be provided; the
printing-press disseminated the new ideas; and thousands of applications
of science to trade and industry and human welfare began to attract public
attention and create a new demand for schools and for a new extension of
learning. During the past century the applications of this new learning to
matters that intimately touch the life of man have been so numerous and so
far-reaching in their effects that they have produced a revolution in life
conditions unlike anything the world ever experienced before. In all the
days from the time of the Crusades to the end of the Napoleonic Wars the
changes in living effected were less, both in scope and importance, than
have taken place in the century since Napoleon was sent to Saint Helena.
THIS TRANSFORMATION WE CALL THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION. This, as we pointed
out earlier (p. 492), began in England in the late eighteenth century.
France did not experience its beginnings until after the Napoleonic Wars,
though after about 1820 the transformations there were rapid and far-
reaching. In the United States it began about 1810-15, and between 1820
and 1860 the industrial methods of the people of the northeastern quarter
of the United States were revolutionized. Between 1860 and 1900 they were
revolutionized again. In the German States the transformation began about
1840, though it did not reach its great development until after the
establishment of the Empire, in 1871. Since the middle of the nineteenth
century, with the development of factories, the building of railroads, and
the extension of steamship lines, even the most remote countries have been
affected by the new forces. Nations long primitive and secluded have been
modernized and industrialized; century-old trades and skills have been
destroyed by machinery; the old home and village industries have been
replaced by the factory system; cities for manufacturing and trade have
everywhere experienced a rapid development; and even on the farm the
agricultural methods of bygone days have been replaced by the discoveries
of science and the products of invention. Almost nothing is done to-day as
it was a century ago, and only in remote places do people live as they
used to live. The nature and extent of the change which has been wrought,
and some estimate as to its effect upon educational procedure, may perhaps
be better comprehended if we first contrast living conditions before and
after this industrial transformation.
[Illustration: FIG. 218. MAN POWER BEFORE THE DAYS OF STEAM
Foot power a century ago. (From a cut by Anderson, America's first
important engraver)]
LIVING CONDITIONS A CENTURY AGO. A century ago people everywhere lived
comparatively simple lives. The steam engine, while beginning to be put to
use (p. 493), had not as yet been extensively applied and made the willing
and obedient slave of man. The lightning had not as yet been harnessed,
and the now omnipresent electric motor was then still unknown. Only in
England had manufacturing reached any large proportions, and even there
the methods were somewhat primitive. Thousands of processes which we now
perform simply and effectively by the use of steam or electric power, a
century ago were done slowly and painfully by human labor. The chief
sources of power were then man and horse power. The home was a center in
which most of the arts and trades were practiced, and in the long winter
evenings the old crafts and skills were turned to commercial account. What
every family used and wore was largely made in the home, the village, or
the neighborhood.
Travel was slow and expensive and something only the well-to-do could
afford. To go fifty miles a day by stage-coach, or one hundred by sailing
packet on the water, was extraordinarily rapid. "One could not travel
faster by sea or by land," as Huxley remarked, "than at any previous time
in the world's history, and King George could send a message from London
to York no faster than King John might have done." The steam train was not
developed until about 1825, and through railway lines not for a quarter-
century longer. It took four days by coach from London to York (188
miles); six weeks by sailing vessel from Southampton to Boston; and six
months from England to India. People moved about but little. A journey of
fifty miles was an event--for many something not experienced in a
lifetime. To travel to a foreign land made a man a marked individual.
Benjamin Franklin tells us that he was frequently pointed out on the
streets of Philadelphia, then the largest city in the United States, as a
man who had been to Europe. George Ticknor has left us an interesting
record (R. 339) of his difficulties, in finding anything in print in the
libraries of the time, about 1815, or any one who could tell him about the
work of the German universities, which he, as a result of reading Madame
de Stael's book on Germany, was desirous of attending. [18]
Everywhere it was a time of hard work and simple living. Every youngster
had to become useful at an early age. The work of life, in town or on the
farm, required hard and continual labor from all. Farm machinery had not
been perfected, and hand labor performed all the operations of ploughing
and sowing, reaping and harvesting. With the introduction of the factory
system, men, women, and children were used to operate machinery, children
being apprenticed to the mills at about eight years of age and working ten
to twelve hours a day. This soon worked the life out of human beings, and
in consequence sickness, wretchedness, juvenile delinquency, ignorance,
drunkenness, pauperism, and crime increased greatly as cities grew and the
factory system drew thousands from the farms to the towns. When Queen
Victoria came to the throne (1837) one person in twelve in England was a
pauper, and the lot of the poor was wretched in the extreme. In cities
they lived in cellars and basements and hovels. There was practically no
sanitation or drainage. Streets and alleys were filthy. Graveyards were
commonly located in the heart of a town. A pure water-supply through
water-mains was unknown. Pumps and water-carriers supplied nearly all the
needs. There was in consequence much sickness, and such diseases as
typhoid and malaria ran rampant.
[Illustration: FIG. 219. THRESHING WHEAT A CENTURY AGO
(After a woodcut by Jacque, in _L'Illustration_)]
CHANGE IN LIVING CONDITIONS TO-DAY. In a century all has been changed.
Steam and electricity and sanitary science have transformed the world; the
railway, steamship, telegraph, cable, and printing-press have made the
world one. The output of the factory system has transformed living and
labor conditions, even to the remote corners of the world; sanitary
science and sanitary legislation have changed the primitive conditions of
the home and made of it a clean and comfortable modern abode; men and
women have been freed from an almost incalculable amount of drudgery and
toil, and the human effort and time saved may now be devoted to other
types of work or to enjoyment and learning. Thousands who once were needed
for menial toil on farm or in shop and home are now freed for employment
in satisfying new wants and new pleasures that mankind has come to know,
[19] or may devote their time and energies to forms of service that
advance the welfare of mankind or minister to the needs of the human
spirit.
[Illustration: FIG. 220. A CITY WATER-SUPPLY ABOUT 1830
(After a lithograph by Bellange)]
Labor-saving devices and the applications of scientific work have touched
all phases of life and labor of men and women, and under modern methods of
transportation go everywhere. The American self-binding reaper is found in
the grain-fields of Russia and the Argentine; one may buy cans of kerosene
and tinned meats and vegetables almost anywhere in the world today; sewing
machines and phonographs add to the comfort and pleasure of the African
native and the dweller on the Yukon; "milady" in Siam uses cosmetics
manufactured for the devotees of fashion in Paris; the Sultan of Sulu
wears an elegant American wrist-watch; the Dahomeny tribesman has a safety
razor, and a mirror of French plate; the Persian dandy wears shoes and
haberdashery made in the United States; old Chinamen up the Yellow River
Valley read their Confucius by the light of an Edison Mazda; the steam
train wends its way up from Jaffa to Jerusalem; the gasoline power boat
chugs its course up the Nile the Pharaohs sailed; and modern surgical
methods and instruments are used in the hospitals of Manila and Singapore,
Cairo and Cape Town. A rupee spent for thread at Calcutta starts the
spindles going in Manchester; a new calico dress for a Mandalay belle
helps the cotton-print mills of Leeds; a new carving set for a Fiji
Islander means more labor for some cutlery works in Sheffield; a half-
dollar for a new undershirt in Panama means increased work for a cotton
mill in New England; a new blanket called for against the winter's cold of
Siberia moves the looms of some Rhode Island town; a dime spent for a box
of matches in Alaska means added labor and profit for a match factory in
California; a new bath tub in Paraguay spells increased output for a
factory at Milan or Turin; and the Christmas wishes of the children in
Brazil give work to the toy factories of Nueremberg.
Trains and huge steamers move today along the great trade routes of the
modern world, exchanging both the people and their products. The holds of
the ships are filled with coal and grain and manufactured implements and
commodities of every description, while their steerage space is crowded
with modern Marco Polos and Magellans going forth to see the world. The
Hindoo walks the streets of Cape Town, London, Sydney, New York, San
Francisco, and Valparaiso; the Russian Jew is found in all the Old and New
World cities; the Englishman and the American travel everywhere; the
Japanese are fringing the Pacific with their laboring classes; toiling
Italians and Greeks are found all over the world; peasants from the
Balkans gather the prune and orange crops of California; the moujic from
the Russian Caucasus tills the wheat-fields of the Dakotas; while the
Irish, Scandinavians, and Teutons form the political, farming, and
commercial classes in many far-distant lands. In the recent World War
Serbs from Montana and Colorado fought side by side with Serbs from
Belgrade and Nisch; Greeks from New York and San Francisco helped their
brothers from Athens drive the Bulgars back up the Vardar Valley; Italians
from New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro helped their kinsmen from the valley
of the Po hold back the Hun from the Venetian plain; Chinese from the
valleys of the Tong-long and the Yang-tse-Kiang backed up the Allied
armies by tilling the fields of France; and Algerian and Senegalese
natives helped the French hold back the Teutonic hordes from the
ravishment of Paris. So completely has the old isolation been broken down!
So completely is the world in flux! So small has the world become!
[Illustration: FIG. 221. THE GREAT TRADE ROUTES OF THE MODERN WORLD
Broken lines, on land, indicate gaps soon to be closed. Compare this with
the maps on pages 161 and 258, and note the progress in discovery and
intercommunication. Ships and trains are constantly passing over these
routes, bearing both freight and peoples.]
It was almost a century from the time instruction in Greek was revived in
Florence (1396) until Linacre first lectured on Greek at Oxford (c. 1492);
six months after the X-ray was perfected in Germany it was in use in the
hospitals of San Francisco. In the Middle Ages thousands might have died
of starvation in Persia or Egypt, a famous city in Asia Minor might have
been destroyed by an earthquake and many people killed, or war might have
raged for years in the Orient without a citizen of western Europe knowing
of it all his life. Today any important event anywhere within the range of
the telegraph or the cable would be reported in tomorrow morning's paper,
and carefully described and illustrated in the magazines at an early date.
Man is no longer a citizen of a town or a state, but of a nation and of
the world. How intelligently he can use this larger citizenship depends
today largely upon the character and the extent of the education he has
received.
[Illustration: FIG. 222. AN EXAMPLE OF THE SHIFTING OF OCCUPATIONS.
Sawing boards by hand, before the introduction of steam power.]
EFFECT OF THESE CHANGES ON THE LABORING-CLASSES. At first the effect of
the introduction of factory-made goods and labor-saving devices was to
upset the old established institutions. Trades practiced by the guilds
since the Middle Ages were destroyed, because factories could turn out
goods faster and cheaper than guild workmen could make them. The age-old
apprenticeship system began to break down. Everywhere people were thrown
out of employment, and a vast shifting of occupations took place. There
was much discontent, and laborers began to unite, where allowed to do so,
[20] with a view to improving their economic and political condition by
concerted action. The political revolutions of 1848 throughout Europe were
in part a manifestation of this discontent, and the right to organize was
everywhere demanded and in time generally obtained. Among the planks in
their platform were equality of all before the law; the limitation of
child and woman labor; better working conditions and wages; the provision
of schools for their children at public expense; and the extension of the
right of suffrage.
Despite certain unfortunate results following the change from age-old
working conditions, the century of transition has seen the laboring man
making gains unknown before in history, and the peasant has seen the
abolition of serfdom [21] and feudal dues. Homes have gained tremendously.
The drudgery and wasteful toil have been greatly mitigated. To-day there
is a standard of comfort and sanitation, even for those in the humblest
circumstances, beyond all previous conceptions. The poorest workman to-day
can enjoy in his home lighting undreamed of in the days of tallow candles;
warmth beyond the power of the old smoky soft-coal grate; food of a
variety and quality his ancestors never knew; kitchen conveniences and an
ease in kitchen work wholly unknown until recently; and sanitary
conveniences and conditions beyond the reach of the wealthiest half a
century ago. The caste system in industry has been broken down, and men
and their children may now choose their occupations freely, [22] and move
about at will. Wages have greatly increased, both actually and relatively
to the greatly improved standard of living. The work of women and children
is easier, and all work for shorter hours. Child labor is fast being
eliminated in all progressive nations. In consequence of all these changes
for the better, people to-day have a leisure for reading and thinking and
personal enjoyment entirely unknown before the middle of the nineteenth
century, and governments everywhere have found it both desirable and
necessary to provide means for the utilization of this leisure and the
gratification of the new desires. Along with these changes has gone the
development of the greatest single agent for spreading liberalizing ideas
--the modern newspaper--"the most inveterate enemy of absolutism and
reaction." Despite censorships, suppressions, and confiscations, the press
has by now established its freedom in all enlightened lands, and the
cylinder press, the telegraph, and the cable have become "indispensable
adjuncts to the development of that power which every absolutist has come
to dread, and with which every prime minister must daily reckon."
III. EFFECT OF THESE CHANGES ON EDUCATION
GENERAL RESULT OF THESE CHANGES. The general result of the vast and far-
reaching changes which we have just described is that the intellectual and
political horizon of the working classes has been tremendously broadened;
the home has been completely altered; children now have much leisure and
do little labor; and the common man at last is rapidly coming into his
own. Still more, the common man seems destined to be the dominant force in
government in the future. To this end he and his children must be
educated, his wife and children cared for, his home protected, and
governments must do for him the things which satisfy his needs and advance
his welfare. The days of the rule of a small intellectual class and of
government in the interests of such a class have largely passed, and the
political equality which the Athenian Greeks first in the western world
gave to the "citizens" of little Athens, the Industrial Revolution has
forced modern and enlightened governments to give to all their people. In
consequence, real democracy in government, education, justice, and social
welfare is now in process of being attained generally, for the first time
in the history of the world.
The effect of all these changes in the mode of living of peoples is
written large on the national life. The political and industrial
revolutions which have marked the ushering-in of the modern age have been
far-reaching in their consequences. The old home life and home industries
of an earlier period are passing, or have passed, never to return. Peoples
in all advanced nations are rapidly swinging into the stream of a new and
vastly more complex world civilization, which brings them into contact and
competition with the best brains of all mankind. At the same time a great
and ever-increasing specialization of human effort is taking place on all
sides, and with new and ever more difficult social, political,
educational, industrial, commercial, and human-life problems constantly
presenting themselves for solution. The world has become both larger and
smaller than it used to be, and even its remote parts are now being linked
up, to a degree that a century ago would not have been deemed possible,
with the future welfare of the nations which so long bore the brunt of the
struggle for the preservation and advancement of civilization.
THESE CHANGES AND THE SCHOOL. It is these vast and far-reaching political,
industrial, and social changes which have been the great actuating forces
behind the evolution and expansion of the state school systems which we
have so far described. The American and French political revolutions, with
their new philosophy of political equality and state control of education,
clearly inaugurated the movement for taking over the school from the
Church and the making of it an important instrument of the State. The
extension of the suffrage to new classes gave a clear political motive for
the school, and to train young people to read and write and know the
constitutional bases of liberty became a political necessity. The
industrial revolution which followed, bringing in its train such extensive
changes in labor and in the conditions surrounding home and child life,
has since completely altered the face of the earlier educational problem.
What was simple once has since become complex, and the complexity has
increased with time. Once the ability to read and write and cipher
distinguished the educated man from the uneducated; to-day the man or
woman who knows only these simple arts is an uneducated person, hardly fit
to cope with the struggle for existence in a modern world, and certainly
not fitted to participate in the complex political and industrial life of
which, in all advanced nations, he or she [23] to-day forms a part.
It is the attempt to remould the school and to make of it a more potent
instrument of the State for promoting national consciousness (R. 340) and
political, social, and industrial welfare that has been behind the many
changes and expansions and extensions of education which have marked the
past half-century in all the leading world nations, and which underlie the
most pressing problems in educational readjustment to-day. These changes
and expansions and problems we shall consider more in detail in the
chapters which follow. Suffice it here to say that from mere teaching
institutions, engaged in imparting a little religious instruction and some
knowledge of the tools of learning, the school, in all the leading
nations, has to-day been transformed into an institution for advancing
national welfare. The leading purpose now is to train for political and
social efficiency in the more democratic types of governments being
instituted among peoples, and to impart to the young those industrial and
social experiences once taught in the home, the trades, and on the farm,
but which the coming of the factory system and city life have deprived
them otherwise of knowing.
NEW PROBLEMS TO BE MET BY EDUCATION. As participation in the political
life of nations has been extended to larger and larger groups of the
people, and as the problems of government have become more and more
complex, the schools have found it necessary to add instruction in
geography, history, government, and national ideals and culture to the
earlier instruction. In the less democratic nations which have evolved
national school systems, this new instruction has often been utilized to
give strength to the type of government and social conditions which the
ruling class desired to have perpetuated. This has been the evident
purpose in Japan (R. 334), though the government of Imperial Germany
formed perhaps the best illustration of such perversion. This was seen and
pointed out long ago by Horace Mann (R. 281). There the idea of
nationality through education (R. 342) was carried to such an extreme as
made the government oppressive to subject peoples and a menace to
neighboring States. [24] On the other hand, the French have used their
schools for national ends (R. 341) in a manner that has been highly
commendable.
As the social life of nations has become broader and more complex, a
longer period of guidance has become necessary to prepare the future
citizens of the State for intelligent participation in it. As a result,
child life everywhere has and is still experiencing a new lengthening of
the period of dependence and training, and all national interests now
indicate that the period devoted to preparing for life's work will need to
be further lengthened. All recent thinking and legislation, as well as the
interests of organized labor and the public welfare, have in recent
decades set strongly against child labor. Economically unprofitable under
modern industrial conditions, and morally indefensible, it has at last
come to be accepted as a principle, by progressive nations, that it is
better for children and for society that they remain under some form of
instruction until they are at least sixteen years of age. To this end the
common primary school has been continued upward, part-time continuation
schools of various types have been organized for those who must go to
labor earlier, and people's high schools or middle schools have been added
(see Figure 210, p. 713) to give the equivalent of a high-school education
to the children of the classes not patronizing the exclusive and limited
tuition secondary school.
As large numbers of immigrants from distant lands have entered some of the
leading nations, notably England and the United States, and particularly
immigrants from less advanced nations where general education is not as
yet common, and where far different political, social, judicial, and
hygienic conditions prevail, a new duty has been thrust upon the school of
giving to such incoming peoples, and their children, some conception of
the meaning and method and purpose of the national life of the people they
have come among. The national schools have accordingly been compelled to
give attention to the needs of these new elements in the population, and
to direct their attention less exclusively to satisfying the needs of the
well-to-do classes of society. Educational systems have in consequence
tended more and more to become democratic in character, and to serve in
part as instruments for the assimilation of the stranger within the
nation's gates and for the perpetuation and improvement of the national
life.
EDUCATION A CONSTRUCTIVE NATIONAL TOOL. One result of the many political,
social, and industrial changes of a century has been to evolve education
into the great constructive tool of modern political society. For ages a
church and private affair, and of no great importance for more than a few,
it has to-day become the prime essential to good government and national
progress, and is so recognized by the leading nations of the world. As
people are freed from autocratic rule and take upon themselves the
functions of government, and as they break loose from their age-old
political, social, and industrial moorings and swing out into the current
of the stream of modern world-civilization, the need for the education of
the masses to enable them to steer safely their ship of state, and take
their places among the stable governments of a modern world, becomes
painfully evident. In the hands of an uneducated people a democratic form
of government is a dangerous instrument, while the proper development of
natural resources and the utilization of trade opportunities by backward
peoples, without being exploited, is almost impossible. In Russia, Mexico,
and the Central American "republics" we see the results of a democracy in
the hands of an uneducated people. There, too often, the revolver instead
of the ballot box is used to settle public issues, and instead of orderly
government under law we find injustice and anarchy. A general system of
education that will teach the fundamental principles of constitutional
liberty, and apply science to production in agriculture and manufacturing,
is almost the only solution for such conditions. By contrast with the
surrounding "republics" one finds in Guatemala [25] a country that has
used education intelligently as a tool to advance the interests of its
people.
[Illustration: FIG. 223. THE PHILIPPINE SCHOOL SYSTEM
A teacher-training course is given as one of the vocational courses in the
Intermediate School, and the Normal School at Manila represents one of the
secondary school courses. The University, besides the combined five-year
college course, has eight professional courses of from three to five years
in length.]
When the United States freed Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines from
Spanish rule, a general system of public education, modeled after the
American educational ladder, was created as a safeguard to the liberty
just brought to these islands, and to education the United States added
courts of justice and bureaus of sanitation as important auxiliary
agencies. As a result the peoples of these islands have made a degree of
progress in self-government and industry in three decades not made in
three centuries under Spanish rule. The good results of the work done in
these islands in establishing schools, building roads and bridges,
introducing police courts, establishing good sanitary conditions, building
hospitals and training nurses, applying science to agriculture, developing
tropical medicine, and training the people in the difficult art of self-
government, will for long be a monument to the political foresight and
intelligent conceptions of government held by the American people. In a
similar way the French have opened schools in Morocco, Algiers, Tunis,
Senegal, Madagascar, and French Indo-China, as have the English in Egypt,
India, Hong Kong, [26] the West Indies, and elsewhere. With the freeing of
Palestine from the rule of the Turk, the English at once began the
establishment of schools and a national university there, and doubtless
they will do the same in time in Persia and Mesopotamia.
Germany, too, before the World War, but with less benevolent purposes than
the Americans, the French, or the English, was also busily engaged in
extending her influence through education. Her universities were thrown
open to students from the whole world, and excellent instruction did they
offer. The "Society for the Extension of Germanism in Foreign Countries"
rendered an important service. Professors were "exchanged"; the
introduction of instruction in the German language into the schools of
other nations was promoted; and German schools were founded and encouraged
abroad. Especially were _Realschulen_ promoted to teach the wonders of
German science, pure and applied. In southern Brazil and the Argentine,
and in Roumania, Bulgaria, and Turkey, particular efforts were made to
extend German influence and pave the way for German commercial and perhaps
political expansion. Primary schools, girls' schools, and _Real_-schools
in numbers were founded and aided abroad, and their progress reported to
the colonial minister at home. All through the Near East the German was
busily building, through trade and education, a new empire for himself.
Had he been content to follow the slower paths of peaceful commercial and
intellectual conquest, with his wonderful organization he would have been
irresistible. With one gambler's throw he dashed his future to the ground,
and unmasked himself before the world!
EXPANSION OF THE EDUCATIONAL IDEA. In all lands to-day where there is an
intelligent government, the education of the people through a system of
state-controlled schools is regarded as of the first importance in
moulding and shaping the destinies of the nation and promoting the
country's welfare. Beginning with education to impart the ability to read
and write and cipher, and as an aid to the political side of government,
the education of the masses has been so expanded in scope during the
century that today it includes aims, classes, types of schools, and forms
of service scarcely dreamed of at the time the State began to take over
the school from the Church, with a view to extending elementary
educational advantages and promoting literacy and citizenship. What some
of the more important of these expansions have been we shall state in a
following chapter, but before doing so let us return to another phase of
the problem--that of the progress of educational theory--and see what have
been the main lines of this progress in the theory as to the educational
purpose since the time when Pestalozzi formulated a theory for the secular
school.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. What does the emphasis on the People's High Schools in Denmark indicate
as to the political status of the common people there?
2. Explain the educational prominence of Finland, compared with its
neighbor Russia.
3. Show the close relation between the character of the school system
developed in Japan and the character of its government. In China.
4. Show why the state-function conception of education is destined to be
the ruling plan everywhere.
5. Show the close connection between the Industrial Revolution and a
somewhat general diffusion of the fundamental principles revealed by the
study of science.
6. Show how the Industrial Revolution has created entirely new problems in
education, and what some of these are.
7. Show the connection between the Industrial Revolution and political
enfranchisement.
8. Enumerate some of the educational problems we now face that we should
not have had to deal with had the Industrial Revolution not taken place.
9. Why has the result of these changes been to extend the period of
dependence and tutelage of children?
10. Outline an educational solution of the problem of Mexico. Of Russia.
Of Persia.
11. Show how Germany found it profitable to establish _Realschulen_ in
such distant countries as Turkey, Mesopotamia, and the Argentine.
12. Describe the expansion of the educational idea since the days when
Pestalozzi formulated the theory for the secular school.
13. What is the social significance of the development of parallel
secondary schools and courses, in all lands?
14. Contrast the American and the European secondary school in purpose.
Why should the American be a free school, while those in Europe are
tuition schools?
15. Show why the essentially democratic school system maintained in the
United States would not be suited to an autocratic form of government.
16. Show that the weight of a priesthood and the force of religious
instruction in the schools would be strong supports for monarchical forms
of government.
17. Homogeneous monarchical nations look after the training of their
teachers much better than does such a cosmopolitan nation as the United
States. Why?
SELECTED READINGS
In the accompanying _Book of Readings_ the following illustrative
selections are reproduced:
333. Switzerland: Constitutional Provisions as to Education and
Religious Freedom.
334. Japan: The Basic Documents of Japanese Education.
(a) Preamble to the Education Code of 1872.
(b) Imperial Rescript on Moral Education.
(c) Instructions as to Lessons on Morals.
335. Ping Wen Kuo: Transformation of China by Education.
336. Mann: Education and National Prosperity.
337. Huxley: The Recent Progress of Science.
338. Anon.: Scientific Knowledge must precede Invention.
339. Ticknor: Illustrating Early Lack of Communication.
340. Monroe: The Struggle for National Realization.
341. Buisson, F.: The French Teacher and the National Spirit.
342. Fr. de Hovre: The German Emphasis on National Ends.
343. Stuntz: Landing of the Pilgrims at Manila.
QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS
1. Compare the Swiss and American Federal organizations, and state just
what the Swiss Constitution (333) provides as to education.
2. Suppose you knew nothing about the Japanese, what type of government
would you take theirs to be from reading the Imperial Rescript (334b)?
3. In comparing the Chinese transformation and the Renaissance (335), does
Mr. Ping propose comparable events?
4. Show that Mr. Mann's argument (336) is still sound.
5. Does Huxley overdraw (337) our dependence on science?
6. From 338, show why the Middle Ages were so poor in inventions and
discoveries.
7. Are there universities anywhere to-day of which we know as little as
Ticknor was able to find out (339) a century ago?
8. Show that Monroe's statements are true that the struggle for national
realization (340) has dominated modern history from the fifteenth century
on.
9. Compare the conceptions as to the function of education in a State as
revealed in the selections as to French (341) and German (342) educational
purpose.
10. Show the entirely new character of the event (343) described by
Stuntz.
SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES
* Buisson, F. and Farrington, F. E. _French Educational Ideals of To-
day_.
Butler, N. M. "Status of Education at the Close of the Century"; in
_Proceedings National Education Association_, 1900, pp. 188-96.
Davidson, Thos. "Education as World Building"; in _Educational
Review_, vol. xx, pp. 325-45. (November, 1900.)
Doolittle, Wm. H. _Inventions of the Century_.
Foster, M. "A Century's Progress in Science"; in _Educational
Review_, vol. xviii, pp. 313-31. (November, 1899.)
* Friedel, V. H. _The German School as a War Nursery_.
Gibbons, H. de B. _Economic and Industrial Progress of the
Century_.
Hughes, J. L., and Klemm, L. R. _Progress of Education in the
Nineteenth Century_.
* Huxley, Thos. "The Progress of Science"; in his _Methods and
Results_.
* Kuo, Ping Wen. _The Chinese System of Public Education_.
Lewis, R. E. _The Educational Conquest of the Far East_.
Macknight, Thos. _Political Progress of the Century_.
* Ross, E. A. "The World Wide Advance of Democracy"; in his _Changing
America_.
Routledge, R. _A Popular History of Science_.
Sandiford, Peter, Editor. _Comparative Education_.
* Sedgwick, W. T., and Tyler, H. W. _A Short History of Science_.
* Thwing, C. F. _Education in the Far East_.
Webster, W. C. _General History of Commerce_.
White, A. D. _The-Warfare of Science and Theology_.
CHAPTER XXVIII
NEW CONCEPTIONS OF THE EDUCATIONAL PROCESS
I. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ORGANIZATION OF ELEMENTARY INSTRUCTION
THE BEGINNINGS OF NORMAL-SCHOOL TRAINING. The training of would-be
teachers for the work of instruction is an entirely modern proceeding. The
first class definitely organized for imparting training to teachers,
concerning which we have any record, was a small local training group of
teachers of reading and the Catechism, conducted by Father Demia, at
Lyons, France, in 1672. The first normal school to be established anywhere
was that founded at Rheims, in northern France, in 1685, by Abbe de la
Salle (p. 347). He had founded the Order of "The Brothers of the Christian
Schools" the preceding year, to provide free religious instruction for
children of the working classes in France (R. 182), and he conceived the
new idea of creating a special school to train his prospective teachers
for the teaching work of his Order. Shortly afterward he established two
similar institutions in Paris. Each institution he called a "Seminary for
Schoolmasters." In addition to imparting a general education of the type
of the time, and a thorough grounding in religion, his student teachers
were trained to teach in practice schools, under the direction of
experienced teachers. This was an entirely new idea.
The beginnings elsewhere, as we have previously pointed out were made in
German lands, Francke's _Seminarium Praeceptorum_, established at Halle
(p. 419), in 1697, coming next in point of time. In 1738 Johann Julius
Hecker (1707-68), one of Francke's teachers (p. 562), established the
first regular Seminary for Teachers in Prussia, and in 1748 he established
a private _Lehrerseminar_ in Berlin. In these two institutions he first
showed the German people the possibilities of special training for
teachers in the secondary school. In 1753 the Berlin institution was
adopted as a Royal Teachers' Seminary (p. 563) by Frederick the Great.
After this, and in part due to the enthusiastic support of the Berlin
institution by the King, the teacher-training idea for secondary teachers
began to find favor among the Germans. We accordingly find something like
a dozen Teachers' Seminaries had been founded in German lands before the
close of the eighteenth century. [1] A normal school was established in
Denmark, by royal decree, as early as 1789, and five additional schools
when the law organizing public instruction in Denmark was enacted, in
1814. In France the beginnings of state action came with the action of the
National Convention, which decreed the establishment of the "Superior
Normal School for France," in 1794 (p. 517). This institution, though, was
short lived, and the real beginnings of the French higher normal school
awaited the reorganizing work of Napoleon, in 1808 (p. 595; R. 283).
The schools just mentioned represent the first institutions in the history
of the world organized for the purpose of training teachers to teach. The
teachers they trained, though, were intended primarily for the secondary
schools, and the training was largely academic in character. Only in
Silesia was any effort made, before the nineteenth century, to give
training in special institutions to teachers intended for the vernacular
schools. There Frederick the Great, in his "Regulations for the Catholic
Schools of Silesia" (R. 275, a sec 2) designated six cathedral and monastery
schools as model schools, where teachers could "have the opportunity for
learning all that is needed by a good teacher." In another place he
defined this as "skill in singing and playing the organ sufficient to
perform the services of the Church," and "the art of instructing the young
in the German language" (R. 275, a sec 1). So long as the instruction in the
vernacular school consisted chiefly of reading and the Catechism, and of
hearing pupils recite what they had memorized, there was of course but
little need for any special training for the teachers. It was not until
after Pestalozzi had done his work and made his contribution that there
was anything worth mentioning to train teachers for.
PESTALOZZI'S CONTRIBUTION. The memorable work done by Pestalozzi in
Switzerland, during his quarter-century (1800-25) of effort at Burgdorf
and Yverdon, changed the whole face of the preparation of teachers
problem. His work was so fundamental that it completely redirected the
education of children. Taking the seed-thought of Rousseau that sense-
impression was "the only true foundation of human knowledge" (R. 267), he
enlarged this to the conception of the mental development of human beings
as being organic, and proceeding according to law. His extension of this
idea of Rousseau's led him to declare that education was an individual
development, a drawing-out and not a pouring-in; that the basis of all
education exists in the nature of man; and that the method of education is
to be sought and constructed. [2] These were his great contributions.
These ideas fitted in well with the rising tide of individualism which
marked the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries, and upon
these contributions the modern secular elementary school has been built.
These ideas led Pestalozzi to emphasize sense perception and expression;
to formulate the rule that in teaching we must proceed from the concrete
to the abstract; and to construct a "faculty psychology" which conceived
of education as "a harmonious development" of the different "faculties" of
the mind. He also tried, unsuccessfully to be sure, to so organize the
teaching process that eventually it could be so "mechanized" that there
would be a regular A, B, C, for each type of instruction, which, once
learned, would give perfection to a teacher. In his Report of 1800 (R.
267), which forms a very clear statement of his aims, he had said:
I know what I am undertaking; but neither the difficulties in the way,
nor my own limitations in skill and insight, shall hinder me from
giving my mite for a purpose which Europe needs so much... The most
essential point from which I start is this:--Sense-impression of
Nature is the only true foundation of human knowledge. All that
follows is the result of this sense-impression, and the process of
abstraction from it....
Then the problem I have to solve is this:--How to bring the elements
of every art into harmony with the very nature of mind, by following
the psychological mechanical laws by which mind rises from physical
sense-impressions to clear ideas.
Largely out of these ideas and the new direction he gave to instruction
the modern normal school for training teachers for the elementary schools
arose.
ORAL AND OBJECTIVE TEACHING DEVELOPED. Up to the time of Pestalozzi, and
for years after he had done his work, in many lands and places the
instruction of children continued to be of the memorization of textbook
matter and of the recitation type. The children learned what was down in
the book, and recited the answers to the teacher. Many of the early
textbooks were constructed on the plan of the older Catechism--that is, on
a question and answer plan (R. 351 a). There was nothing for children to
do but to memorize such textbook material, or for the teacher but to see
that the pupils knew the answers to the questions. It was school-keeping,
not teaching, that teachers were engaged in.
The form of instruction worked out by Pestalozzi, based on sense-
perception, reasoning, and individual judgment, called for a complete
change in classroom procedure. What Pestalozzi tried most of all to do was
to get children to use their senses and their minds, to look carefully, to
count, to observe forms, to get, by means of their five important senses,
clear impressions and ideas as to objects and life in the world about
them, and then to think over what they had seen and be able to answer his
questions, because they had observed carefully and reasoned clearly.
Pestalozzi thus clearly subordinated the printed book to the use of the
child's senses, and the repetition of mere words to clear ideas about
things. Pestalozzi thus became one of the first real teachers.
This was an entirely new process, and for the first time in history a real
"technique of instruction" was now called for. Dependence on the words of
the text could no longer be relied upon. The oral instruction of a class
group, using real objects, called for teaching skill. The class must be
kept naturally interested and under control; the essential elements to be
taught must be kept clearly in the mind of the teacher; the teacher must
raise the right kind of questions, in the right order, to carry the class
thinking along to the right conclusions; and, since so much of this type
of instruction was not down in books, it called for a much more extended
knowledge of the subject on the part of the teacher than the old type of
school-keeping had done. The teacher must now both know and be able to
organize and direct. Class lessons must be thought out in advance, and
teacher-preparation in itself meant a great change in teaching procedure.
Emancipated from dependence on the words of a text, and able to stand
before a class full of a subject and able to question freely, teachers
became conscious of a new strength and a professional skill unknown in the
days of textbook reciting. Out of such teaching came oral language
lessons, drill in speech usage, elementary science instruction,
observational geography, mental arithmetic, music, and drawing, to add to
the old instruction in the Catechism, reading, writing, and ciphering, and
all these new subjects, taught according to Pestalozzian ideas as to
purpose, called for an individual technique of instruction.
[Illustration: FIG. 224. THE FIRST MODERN NORMAL SCHOOL
The old castle at Yverdon, where Pestalozzi's Institute was conducted and
his greatest success achieved.]
THE NORMAL SCHOOL FINDS ITS PLACE. These new ideas of Pestalozzi proved so
important that during the first five or six decades of the nineteenth
century the elementary school was made over. The new conception of the
child as a slowly developing personality, demanding subject-matter and
method suited to his stage of development, and the new conception of
teaching as that of directing mental development instead of hearing
recitations and "keeping school," now replaced the earlier knowledge-
conception of school work. Where before the ability to organize and
discipline a school had constituted the chief art of instruction, now the
ability to teach scientifically took its place as the prime professional
requisite. A "science and art" of teaching now arose; methodology soon
became a great subject; the new subject of pedagogy began to take form and
secure recognition; and psychology became the guiding science of the
school.
As these changes took place, the normal school began to come into favor in
the leading countries of Europe and in the United States, and in time has
established itself everywhere as an important educational institution.
Pestalozzi had himself conducted the first really modern teacher-training
school, and his work was soon copied in a number of the Swiss cantons.
Other cantons, on the contrary, for a time would have nothing to do with
the new idea.
1. _The German States._ The first nation, though, to take up the teacher-
training idea and establish it as an important part of its state school
system was Prussia. Beginning in 1809 with the work of Zeller (p. 569), by
1840 there were thirty-eight Teachers' Seminaries, as the normal schools
in German lands have been called, in Prussia alone. The idea was also
quickly taken up by the other German States, and from the first decade of
the nineteenth century on no nation has done more with the normal school,
or used it, ends desired considered, to better advantage than have the
Germans. One of the features of the Prussian schools which most impressed
Professor Bache, when he visited the schools of the German States in 1838,
was the excellence of the Seminaries for Teachers (R. 344), and these he
described (R. 345) in some detail in his Report. Horace Mann, similarly,
on his visit to Europe, in 1843, was impressed with the thoroughness of
the training given prospective teachers in the Teachers' Seminaries of the
German States (R. 278). University pedagogical seminars were also
established early (c. 1810) [3] in the universities, for the training of
secondary teachers, and this training was continued with increasing
thoroughness up to 1914. Every teacher in the German States, elementary or
secondary, before that date, was a carefully-trained teacher. This was a
feature of the German state school systems of the pre-War period of which
no other nation could boast.
2. _France._ After the German States, France probably comes next as the
nation in which the normal school has been most used for training
teachers. The Superior Normal School had been recreated in 1808 (R. 283),
and after the downfall of Napoleon the creation of normal schools for
elementary-school teachers was begun. Twelve had been established by 1830,
and between 1830 and 1833 thirty additional schools for training these
teachers were begun (R. 285). These rendered a service for France (R. 346)
quite similar to that rendered by the Teachers' Seminaries in German
lands. During the period of reaction, from 1848 to 1870, the normal school
did not prosper in France, but since 1870 a normal school to train
elementary teachers has been established for men and one for women in each
of the eighty-seven departments into which France, for administrative
purposes, has been divided. Satisfactory provision has also been made for
the training of teachers for the secondary schools.
3. _The United States._ The United States has also been prominent,
especially since about 1870, in the development of normal schools for the
training of elementary teachers. The Lancastrian schools had trained
monitors for their work, but the first teacher-training school in the
United States to give training to individual teachers was opened
privately, [4] in 1823, and the second in a similar manner, [5] in 1827.
These were almost entirely academic institutions, being in the nature of
tuition high schools, with a little practice teaching and some lectures on
the "Art of Teaching" added in the last year of the course. In 1826
Governor Clinton recommended to the legislature of New York the
establishment by the State of "a seminary for the education of teachers in
the monitorial system of instruction." Nothing coming of this, in 1827 he
recommended the creation of "a central school in each county for the
education of teachers" (R. 349). That year (1827) the New York legislature
appropriated money to aid the academies "to promote the education of
teachers"--the first state aid in the United States for teacher-training.
The publication of an English edition of Cousin's _Report_ (p. 597; R.
284) in New York, in 1835; Calvin E. Stowe's _Report on Elementary
Education in Europe_, [6] in 1837; and Alexander D. Bache's _Report on
Education in Europe_ (Rs. 344, 345), in 1838, with their strong
commendations of the German teacher-training system, awakened new interest
in the United States, in the matter of teacher-training. Finally, in 1839,
the legislature of Massachusetts duplicated a gift of $10,000, and placed
the money in the hands of the newly created State Board of Education (p.
689) to be used "in qualifying teachers for the common schools of
Massachusetts" (R. 350 a). After careful consideration it was decided to
create special state institutions, after the German and French plans, in
which to give the desired training, and the French term of Normal School
was adopted and has since become general in the United States.
[Illustration: TEACHER-TRAINING IN THE UNITED STATES BY 1860.
A few private training-schools also existed, though less than half a dozen
in all.]
On July 3, 1839, the first state normal school in the United States opened
in the town hall at Lexington, Massachusetts, with one teacher and three
students. Later that same year a second state normal school was opened at
Barre, and early the next year a third at Bridgewater, both in
Massachusetts. For these the State Board of Education adopted a statement
as to entrance requirements and a course of instruction (R. 350 b) which
shows well the academic character of these early teaching institutions.
Their success was largely due to the enthusiastic support given the new
idea by Horace Mann. In an address at the dedication of the first building
erected in America for normal-school purposes, in 1846, he expressed his
deep belief as to the fundamental importance of such institutions (R. 350
c). By 1860 eleven state normal schools had been established in eight of
the States of the American Union, and six private schools were also
rendering similar services. Closely related was the Teachers' Institute,
first definitely organized by Henry Barnard in Connecticut, in 1839, to
offer four- to six-weeks summer courses for teachers in service, and these
had been organized in fifteen of the American States by 1860. Since 1870
the establishment of state normal schools has been rapid in the United
States, two hundred having been established by 1910, and many since. The
United States, though, is as yet far from having a trained body of
teachers for its elementary schools. For the high schools, it is only
since about 1890 that the professional training of teachers for such
service has really been begun.
4. _England._ In England the beginnings of teacher-training came with the
introduction of monitorial instruction, both the Bell and the Lancaster
Societies (p. 625) finding it necessary to train pupils for positions as
monitors, and to designate certain schools as model and training schools.
In 1833, it will be remembered (p. 638), Parliament made its first grant
of money in aid of education. Up to 1840 this was distributed through the
two National Societies, and in 1839 a portion of this aid was definitely
set aside to enable these Societies to establish model schools (R. 347).
From this beginning, the model training-schools for the different
religious Societies were developed. In these model schools prospective
teachers were educated, being trained in religious instruction and in the
art of teaching. In 1836, with the founding of the "Home and Colonial
Infant Society," a Pestalozzian Training College was founded by it.
In a further effort to secure trained teachers the government, in 1846,
adopted a plan then in use in Holland, and instituted what became known as
the "pupil-teacher system" (R. 348). This was an improvement on the waning
monitorial training system previously in use. Under this, a favorite old
English method, used somewhat for the same purpose a century earlier (R.
243), was adapted to meet the new need.' Under it promising pupils were
apprenticed to a head teacher for five years (usually from thirteen to
eighteen), he agreeing to give them instruction in both secondary-school
subjects and in the art of teaching in return for their help in the
schoolroom. Beginning in 1846, there were, by 1848, 200 pupil teachers; by
1861, 13,871; and by 1870, 14,612. This system formed the great dependence
of England before the days of national education. In 1874 the pupil-
teacher-center system was begun, and between 1878 and 1896 the age for
entering as a pupil-teacher was raised from thirteen to sixteen, and the
years of apprenticeship reduced from five to two. In most cases now the
academic preparation continues to seventeen or eighteen, and is followed
by one year of practice teaching in an elementary school, under
supervision. After that the teacher may, or may not, enter what is there
known as a Training-College. [7] So far the training of teachers has not
made such headway in England and Wales as has been the case in the German
States, France, the United States, or Scotland, but important progress may
be expected in the near future as an outcome of new educational impulses
arising as a result of the World War.
SPREAD OF THE NORMAL-SCHOOL IDEA. The movement for the creation of normal
schools to train teachers for the elementary schools has in time spread to
many nations. As nation after nation has awakened to the desirability of
establishing a system of modern-type state schools, a normal school to
train leaders has often been among the first of the institutions created.
The normal school, in consequence, is found to-day in all the continental
European States; in all the English self-governing dominions; in nearly
all the South American States; and in China, [8] Japan, Siam, the
Philippines, Cuba, Algiers, India, and other less important nations. In
all these there is an attempt, often reaching as yet to but a small
percentage of the teachers, to extend to them some of that training in the
theory and art of instruction which has for long been so important a
feature of the education of the elementary teacher in the German States,
France, and the United States. Since about 1890 other nations have also
begun to provide, as the German States and France have done for so long,
some form of professional training for the teachers intended for their
secondary schools [9] as well.
PSYCHOLOGY BECOMES THE MASTER SCIENCE. Everywhere the establishment of
normal schools has meant the acceptance of the newer conceptions as to
child development and the nature of the educational process. These are
that the child is a slowly developing personality, needing careful study,
and demanding subject-matter and method suited to his different stages of
development. The new conception of teaching as that of directing and
guiding the education of a child, instead of hearing recitations and
"keeping school," in time replaced the earlier knowledge-conception of
school work. Psychology accordingly became the guiding science of the
school, and the imparting to prospective teachers proper ideas as to
psychological procedure, and the proper methodology of instruction in each
of the different elementary-school subjects, became the great work of the
normal school. Teachers thus trained carried into the schools a new
conception as to the nature of childhood; a new and a minute methodology
of instruction; and a new enthusiasm for teaching;--all of which were
important additions to school work.
A new methodology was soon worked out for all the subjects of instruction,
both old and new. The centuries-old alphabet method of teaching reading
was superseded by the word and sound methods; the new oral language
instruction was raised to a position of first importance in developing
pupil-thinking; spelling, word-analysis, and sentence-analysis were given
much emphasis in the work of the school; the Pestalozzian mental
arithmetic came as an important addition to the old ciphering of sums; the
old writing from copies was changed into a drill subject, requiring
careful teaching for its mastery; the "back to nature" ideas of Rousseau
and Pestalozzi proved specially fruitful in the new study of geography,
which called for observation out of doors, the study of type forms, and
the substitution of the physical and human aspects of geography for the
older political and statistical; object lessons on natural objects, and
later science and nature study, were used to introduce children to a
knowledge of nature and to train them in thinking and observation; while
the new subjects of music and drawing came in, each with an elaborate
technique of instruction.
By 1875 the normal school in all lands was finding plenty to do, and
teaching, by the new methods and according to the new psychological
procedure, seemed to many one of the most wonderful and most important
occupations in the world. How great a change in the scope, as well as in
the nature of elementary-school instruction had been effected in a
century, the above diagram of American elementary-school development will
reveal. History and literature, it will be noticed, had also come in as
additional new subjects, but these were relatively unimportant in either
the elementary school or the normal school until after the coming of
Herbartian ideas, to which we shall refer a little further on.
[Illustration: FIG. 226. EVOLUTION OF THE ELEMENTARY-SCHOOL CURRICULUM AND
OF METHODS OF TEACHING]
Accompanying the organization of professional instruction for teachers,
another important change in the nature of the elementary school was
effected.
THE GRADING OF SCHOOLROOM INSTRUCTION. For some time after elementary
schools began it was common to teach all the children of the different
ages together in one room, or at most in two rooms. In the latter case the
subjects of instruction were divided between the teachers, rather than the
children. [10] Many of the pictures of early elementary schools show such
mixed-type schools. In these the children were advanced individually and
by subjects as their progress warranted, [11] until they had progressed as
far as the instruction went or the teacher could teach (R. 352). From this
point on the division of the elementary school into classes and a graded
organization has proceeded by certain rather well-defined steps.
The first step (Rs. 353, 354) was the division of the school into two
schools, one more advanced than the other, such as lower and higher, or
primary and grammar. Another division was introduced when the Infant
School was added, beneath. The next step was the division of each school
into classes. This began by the employment of assistant teachers, in
England and America known as "ushers," to help the "master," and the
provision of small recitation rooms, off the main large schoolroom, to
which the usher could take his class to hear recitations. The third and
final step came with the erection of a new type of school building, with
smaller and individual classrooms, or the subdivision of the larger
schoolrooms. It was then possible to assign a teacher to each classroom,
sort and grade the pupils by ages and advancement, outline the instruction
by years, and the modern graded elementary school was at hand.
The transition to the graded elementary school came easily and naturally.
For half a century the course of instruction in the evolving elementary
state school had been in process of expansion. Pestalozzi paved the way
for its creation by changing the purpose and direction, and greatly
enlarging (p. 543) the field of instruction of the vernacular school.
After him other new subjects of study were added (see diagram, Figure
226), new and better and longer textbooks were prepared (R. 351), and the
school term was gradually lengthened. The way in time became clear,
earliest in the German lands and in a few American cities, but by about
1850 in most leading nations, for that simple reorganization of school
work which would divide the school into a number of classes, or forms, or
grades, and give one to each teacher to handle. When this point had been
reached, which came about 1850 to 1860 in most nations, but earlier in a
few, the modern type of town or city graded elementary school was at hand.
Teaching had by this time become an organized and a psychological process;
graded courses of study began to appear; professional school
superintendents began to be given the direction and supervision of
instruction; and the modern science of school organization and
administration began to take shape. From this point on the further
development of the graded elementary public school has come through the
addition of new materials of instruction, and by changing the direction of
the school to adapt it better to meeting the new needs of society brought
about by the scientific, industrial, social, and political revolutions
which we, in previous chapters, have described. A few of the more
important of these additions and changes in direction we shall now briefly
describe.
[Illustration: FIG. 227. AN "USHER" AND HIS CLASS.
The usher, or assistant teacher, is here shown with a class in one of the
small recitation-rooms, off the large schoolroom.]
II. NEW IDEAS FROM HERBARTIAN SOURCES
THE WORK OF HERBART. Taking up the problem as Pestalozzi left it, a German
by the name of Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841) carried it forward by
organizing a truer psychology for the whole educational process, by
erecting a new social aim for instruction, by formulating new steps in
method, and by showing the place and the importance of properly organized
instruction in history and literature in the education of the child.
Though the two men were entirely different in type, and worked along
entirely different lines, the connection between Herbart and Pestalozzi
was, nevertheless, close. [12]
The two men, however, approached the educational problem from entirely
different angles. Pestalozzi gave nearly all his long life to teaching and
human service, while Herbart taught only as a traveling private tutor for
three years, and later a class of twenty children in his university
practice school. Pestalozzi was a social reformer, a visionary, and an
impractical enthusiast, but was possessed of a remarkable intuitive
insight into child nature. Herbart, on the other hand, was a well-trained
scholarly thinker, who spent the most of his life in the peaceful
occupation of a professor of philosophy in a German university. [13] It
was while at Koenigsberg, between 1810 and 1832, and as an appendix to his
work as professor of philosophy, that he organized a small practice
school, conducted a Pedagogical Seminar, and worked out his educational
theory and method. His work was a careful, scholarly attempt at the
organization of education as a science, carried out amid the peace and
quiet which a university atmosphere almost alone affords. He addressed
himself chiefly to three things: (1) the aim, (2) the content, and (3) the
method of instruction.
THE AIM AND THE CONTENT OF EDUCATION. Locke had set up as the aim of
education the ideal of a physically sound gentleman. Rousseau had declared
his aim to be to prepare his boy for life by developing naturally his
inborn capacities. Pestalozzi had sought to regenerate society by means of
education, and to prepare children for society by a "harmonious training"
of their "faculties." Herbart rejected alike the conventional-social
education of Locke, the natural and unsocial education of Rousseau, and
the "faculty-psychology" conception of education of Pestalozzi. Instead he
conceived of the mind as a unity, instead of being divided into
"faculties," and the aim of education as broadly social rather than
personal. The purpose of education, he said, was to prepare men to live
properly in organized society, and hence the chief aim in education was
not conventional fitness, natural development, mere knowledge, nor
personal mental power, but personal character and social morality. This
being the case, the educator should analyze the interests and occupations
and social responsibilities of men as they are grouped in organized
society, and, from such analyses, deduce the means and the method of
instruction. Man's interests, he said, come from two main sources--his
contact with the things in his environment (real things, sense-
impressions), and from his relations with human beings (social
intercourse). His social responsibilities and duties are determined by the
nature of the social organization of which he forms a part.
Pestalozzi had provided fairly well for the first group of contacts,
through his instruction in objects, home geography, numbers, and geometric
form. For the second group of contacts Pestalozzi had developed only oral
language, and to this Herbart now added the two important studies of
literature and history, and history with the emphasis on the social rather
than the political side. Two new elementary-school subjects were thus
developed, each important in revealing to man his place in the social
whole. History in particular Herbart conceived to be a study of the first
importance for revealing proper human relationships, and leading men to
social and national "good-will."
The chief purpose of education Herbart held to be to develop personal
character and to prepare for social usefulness (R. 355). These virtues, he
held, proceeded from enough of the right kind of knowledge, properly
interpreted to the pupil so that clear ideas as to relationships might be
formed. To impart this knowledge interest must be awakened, and to arouse
interest in the many kinds of knowledge needed, a "many-sided" development
must take place. From full knowledge, and with proper instruction by the
teacher, clear ideas or concepts might be formed, and clear ideas ought to
lead to right action, and right action to personal character--the aim of
all instruction. Herbart was the first writer on education to place the
great emphasis on proper instruction, and to exalt teaching and proper
teaching-procedure instead of mere knowledge or intellectual discipline.
He thus conceived of the educational process as a science in itself,
having a definite content and method, and worthy of special study by those
who desire to teach.
HERBARTIAN METHOD. With these ideas as to the aim and content of
instruction, Herbart worked out a theory of the instructional process and
a method of instruction (R. 356). Interest he held to be of first
importance as a prerequisite to good instruction. If given spontaneously,
well and good; but, if necessary, forced interest must be resorted to.
Skill in instruction is in part to be determined by the ability of the
teacher to secure interest without resorting to force on the one hand or
sugar-coating of the subject on the other. Taking Pestalozzi's idea that
the purpose of the teacher was to give pupils new experiences through
contacts with real things, without assuming that the pupils already had
such, Herbart elaborated the process by which new knowledge is assimilated
in terms of what one already knows, and from his elaboration of this
principle the doctrine of apperception--that is, the apperceiving or
comprehending of new knowledge in terms of the old--has been fixed as an
important principle in educational psychology. Good instruction, then,
involves first putting the child into a proper frame of mind to apperceive
the new knowledge, and hence this becomes a corner-stone of all good
teaching method.
Herbart did not always rely on such methods, holding that the "committing
to memory" of certain necessary facts often was necessary, but he held
that the mere memorizing of isolated facts, which had characterized school
instruction for ages, had little value for either educational or moral
ends. The teaching of mere facts often was very necessary, but such
instruction called for a methodical organization of the facts by the
teacher, so as to make their learning contribute to some definite purpose.
This called for a purpose in instruction; the organization of the facts
necessary to be taught so as to select the most useful ones; the
connection of these so as to establish the principle which was the purpose
of the instruction; and training in systematic thinking by applying the
principle to new problems of the type being studied. The carrying-out of
such ideas meant the careful organization of the teaching process and
teaching method, to secure certain predetermined ends in child
development, instead of mere miscellaneous memorizing and school-keeping.
THE HERBARTIAN MOVEMENT IN GERMANY. Herbart died in 1841, without having
awakened any general interest in his ideas, and they remained virtually
unnoticed until 1865. In that year a professor at Leipzig, Tuiskon Ziller
(1817-1883), published a book setting forth Herbart's idea of instruction
as a moral force. This attracted much attention, and led to the formation
(1868) of a scientific society for the study of Herbart's ideas. Ziller
and his followers now elaborated Herbart's ideas, advanced the theory of
culture-epochs in child development, the theory of concentration in
studies, and elaborated the four steps in the process of instruction, as
described by Herbart, into the five formal steps of the modern Herbartian
school.
In 1874 a pedagogical seminary and practice school was organized at the
University of Jena, and in 1885 this came under the direction of Professor
William Rein, a pupil of Ziller's, who developed the practice school
according to the ideas of Ziller. A detailed course of study for this
school, filling two large volumes, was worked out, and the practice
lessons given were thoroughly planned beforehand and the methods employed
were subjected to a searching analysis after the lesson had been given.
HERBARTIAN IDEAS IN THE UNITED STATES. For a time, under the inspiration
of Ziller and Rein, Jena became an educational center to which students
went from many lands. From the work at Jena Herbartian ideas have spread
which have modified elementary educational procedure generally. In
particular did the work at Jena make a deep impression in the United
States. Between 1885 and 1890 a number of Americans studied at Jena and,
returning, brought back to the United States this Ziller-Rein-Jena brand
of Herbartian ideas and practices. [14] From the first the new ideas met
with enthusiastic approval.
[Illustration: PLATE 18. TWO LEADERS IN THE REORGANIZATION OF EDUCATIONAL
THEORY
JOHANN FRIEDRICH HERBART (1776-1841)
Organizer of the Psychology of Instruction
FRIEDRICH WILHELM TROEBEL (1782-1852)
Founder of the Kindergarten]
New methods of instruction in history and literature, and a new
psychology, were now added to the normal-school professional instruction.
Though this psychology has since been outgrown (R. 357), it has been very
useful in shaping pedagogical thought. New courses of study for the
training-schools were now worked out in which the elementary-school
subjects were divided into drill subjects, content subjects, and motor-
activity subjects. [15]
Apperception, interest, correlation, social purpose, moral education,
citizenship training, and recitation methods became new terms to conjure
with. From the normal schools these ideas spread rapidly to the better
city school systems of the time, and soon found their way into courses of
study everywhere. Practice schools and the model lessons in dozens of
normal schools were remodeled after the pattern of those at Jena, and for
a decade Herbartian ideas and the new child study vied with one another
for the place of first importance in educational thinking. The Herbartian
wave of the nineties resembled the Pestalozzian enthusiasm of the sixties.
Each for a time furnished the new ideas in education, each introduced
elements of importance into the elementary-school instruction, each deeply
influenced the training of teachers in normal schools by giving a new turn
to the instruction there, and each gradually settled down into its proper
place in educational practice and history.
THE HERBARTIAN CONTRIBUTION. To the Herbartians we are indebted in
particular for important new conceptions as to the teaching of history and
literature, which have modified all our subsequent procedure; for the
introduction of history teaching in some form into all the elementary-
school grades; for the emphasis on a new social point of view in the
teaching of history and geography; for the new emphasis on the moral aim
in instruction; for a new and a truer educational psychology; and for a
better organization of the technique of classroom instruction. In
particular Herbart gave emphasis to that part of educational development
which comes from without--environment acting upon the child--as contrasted
with the emphasis Pestalozzi had placed on mental development from within
and according to organic law. With the introduction of normal child
activities, which came from another source about this same time, the
elementary-school curriculum as we now have it was practically complete,
and the elementary school of 1850 was completely made over to form the
elementary school of the beginning of the twentieth century.
III. THE KINDERGARTEN, PLAY, AND MANUAL ACTIVITIES
To another German, Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852), we are indebted,
directly or indirectly, for three other additions to elementary education
--the kindergarten, the play idea, and handwork activities.
ORIGIN OF THE KINDERGARTEN. Of German parentage, the son of a rural
clergyman, early estranged from his parents, retiring and introspective by
nature, having led a most unhappy childhood, and apprenticed to a forester
without his wishes being consulted, at twenty-three Froebel decided to
become a schoolteacher and visited Pestalozzi in Switzerland. Two years
later he became the tutor of three boys, and then spent the years 1808-10
as a student and teacher in Pestalozzi's Institute at Yverdon. During his
years there Froebel was deeply impressed with the great value of music and
play in the education of children, and of all that he carried away from
Pestalozzi's institution these ideas were most persistent. After serving
in a variety of occupations--student, soldier against Napoleon, and
curator in a museum of mineralogy--he finally opened a little private
school, in 1816, which he conducted for a decade along Pestalozzian lines.
In this the play idea, music, and the self-activity of the pupils were
uppermost. The school was a failure, financially, but while conducting it
Froebel thought out and published (1826) his most important pedagogical
work--_The Education of Man_.
Gradually Froebel became convinced that the most needed reform in
education concerned the early years of childhood. His own youth had been
most unhappy, and to this phase of education he now addressed himself.
After a period as a teacher in Switzerland he returned to Germany and
opened a school for little children in which plays, games, songs, and
occupations involving self-activity were the dominating characteristics,
and in 1840 he hit upon the name _Kindergarten_ for it. In 1843 his
_Mutter- und Kose-Lieder_, a book of fifty songs and games, was published.
This has been translated into almost all languages.
SPREAD OF THE KINDERGARTEN IDEA. After a series of unsuccessful efforts to
bring his new idea to the attention of educators, Froebel, himself rather
a feminine type, became discouraged and resolved to address himself
henceforth to women, as they seemed much more capable of understanding
him, and to the training of teachers in the new ideas. Froebel was
fortunate in securing as one of his most ardent disciples, just before his
death, the Baroness Bertha von Marenholtz Bulow-Wendhausen (1810-93), who
did more than any other person to make his work known. Meeting, in 1849,
the man mentioned to her as "an old fool," she understood him, and spent
the remainder of her life in bringing to the attention of the world the
work of this unworldly man who did not know how to make it known for
himself. In 1851 the Prussian Government, fearing some revolutionary
designs in the new idea, and acting in a manner thoroughly characteristic
of the political reaction which by that time had taken hold of all German
official life, forbade kindergartens in Prussia. The Baroness then went to
London and lectured there on Froebel's ideas, organizing kindergartens in
the English "ragged schools." Here, by contrast, she met with a cordial
reception. She later expounded Froebelian ideas in Paris, Italy,
Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, and (after 1860, when the prohibition was
removed) in Germany. In 1870 she founded a kindergarten training-college
in Dresden. Many of her writings have been translated into English, and
published in the United States.
Considering the importance of this work, and the time which has since
elapsed, the kindergarten idea has made relatively small progress on the
continent of Europe. Its spirit does not harmonize with autocratic
government. In Germany and the old Austro-Hungary it had made but little
progress up to 1914. Its greatest progress in Europe, perhaps, has been in
democratic Switzerland. [16] In England and France, the two great leaders
in democratic government, the Infant-School development, which came
earlier, has prevented any marked growth of the kindergarten. In England,
though, the Infant School has recently been entirely transformed by the
introduction into it of the kindergarten spirit. [17] In France, infant
education has taken a somewhat different direction. [18]
In the United States the kindergarten idea has met with a most cordial
reception. In no country in the world has the spirit of the kindergarten
been so caught and applied to school work, and probably nowhere has the
original kindergarten idea been so expanded and improved. [19] The first
kindergarten in the United States was a German kindergarten, established
at Watertown, Wisconsin, in 1855, by Mrs. Carl Schurz, a pupil of Froebel.
During the next fifteen years some ten other kindergartens were organized
in German-speaking communities. The first English-speaking kindergarten
was opened privately in Boston, in 1860, by Miss Elizabeth Peabody. In
1868 a private training-college for kindergartners was opened in Boston,
largely through Miss Peabody's influence, by Madame Matilde Kriege and her
daughter, who had recently arrived from Germany. In 1872 Miss Marie Boelte
opened a similar teacher-training school in New York City, and in 1873 her
pupil, Miss Susan Blow, accepted the invitation of Superintendent William
T. Harris, of St. Louis, to go there and open the first public-school
kindergarten in the United States. [20]
To-day the kindergarten is found in some form in nearly all countries in
the world, having been carried to all continents by missionaries,
educational enthusiasts, and interested governments. [21] Japan early
adopted the idea, and China is now beginning to do so.
THE KINDERGARTEN IDEA. The dominant idea in the kindergarten is natural
but directed self-activity, focused upon educational, social, and moral
ends. Froebel believed in the continuity of a child's life from infancy
onward, and that self-activity, determined by the child's interests and
desires and intelligently directed, was essential to the unfolding of the
child's inborn capacities. He saw, more clearly than any one before him
had done, the unutilized wealth of the child's world; that the child's
chief characteristic is self-activity; the desirability of the child
finding himself through play; and that the work of the school during these
early years was to supplement the family by drawing out the child and
awakening the ideal side of his nature. To these ends doing, self
activity, and expression became fundamental to the kindergarten, and
movement, gesture, directed play, song, color, the story, and human
activities a part of kindergarten technique. Nature study and school
gardening were given a prominent place, and motor-activity much called
into play. Advancing far beyond Pestalozzi's principle of sense-
impressions, Froebel insisted on motor-activity and learning by doing (R.
358).
Froebel, as well as Herbart, also saw the social importance of education,
and that man must realize himself not independently amid nature, as
Rousseau had said, but as a social animal in cooeperation with his
fellowmen. Hence he made his schoolroom a miniature of society, a place
where courtesy and helpfulness and social cooeperation were prominent
features. This social and at times reverent atmosphere of the kindergarten
has always been a marked characteristic of its work. To bring out social
ideas many dramatic games, such as shoemaker, carpenter, smith, and
farmer, were devised and set to music. The "story" by the teacher was made
prominent, and this was retold in language, acted, sung, and often worked
out constructively in clay, blocks, or paper. Other games to develop skill
were worked out, and use was made of sand, clay, paper, cardboard, and
color. The "gifts" and "occupations" which Froebel devised were intended
to develop constructive and aesthetic power, and to provide for connection
and development they were arranged into an organized series of playthings.
Individual development as its aim, motor-expression as its method, and
social cooeperation as its means were the characteristic ideas of this new
school for little children (R. 358).
THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE KINDERGARTEN. Wholly aside from the specific
training given children during the year, year and a half, or two years
they spend in this type of school, the addition of the kindergarten to
elementary-school work has been a force of very large significance and
usefulness. The idea that the child is primarily an active and not a
learning animal has been given new emphasis, and that education comes
chiefly by doing has been given new force. The idea that a child's chief
business is play has been a new conception of large educational value. The
elimination of book education and harsh discipline in the kindergarten has
been an idea that has slowly but gradually been extended upward into the
lower grades of the elementary school.
To-day, largely as a result of the spreading of the kindergarten spirit,
the world is coming to recognize play and games at something like their
real social, moral, and educational values, wholly aside from their
benefits as concern physical welfare, and in many places directed play is
being scheduled as a regular subject in school programs. Music, too, has
attained new emphasis since the coming of the kindergarten, and methods of
teaching music more in harmony with kindergarten ideas have been
introduced into the schools.
INSTRUCTION IN THE MANUAL ACTIVITIES. Froebel not only introduced
constructive work--paper-folding, weaving, needlework, and work with sand
and clay and color--into the kindergarten, but he also proposed to extend
and develop such work for the upper years of schooling in a school for
hand training which he outlined, but did not establish. His proposed plan
included the elements of the so-called manual-training idea, developed
later, and he justified such instruction on the same educational grounds
that we advance to-day. It was not to teach a boy a trade, as Rousseau had
advocated, or to train children in sense-perception, as Pestalozzi had
employed all his manual activities, but as a form of educational
expression, and for the purpose of developing creative power within the
child. The idea was advocated by a number of thinkers, about 1850 to 1860,
but the movement took its rise in Finland, Sweden, and Russia.
The first country to organize such work as a part of its school
instruction was Finland, where, as early as 1858, Uno Cygnaeus (1810-1888)
outlined a course for manual training involving bench and metal work,
wood-carving, and basket-weaving. In 1866 Finland made some form of manual
work compulsory for boys in all its rural schools, and in its training-
colleges for male teachers. In 1872 the government of Sweden decided to
introduce sloyd work into its schools, partly to counteract the bad
physical and moral effects of city congestion, and partly to revivify the
declining home industries of the people. A sloyd school was established at
Naas, in 1872, to train teachers, and in 1875 a second school, known as a
"Sloyd Seminarium," was begun. The summer courses of these two schools
were soon training teachers from many nations. In 1877 sloyd work was
added to the Folk School instruction of Sweden. At first the old native
sloyd occupations were followed, such as carpentering, turning, wood-
carving, brush-making, book-binding, and work in copper and iron, but
later the industrial element gave way to a well-organized course in
educational tool work for boys from twelve to fifteen years of age, after
the Finnish plan.
SPREAD OF THE MANUAL-TRAINING IDEA. France was the first of the larger
European nations to adopt this new addition to elementary-school
instruction, a training-school being organized at Paris in 1873, and, in
1882, the instruction in manual activities was ordered introduced into all
the primary schools of France. It has required time, though, to provide
work rooms and to realize this idea, and it is still lacking in complete
accomplishment. In England the work was first introduced in London, about
1887. The government at once accepted the idea, encouraged its spread, and
began to aid in the training of teachers. By 1900 the work was found in
all the larger cities, and included cooking and sewing for girls, as well
as manual work for boys. The training for girls goes back still farther,
and was an outgrowth of the earlier "schools of industry" established to
train girls for domestic service (R. 241). By 1846 instruction in
needlework had been begun in earnest in England. In German lands
needlework was also an early school subject, while some domestic training
for girls had been provided in most of the cities, before 1914. Manual
training for boys, though, despite much propaganda work, had made but
little headway up to that time. As in the case of the kindergarten, the
initiative and self-expression aspects of the manual-training movement
made no appeal to those responsible for the work of the people's schools,
and, in consequence, the manual activities have in German lands been
reserved largely for the continuation and vocational schools for older
pupils.
In the United States the manual-training and household-arts ideas have
found a very ready welcome. Curious as it may seem, the first introduction
to the United States of this new form of instruction came through the
exhibit made by the Russian government at the Centennial Exhibition of
1876, showing the work in wood and iron made by the pupils at the Imperial
Technical Institute at Moscow. This, however, was not the Swedish sloyd,
but a type of work especially adapted to secondary-school instruction. In
consequence the movement for instruction in the manual activities in the
United States, unlike in other nations, began as a highly organized
technical type of high-school instruction, [22] while the elementary-
school sloyd and the household arts for girls came in later. This type of
technical high school has since developed rapidly in this country, has
rendered an important educational service, and is a peculiarly American
creation. In Europe the manual-training idea has been confined to the
elementary school, and no institution exists there which parallels these
costly and well-equipped American technical secondary schools.
The introduction of manual work into the elementary schools came a little
later, and a little more slowly. As early as 1880 the Workingmen's School,
founded by the Ethical Culture Society of New York, had provided a
kindergarten and had extended the kindergarten constructive-work idea
upward, in the form of simple woodworking, into its elementary school. In
the public schools, experimental classes in elementary-school woodworking
were tried in one school in Boston, as early as 1882, the expense being
borne privately. In 1888 the city took over these classes. In 1886 a
teacher was brought to Boston from Sweden to introduce Swedish sloyd, and
a teacher-training school which has been very influential was established
there, in 1889. In 1876 Massachusetts permitted cities to provide
instruction in sewing, and Springfield introduced such instruction in
1884, and elementary-school instruction in knifework in 1886.
From these beginnings the movement spread, [23] though at first rather
slowly. By 1900 approximately forty cities, nearly all of them in the
North Atlantic group of States, had introduced work in manual training and
Back to Full Books
|