Academies,
In English secondary instruction the ‘academies,’ in which science first appeared (pp. 157f.), had before the close of the eighteenth century greatly declined, and the humanistic ‘public’ schools and secondary institutions of a private character had as yet paid almost no attention to the sciences. In the first half of the nineteenth century an anti-classical campaign began, and, continuing with ever increasing force until the middle of the century, it brought about the foundation of numerous schools to embody the new ideals. Toward‘secular’ schools,the close of 1848 the first ‘secular’ school was opened by Combe (see p. 403) at Edinburgh, and included in its curriculum a study of geography, drawing, mathematics, natural history, chemistry, natural philosophy, physiology, phrenology, and materials used in the arts and manufactures. Similar institutions were organized at Glasgow, Leith, London, Manchester, Birmingham, Newcastle, Belfast, and many other cities of the United Kingdom. While short-lived, these schools did much to promote the introduction of sciences into secondary education that soon followed. Shortly after the middle of the century Rugby, and then Winchester, introduced science into the regular curriculum, and by 1868, as a result of the governmental investigation of the endowed schools, which showed an almost complete absence of‘modern side’ in public schools,science in the curricula, all the leading secondary schools began to establish a ‘modern side.’ This course generallyincluded physics and natural history, as well as modern languages and history, but it was most reluctantly organized by the institutions, and, while it has attained to great efficiency, it has never, except in a few schools, been accorded the same standing as the classical course.and Department of Science and Art.The Department of Science and Art also afforded much encouragement to secondary instruction in the sciences by subsidizing schools and classes in physics, chemistry, zoölogy, botany, geology, mineralogy, and subjects involving the applications of science. Before its absorption into the Board of Education some ten thousand classes and seventy-five independent schools of secondary grade received assistance from this source.
Grants for science work in elementary schools.
The Department also gave aid to the study of science in elementary education. As early as the fifties, grants were made to establish work in elementary science, art, and design, but the educational value was for more than forty years subordinated to practical applications. And while, after the report by a Committee of the British Association in 1889, much aid was furnished for the equipment of laboratories, lecture rooms, and workshops, and an increase in the staff of instructors, for a decade no subjects except the rudiments were required in the elementary course, and such ‘supplementary’ subjects as elementary science and geography, if taught, were given a special subsidy. But since 1900 this scientific work has been made compulsory in the elementary curriculum.
The United States.—In the colleges of the United States the courses show considerable evidence of scienceBeginning in the colleges during the eighteenth century.teaching by the eighteenth century. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, King’s (afterward Columbia), Dartmouth, Union, and Pennsylvania had all come to offer work in‘natural philosophy’ or ‘natural history,’ which terms might then be used to cover physics, chemistry, geology, astronomy, botany, and zoölogy. However, before the Revolution physics seems to have been a subordinate branch of mathematical instruction, even less importance was attached to biology, and chemistry was only occasionally taught as an obscure and unimportant phase of physics. Laboratories and instruments of precision did not yet exist.
Development of sciences,—
Since then whole fields of science have been discovered and defined, and others, like geology and astronomy, have been reclaimed from dogmatism, and science studieschemistry,have slowly come into favor. Instruction in chemistry has grown up through a study of materia medica at the medical schools of Pennsylvania (1768), Harvard (1782), and Dartmouth (1798). A separate chair of chemistry was soon established at Princeton (1795), Columbia (1800), Yale (1802), Bowdoin (1805), South Carolina (1811), Dickinson (1811), and Williams (1812), and the movement continued until practically all the colleges had recognized it as an important branch of study. But while experiments were from the first performed as demonstrations by the instructors, it was generally not until almost the middle of the century that students werephysics,admitted at all to the laboratories. About the same time laboratories in physics began to be equipped with apparatus.geology,Geology was included in the early professorship of chemistry at Yale, and was given a distinct chair upon the advent of James D. Dana about the middle of the century, while Amos Eaton taught it as a separate subject at Williams as early as 1825. Some attentionastronomy,was given to astronomy early in the century, althoughthe instruments remained very ordinary and the methods authoritative and prescriptive until the opening of the observatories at Cincinnati (1844), Cambridge (1846),and biology.and Ann Arbor (1854). The biological sciences were even longer studied through mere observation rather than investigation and experiment. Until Louis Agassiz opened his laboratory at Harvard to students just after the middle of the century, the courses were meager, mostly theoretical and classificatory, and were given entirely by lecture, without field or laboratory work. Since then the development has been rapid.
Impulse through evolutionary doctrine.
But the greatest impulse was given to instruction in science through the publication of Darwin’sOrigin of Species(1859), and the dissemination of evolutionary doctrine through Asa Gray, professor of natural history at Harvard, and William B. Rogers, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The intellectual development ensuing also brought about the foundation of such new institutions as Cornell and Johns Hopkins, which emphasized the teaching of science as an unconscious protest against the exclusively classicalRise of new institutions.training. Special scientific and technological schools likewise began to arise. The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (1825) and the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard (1847) had already been opened, but now similar schools of science, like Sheffield at Yale (1860), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1862), sprang up in all parts of the country. In 1862 the Morrill Act of Congress appropriated lands in every state to promote education in agriculture, mechanic arts, and the natural sciences. These grants, which amounted at first to thirteen million acres, were subsequentlyextended to new states as they were admitted, and the endowment was increased by the annual grants of money that were made under later acts. From these funds and private benefactions, further schools of science were started or old schools were strengthened in every state.
Through the academy movement (pp. 158ff.) sciences were introduced into American secondary education. Sometimes these subjects were extended downward from the colleges, but often they had as yet been barelyAcademiestouched by the colleges. As the early high schools grew up, they continued the attention paid to the sciences by the academies. The first high school to appear, that at Boston in 1821 (pp. 268f.), scheduled geography in the first year; navigation and surveying in the second; and natural philosophy and astronomy in the third. A similar emphasis upon science appeared during the first half of the century in all the secondary institutions,and high schools.whether known as academies, high schools, union schools, or city colleges. In all cases, however, instruction was given mainly through text-books, and, while experiments were frequently used for demonstration by the teacher, there was no laboratory work for the students. Moreover, a tendency to overload the curriculum with sciences was much increased during the seventies by the demand of the legislatures in several states that candidates for teachers’ certificates pass an examination in several sciences. The high schools and academies endeavored to furnish the necessary training to prepare for these examinations, and until toward the end of the century the courses in the sciences were numerous and of rather superficial character. Within the last twenty years, however, the schools have come to limit eachstudent to a relatively few courses taught by thorough laboratory methods.
Influence of Mann
Except for geography, which appeared in the curriculum early in the century, the rudiments practically constituted the entire course of the elementary school until the time of Horace Mann. Largely through his efforts, physiology was widely introduced by the middleand Pestalozzi.of the century. About a dozen years later the Pestalozzian object teaching began to come in through the Oswego methods, although it tended to become formalized. Thus materials in several of the sciences came to be used, and the pupils were required to describe them in scientific terms. Toward the close of the century the sciences came to be presented more informally by the method generally known as ‘nature study.’ This movement quickly spread through the country, and has most recently appeared in the guise of agricultural instruction (see p. 424). Many states now require agriculture as a requisite for a teacher’s certificate, and most normal schools have come to furnish a training in the subject.
Interrelation of the Scientific with the Psychological and Sociological Movements.—It is evident that there has been a marked scientific movement in the educational systems of all countries during the past two hundred years. The sciences began to appear in the curricula of educational institutions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but their rapid increase, and the use of laboratories and the scientific method in instruction,Attitude upon formal discipline and method.dated from the middle of the nineteenth. In some respects this scientific movement has been closely related to the other modern tendencies in education,—the psychological and the sociological. The coincidence ofthe scientific movement with the psychological on the question of formal discipline has been evident (pp. 183f.). The influence of the development of the sciences upon educational method also constitutes part of the psychological movement. The sciences demanded entirely different methods of teaching from the traditional procedure. These innovations were worked out slowly by experimentation, and when they proved to be more in keeping with psychology, they reacted upon the teaching of the older subjects and came to be utilized in history, politics, philology, and other studies. A corresponding improvement in the presentation of the form, content, and arrangement of various subjects has taken place in text-books, and a radically different set of books and authors has been rendered necessary.
The scientific movement has even more points in common with the sociological. In its opposition to the disciplinarians and its stress upon content rather than form, the scientific tendency coincides with the sociological, although the former looks rather to the naturalMeans of human welfare.sciences as a means of individual welfare, and the latter to the social and political sciences to equip the individual for life in social institutions and to secure the progress of society. But while the scientist usually states his argument in individual terms, because of his connection in time and sympathy with the individualism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the same writer usually, as in the case of Rousseau, Combe, Spencer, and Huxley, advocates the social, moral, and political sciences as a means of complete living. Similarly, the sociological movement has especial kinship with the economic and utilitarian aspects of the study of thesciences, for professional, technical, and commercial institutions have been evolved because of sociological as well as scientific demands. Again, the use of the sciences in education as a means of preparing for life and the needs of society overlaps the modern sociological principle of furthering democracy. Both tendencies lead to the best development of all classes and to the abandonment of artificial strata in society.
Graves,In Modern Times(Macmillan, 1913), chap. X; andGreat Educators(Macmillan, 1912), chap. XIV; Monroe,Textbook(Macmillan, 1905), chap. XII; Parker,Modern Elementary Education(Ginn, 1912), pp. 331-340. Popular accounts of the growth of science can be found in Buckley, Arabella B.,A Short History of Natural Science(Appleton), and Williams, H. S.,Story of Nineteenth Century Science(Harper). Spencer’sEducationand Huxley’sScience and Educationshould be read. Further arguments for the study of science can be found in Coulter, J. M.,The Mission of Science in Education(Science, II, 12, pp. 281-293); Dryer, C. R.,Science in Secondary Schools(Prize Essay inThe Academy, May, 1888, pp. 197-221); Galloway, R.,Education, Scientific and Technical(Trübner, London, 1881); Norton, W. H.,The Social Service of Science(Science, II, 13, pp. 644ff.); Pearson, K.,Grammar of Science(Macmillan, 1911), chap. I; Roberts, R. D.,Science in the Nineteenth Century(Cambridge University Press, 1901), chap. VII; Sedgwick, W. T.,Educational Value of the Method of Science(Educational Review, vol. V, pp. 243ff.), and especially Youmans, E. L.,Culture Demanded by Modern Life(Appleton, 1867).
At the present time there is great progress in industrial, commercial, and agricultural training in the schools of Europe and America.For a quarter of a century the educational systems of Europe have been giving attention to moral training, and of late there has been some discussion of the subject in the United States.All the great nations now provide for the training of mental defectives, and for some time training has been afforded those defective in some sense organ.The attempts at improved methods of teaching are witnessed by the study of industries in the experimental school of Dewey, by the formulation of a curriculum in terms of normal activities of other elementary schools, and by the ‘didactic apparatus’ and the devices for learning the ‘three r’s’ of Montessori.Methods of mental measurement are being devised for the elementary school subjects by Thorndike and others, and systems of measurement are being utilized in administration.Darwin’s theory of evolution has revolutionized our attitude, imagery, and vocabulary in education.There is also a great variety of other educational movements in all grades of education.
At the present time there is great progress in industrial, commercial, and agricultural training in the schools of Europe and America.
For a quarter of a century the educational systems of Europe have been giving attention to moral training, and of late there has been some discussion of the subject in the United States.
All the great nations now provide for the training of mental defectives, and for some time training has been afforded those defective in some sense organ.
The attempts at improved methods of teaching are witnessed by the study of industries in the experimental school of Dewey, by the formulation of a curriculum in terms of normal activities of other elementary schools, and by the ‘didactic apparatus’ and the devices for learning the ‘three r’s’ of Montessori.
Methods of mental measurement are being devised for the elementary school subjects by Thorndike and others, and systems of measurement are being utilized in administration.
Darwin’s theory of evolution has revolutionized our attitude, imagery, and vocabulary in education.
There is also a great variety of other educational movements in all grades of education.
Recent Educational Progress.—Because of the notable development of science and invention, which has been noted in the last chapter, the nineteenth century has often been referred to as the ‘wonderful’ century. Such a term affords no better description of material achievementthan of the remarkable progress that has taken place in education. Previous chapters have indicated the extent to which, through various movements, education has advanced and broadened in conception, but the near future of education will probably witness a much greater development. At the present time there areConstant efforts at a reconstruction of education.constant efforts at a modification and a reconstruction of education in the interest of a better adjustment of the individual to his social environment and of greatly improved conditions in society itself. It would, of course, be impossible to describe all of these movements even in the briefest manner, but some of the present day tendencies that appear most significant should now engage our attention.
The Growth of Industrial Training.—The movement that is perhaps most widely discussed to-day is the introduction of vocational training into the systems of education.Social reasons for industrial education.There is now an especial need for this type of training. Since the industrial revolution and the development of the factory system, the master no longer works by the side of his apprentice and instructs him, and the ambition of the youth can no longer be spurred by the hope that he may himself some day become a master. His experience is generally confined to some single process, and only a few of the operatives require anything more than low-grade skill. Nor, as a rule, will the employer undertake any systematic education of his workmen, when the mobility of labor permits of no guarantee that he will reap the benefit of such efforts, and the modern industrial plant is poorly adapted to supplying the necessary theoretical training for experts. Hence an outside agency—the school—has been calledupon to assist in the solution of these new problems. To meet the demand for industrial education, all the principal states of Europe have maintained training of this sort for at least half a century, and the United States has in the twentieth century been making rapid strides in the same direction.
Industrial training of the continuation schools in Germany.
Industrial Schools in Europe.—In Germany, where this training is most effective, the work has for fifty years been rapidly developing through theFortbildungsschulen(see Fig. 55). The course in these schools at first consisted largely of review work, but the rapid spread of elementary schools soon enabled them to devote all the time to technical education. Training is now afforded not only for the rank and file of workmen in the different trades, but for higher grades of workers, such as foremen and superintendents. Girls are likewise trained in a wide variety of vocations. During the last twenty-five years there have also been developed continuation schools to furnish theoretical courses in physical sciences, mathematics, bookkeeping, drawing, history, and law. In North Germany there is a tendency to confine the courses to theoretical training, and leave the practical side to the care of the employers, but the South German states generally combine theoretical and practical work, and develop schools adapted to the industries of the variousWork of Kerschensteiner.localities. Through the work of Kerschensteiner, Munich has even included an extra class in the elementary schools, to bridge the gap between school life and employment.
No apprenticeship in France, but all training in continuation schools.
France goes still further, and, because of unsatisfactory conditions in apprenticeship, attempts to eliminate it altogether, and to furnish the entire industrial trainingthrough continuation schools articulating with the elementary system. The pupils are admitted at thirteen to the continuation schools (see p. 383) and obtain practice in the school workshops for three years. Woodwork is generally taught to the boys, but the other courses vary with local needs. Girls learn to make dresses, corsets, millinery, artificial flowers, and otherEarly facilities in England.industrial products. In England, grants were first made to evening industrial schools and classes in 1851, but twenty years later regular schools of science were organized, which had both day and evening sessions. In addition to these continuation schools, there have now been established higher elementary schools, which afford a four-year course in practical and theoretical science arranged according to local needs.
Evening continuation schools in United States.
Industrial Training in the United States.—Industrial training first began to be offered in the United States during the latter half of the nineteenth century by means of a number of evening continuation schools. These were established through philanthropy in the larger cities, and included the Cooper Union and the Mechanics’ Institute in New York; the Franklin Union and the Spring Garden Institute in Philadelphia; the Ohio Mechanics’ Institute in Cincinnati; and the Virginia Mechanics’ Institute in Richmond. The public schools at length followed this example, and of late years have organized evening classes in drawing, mathematics, science, and technical subjects. Day instruction was long delayed. It began in 1881Day schools, privatewith the foundation of the New York Trade School, but at the end of twenty years there were only twoand public.others,—the Williamson Free School of Mechanical Trades near Philadelphia and the Baron de Hirsch TradeSchool in New York. Later the development was more rapid, and since 1906 several hundred day trade schools have been organized, mostly through public support, inSecondary schools.the larger cities of the country. These schools are mostly for youths between sixteen and twenty-five, but ‘preparatory trade schools’ for younger boys have also been started in New York, Massachusetts, and other states. Higher training to equip leaders for the industries has also come to be furnished through endowed secondary schools and technical high schools in a number of cities.‘Part-time’ schools.A recent variety of vocational training is the ‘part-time’ plan, by which students are given some theoretical and formal training in a regular high school or college, while they are obtaining their practical experience. This alternation of practical and theoretical training is sometimes carried on in a single institution, or even within a commercial establishment itself.
Conditions requiring commercial education.
Commercial Education in Europe and America.—But the modern development of vocational training throughout the leading countries has not been confined to industrial lines. With the extension of the sphere of commerce and the development of its organization that have taken place in the nineteenth century, it has come to be recognized that preparation is essential for a business career. Only recently, however, has this training been felt to be a proper function of the schools, since for many years it was opposed by educators as sordid and commercializing, and by business men as unpractical and ineffective. Both classes have now been brought to realize the need of mutual support, and the rapid growth of commercial education indicates an appreciation of its usefulness.
In Germany many private continuation schools,
Germany is generally admitted to lead in commercial education. The growth of this training has taken place since 1887, but there is now offered under state control a unified and thorough preparation for any line of business. Besides private continuation schools, in which a course of three years in modern languages and elementary commercial studies can be obtained, there have grownand secondary and university courses,up both public secondary schools and university courses in which a thorough general education and theoretical work in commerce, as well as a practical and technicalbut England and France indifferent.training, are provided (Fig. 55). England and France have been rather indifferent to commercial education. In both countries until very recently schools have been few, and the number of pupils in each has been small. But now continuation schools, free evening courses, and private classes have sprung up, and in a few large cities commercial schools of secondary and even higher gradeIn the United States ‘business colleges,’have been established. In the United States commercial training began by the middle of the nineteenth century through private enterprise with classes in bookkeeping, and later with ‘business colleges.’ Despite the name of the latter, the course is narrow and is generally shaped byand secondary and higher courses.pecuniary aims. During the last two decades of the nineteenth century high and normal schools began to offer commercial instruction, but until the twentieth century the courses were only tolerated as a necessary evil, and largely imitated those of the business colleges. Since then many cities have opened high schools of commerce, and university schools and colleges of commerce have arisen, and even a score of years before this development the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce was started at the University of Pennsylvania.
Agricultural instruction in the schools of France and Germany.
Recent Emphasis upon Agricultural Training.—A similar development has of late been taking place in agricultural education. France and Germany offer elementary instruction in agriculture, while the former has also introduced the subject into the normal schools, and the latter has established a secondary agricultural institution open to students at the close of their sixth yearUnited States offers courses in all grades of education.in theRealschule. Through the feeling that the United States must become the great agricultural nation, and that the traditional methods of agriculture have been exceedingly wasteful, this country especially has been emphasizing that type of vocational education. The land grant colleges, first endowed by act of Congress in 1862, have greatly stimulated interest in the subject, and later Congress added other sources of revenue, and has recently furnished appropriations for instruction in the teaching of agriculture and for extension work in agriculture. Thus the way has been prepared for the introduction of the subject into the high school and grades. There are now at least one hundred agricultural high schools in the United States, and agriculture is taught as a branch of study in several thousand high and elementary school systems.
Social conditions demanding moral training.
Moral Training in the Schools To-day.—But present day tendencies in education have to do with more than the material side of civilization. There is a growing sentiment in favor of moral instruction in the schools. There are many reasons why this need should be especially felt in the complex business life of to-day. When men work for impersonal corporations, sell products to people they never see, or intrust their welfare to officials whose names are scarcely known, one strong factor making forhonesty and virtue, that of personal relations, is lost. Moreover, as a result of the weakening of old religious sanctions, the new conditions in large cities, and other causes, moral traditions are in need of being buttressed.
Fig. 55.—Vocational education for boys in Germany (Commercial, Industrial, and Professional) in Relation to Public School Organization.(Reproduced by permission from Farrington’sCommercial Education in Germany.)
Fig. 55.—Vocational education for boys in Germany (Commercial, Industrial, and Professional) in Relation to Public School Organization.
(Reproduced by permission from Farrington’sCommercial Education in Germany.)
The educational systems of Europe have for a quarter of a century given more or less attention to moral training.In France secular training, but in England and Germany religious.In France this training has been purely secular and excluded all religious elements. But the education of England and Germany has always associated the teaching of morality with religion. In England, the ‘board’ schools have furnished religious instruction of a nonsectarian character, but the religious training of the ‘voluntary’ schools has occupied more time and has stressed the creed and denominational teaching of some church, usually the Church of England (seepp. 380f.). The contest over religious teaching since the Act ofSadler’s commission.1902 (see p. 390) caused a self-constituted commission, with Michael E. Sadler as chairman, to investigate the subject of moral instruction, and in 1908-1909 it presented a large and illuminating report. In Germany the moral and religious instruction in all elementary schools is sectarian, and Catholic and Protestant schools are alike supported, wherever needed, at public expense. During the past decade there has been considerable discussion in the United States concerning moral education. In response to the demand for an investigation ofWork of the N. E. A. in the United States.the subject, a committee of the National Education Association in 1908-1909 made a report upon various phases of moral training, and recommended special instruction in ethics, not in the form of precepts, but through consideration of existing moral questions. In 1911 theSummary of the R. E. A.Religious Education Association, whose convention in that year was devoted to moral training, gave in itsJournala broad summary of the progress of moral education in the United States. The report reveals a wide difference of opinion and practice, but an evident tendency to trust other agencies than direct moral instruction. As a rule, state legislation seems as yet to have failed to provide a general system of training, but has confined itself to specific subjects, such as instruction in citizenship, the effects of alcohol and narcotics, and the humane treatment of animals.
Impulse given by Seguin’s ‘physiological’ methods.
The Development of Training for Mental Defectives.—One of the most patent evidences of the growth of the humane spirit in modern times is found in the universal attention now given to the education of mental defectives. This movement was given its greatest impulse through Édouard Seguin, who came to the United States in 1850 and developed his methods here. His general plan was to appeal to the mind through the senses by means of a training of the hand, taste and smell, and eye and ear. He used pictures, photographs, cards, patterns, figures, wax, clay, scissors, compasses, and pencils as his chief instruments of education. The stimulus he gave to the training of defectives has been epoch-making, and his ‘physiological’ methods have remained the chief means of education. Although there has grown up aAttempts to introduce intellectual elements.tendency to introduce intellectual elements into the training of the feeble-minded, the advantages of such a procedure are doubtful.
All the great nations now provide schools for theSchools in Germany,training of defectives. Germany has over one hundred institutions, with some twenty thousand pupils in them,although nine-tenths of them are not supported by the state, but are under church or private auspices. These schools generally stress manual education, but give some attention to intellectual lines, especially to speech training. There are but few schools for defectives inFrance, and England.France, aside from the two near Paris and the juvenile department of the insane hospital at Bicêtre, but these institutions largely follow the physical work formulated by Seguin. In London there is one excellent institution with two thousand pupils, where manual training constitutes almost the entire course. But there are five other schools so located as to serve the various parts of England, in which the training is rather bookish and emphasis is especially laid upon number work.
Training in the United States.
Thanks to the start given by Seguin, America has taken up the education of defectives more fully than any other country. Schools for the feeble-minded now exist in almost all the states, and there are some thirty-five or forty private institutions of considerable merit. Not far from twenty thousand defectives are being trained, although this is probably only about one-tenth of the total number of such cases in the country. The type of education differs greatly according to the institution, ranging from almost purely manual training to a large proportion of the intellectual rudiments, but in all the work is adapted to the various grades in such a way as to raise them a little in the scale of efficiency and to keep them as far as possible from being a burden to themselves and to society. Likewise, special clinics and investigations, like those of Lightner Witmer of the University of Pennsylvania and of H. H. Goddard of the Training School at Vineland (New Jersey), aregreatly adding to our knowledge of the best methods for training defectives.
Education of the Deaf and Blind.—Persons defective in some sense organ, but otherwise up to the standard, have likewise for some time been receiving an educationManualthat will minimize the difficulty. There have been two chief methods for teaching the deaf. The manual or ‘silent’ method of communication was invented by the Abbé de l’Épée in Paris during the latter part of the eighteenth century, and his school was adopted by theand oral methods for the deaf.nation in 1791. The other method, the ‘oral,’ by which the pupil learns to communicate through reading the movements of the lips, was started in Germany early in the eighteenth century, but was not employed to any great extent until the middle of the next century. Most countries now use the oral method exclusively, or in connection with the manual system. In the United States practically every commonwealth now has one or more schools for the deaf, and since 1864 even higher education has been furnished by Gallaudet College at Washington.
The first instruction of the blind through raised lettersSchools for the blind in Europe and the United States.was given toward the end of the eighteenth century by Abbé Haüy at Paris. While his schools, owing to his lack of judgment, were failures, the idea spread rapidly. Early in the nineteenth century there were one or more schools in each of the leading countries of Europe, and a generation later institutions of this sort were started in the United States. In schools for the blind or deaf, industrial training has in most instances been added to the intellectual (see p. 300), in order to fit every individual to be an independent workman in some line.Even pupils, both deaf and blind, like Laura Bridgeman and Helen Keller, have had their minds awakened through the sense of touch.
Recent Development of Educational Method; Dewey’s Experimental School.—Nor has the past century witnessed any cessation of the attempts at improved methods of teaching. Various suggestions and systems have been put forward and many have had an important effect upon school procedure. It is impossible, however, to discuss any except a few of the more influential and prominent, and these can be considered but briefly. The occupational work of Professor Dewey and ColonelColonel Parker’s contributions.Parker’s scheme of concentration have marked the growth of a body of educational theory and practice that places the methods of to-day far in advance of anything previously known. The combination and modification of Ritter, Herbart, and Froebel worked out by Parker have perhaps received sufficient attention (seepp. 293, 350, and 364), but we may at this point outline a little more fully the contributions made by John Dewey, who has probably been the leader in the reconstruction that has taken place in education almost since the twentieth century began.
The methods of Dewey were developed in an experimental elementary school connected with the University of Chicago and under his supervision from 1896 to 1903. The school did not start with ready-made principles, but sought to solve three fundamental educational problems.PurposeIt undertook to find out (1) how to bring the school into closer relation with the home and neighborhood life; (2) how to introduce subject-matter in history, science, and art that has a positive value and real significance inthe child’s own life; and (3) how to carry on instruction in reading, writing, and figuring with everyday experience and occupation as their background “in such a way that the child shall feel their necessity through their connection with subjects which appeal to him on their own account.” The plan for meeting these needs was found largely in the study of industries. Since industries are most fundamental in the thought, ideals, and social organization of a people, these activities must have the most prominent place in the course of a school. “The school cannot be a preparation for social life except as it reproducesand course of Dewey’s school.the typical conditions of life.” The means used in furnishing this industrial activity were evolved mainly along the lines of shopwork, cooking, sewing, and weaving, although many subsidiary industries were also used. These occupations were, of course, intended for a liberalizing, rather than a technical purpose, and considerable time was given to an historical study of them (Fig. 56). Dewey declares: “The industrial history of man is not a materialistic or merely utilitarian affair. It is a matter of intelligence. Its record is the record of how man learned to think, to think to some effect, to transform the conditions of life so that life itself became a different thing. It is an ethical record as well; the account of the conditions which men have patiently wrought out to serve their ends.”
In harmony with Froebel,
It can be seen how fully this plan is in accord with the real principles of social coöperation and expression of individual activities underlying the work of Froebel; and “so far as these statements correctly represented Froebel’s educational philosophy,” Dewey generously grants that “the school should be regarded as its exponent.”But these industrial activities of the Chicago experimental school were not in the least suggested by Froebel’s work, and were far more expressive of real life. They never became as stereotyped and external as thebut not as stereotyped,gifts or even as the occupations of the kindergarten have generally been. Dewey is insistent that this training shall be carried on not for the purpose of furnishing facts or principles to be learned, but for enabling the child to engage in the industrial occupations in miniature. “The school is not preparation for life: it is life.” Hence this training is superior to the occupations of Froebel in that “it maintains a balance between the intellectual and the practical phases of experience.” Where Froebel has held to the construction of beautiful things in mechanical ways, Dewey emphasizes the ordinary activities and experiences of life, even though the expression of these be crude. The child should be “given, wherever possible, intellectual responsibility for selecting the materials and instruments that are most fit, and given an opportunity to think out his own model and plan of work, led to perceive his own errors, and find how to correct them.”and work—not amusement—the spirit of the school.Thus the work was never “reduced to a mere routine or custom and its educational value lost.” As a result, too, it was the consensus of opinion that “while the children like, or love, to come to school, yet work, and not amusement, has been the spirit and teaching of the school; and that this freedom has been granted under such conditions of intelligent and sympathetic oversight as to be a means of upbuilding and strengthening character.”
Other Experiments in Method.—Hence, while the Chicago school is now at an end, the experiment in education developed there is still yielding abundant fruitage.It has stimulated similar undertakings elsewhere, and has been the largest factor in determining the theory and practice of the present day. Either as a result of Dewey’s work or through independent thought, there has sprung up an important group of schools in which there is clearly an effort to bring boys and girls of elementary school age into more intimate relation to community life about them. Such are the Gary (Indiana) Public Schools,Schools on a similar basis.the Francis W. Parker School of Chicago, the Elementary School at the University of Missouri, the Pestalozzi-Froebel School of Berlin, the Abbotsholme School in Derbyshire (England), and a number of others.
A good illustration is afforded in the school developedUniversity of Missouri Elementary School:by Junius L. Meriam at Columbia, Missouri, although it has not been given much publicity. Its function is to help children do better in all those wholesome activities in which they normally engage. The school does not attend to the ‘three r’s’ as such, but specifically to particularits purpose and curriculum.activities of children, including (1) play, (2) observation, (3) handwork, and (4) stories, music, and art. These four ‘studies,’ representing real life, irrespective of the school, constitute the curriculum, and the ‘three r’s’ are studied only as they are needed. Their content, therefore, being used, as in life, in meeting real needs, is studied most effectively.
Gary school system:
An experiment that has attracted widespread interest is that worked out in the Gary school system by William A. Wirt. While the achievement is mostly in the way of a remarkable organization and administration that have undertaken to make available “all of the educational opportunities of the city all of the time for all of the people,” the teaching has to some extent been carriedon so as to reveal to the pupils “that what they are doingits plant and methods.is worth while.” The school plant includes a playground, garden, workshop, social center, library, and traditional school, and it has been shown that these agencies, when properly organized, “secure the same attitude of mind toward the reading, writing, and arithmetic that the child normally has for play.” All the other schools that have been mentioned above make similar attempts to enable the children to get into closer touch with their environment. While each of them approaches the problems of elementary training from a different angle, they are all in harmony with the spirit of Dewey and present day theory.
The Montessori Method.—But probably the most spectacular development in educational procedure is that originating with Maria Montessori at Rome. Yet the Montessori method, except for some elements adapted from Seguin (see p. 426), is largely a combination of several of the concepts found in Rousseau, Pestalozzi, and Froebel, and fails to grasp the larger vision of education that appears in present-day theory, such as Dewey’s. Like Rousseau and Froebel, Montessori holds fundamentally to the rightness of child nature and consequently‘Liberty of the pupil;’to the liberty of the pupil, but she does not, like Dewey, realize that education is itself life and that the activities of real life should be utilized in training. Moreover, the sense training, which Montessori herself considers the most distinctive feature of her system, is neither original nor psychologically sound. MontessoriSeguin’s apparatus.began as a teacher of defectives, and her ‘didactic apparatus’ and methods are largely borrowed from Seguin. Exercises of this sort are of great value in training defectives,but the assumption of their usefulness in the education of normal children is more doubtful. They are intended to train the senses to general powers and discriminations, and seem to be defended simply upon the basis of faculty psychology and the outworn theory of ‘formal discipline’ (see p. 182 f.).
Writing,
The feature of the Montessori method, however, that has attracted most attention is its apparent success with the formal elementary studies, especially the facility, enthusiasm, and speed with which it has enabled the pupils to learn to write. Montessori has carefully analyzed the process of writing and devised three exercises by which this art is unconsciously learned by three or four year old children in Italy. If this training can bereading, and arithmetic.applied to unphonetic languages, like the English, it may possibly be regarded as a contribution. It is evident, however, that Montessori lays too much stress upon the acquisition of the formal studies and starts them at too early an age. In this she fails to appreciate Froebel’s great contribution of a school without books, and certainly does not realize, with Dewey, that the main purpose of education is to give a child some control of his social environment and that for this there are activities of more importance to child life than the school arts. Within a few years it will probably be difficult to understand thefurorethat has been created by the Montessori methods.
The Statistical Method and Mental MeasurementsTechnique of the physical sciences applied to education.in Education.—One of the most significant of the present day movements is the application, especially in the United States, of scientific, statistical methods to problems of education. Statistics have long been used,though often without clearness or accuracy, in reports of school administration, but it remained for this century to apply to the various phases of education the same general technique and approximately the same precision as that long demanded by the physical and biological sciences. Quantitative, unambiguous statements are now sought and secured not only for the phenomena of attendance, retardation, expenditures, and the like, but also for the relative and absolute amounts of knowledge. As a consequence, emphasis has been placed upon the results of education rather than upon the declaration of intentions.
Probably the first scholar to apply the scientific principles of statistics to education was Edward L.Thorndike’s advocacy of a quantitative description and of scales, and the application to achievement in school subjects.Thorndike of Columbia University. In hisEducational Psychologyhe illustrates how a quantitative description of individual differences and of the factors that condition them is necessary to throw real light upon educational theory and practice, and in hisMental and Social Measurementshe presents the details of the method. Subsequently he maintained, in the face of much opposition, that scales, as objective and as impersonal as possible, should and could be devised for measuring variations in ability and changes that take place as a result of natural growth and instruction. Such scales, beginning at an ascertained zero and progressing by regular steps to a point near perfection, are, because of the complexity of their elements, difficult to construct, but they have been set forth more or less tentatively by various investigators for the measurement of achievement in handwriting (Fig. 57), arithmetic, English composition, spelling, drawing, freehand lettering, and readingrespectively. Other scales to measure ability in the several high school subjects may be expected soon.