II.—The Form of Education.
§ 23. The general form of Education follows from the nature of mind. Mind is nothing but what it itself creates out of its own activity. It is, at first, mind as undeveloped or unconscious (in the main); but, secondly, it acquires the power of examining its own action, of considering itself as an object of attention, as if it were a quite foreign thing—i.e., it reflects (in this stage it is really ignorant that it is studying its own nature); and, finally, it becomes conscious that this, which it had been examining, and of whose existence it is conscious, is itsown self: It attains self-consciousness. It is through this estrangement from itself, given back to itself again and restored to unity, but it is no longer a simple, unconscious unity. In this third state only can it be said to be free—i.e., to possess itself. Education cannot create; it can only help to develop into reality the previously-existent possibility; it can only help to bring forth to light the hidden life.
§ 24. All culture, in whatever line, must pass through these two stages of estrangement and of reunion; the reunion being not of two different things, but the recognition of itself by thought, and its acceptance of itself as itself. And the more complete is the estrangement—i.e., the more perfectly can the thought be made to view itself as a somewhat entirely foreign to itself, to look upon it as a different and independent somewhat—the more complete and perfect will be its union with and acceptance of its object as one with itself when the recognition does finally take place. Through culture we are led to this conscious possession of our own thought. Plato gives to the feeling, with which knowledge must necessarily begin, the name of wonder. But wonder is not knowledge; it is only the first step towards it. It is the half-terrified attention which the mind fixes on an object, and the half-terror would be impossible did it not dimly forebode that it was something of its own nature at which it was looking. The child delights in stories of the far-off, the strange, and the wonderful. It is as if they hoped to find in these some solution to themselves—a solution which they have, as it were, asked in vain of familiar scenes and objects. Their craving for such is the proof of how far their nature transcends all its known conditions. They are like adventurous explorers who push out to unknown regions in hopes of finding the freedom and wealth which lies only within themselves. They want to be told about things which they never saw, such as terrible conflagrations, banditti life, wild animals, gray old ruins, Robinson Crusoes on far-off, happy islands. They are irresistibly attracted by whatever is highly colored and dazzlingly lighted. The child prefers the story of Sinbad the Sailor to any tales of his own home and nation, because mind has this necessityof getting, as it were, outside of itself so as to obtain a view of itself. As the child grows to youth he is, from the same reasons, desirous of traveling.
§ 25. Work may be defined as the activity of the mind in a conscious concentration on, and absorption in, some object, with the purpose of acquiring or producing it. Play is the activity of the mind which gives itself up to surrounding objects according to its own caprice, without any thought as to results. The Educator gives out work to the pupil, but he leaves him to himself in his play.
§ 26. It is necessary to draw a sharp line between work and play. If the Educator has not respect for work as an activity of great weight and importance, he not only spoils the relish of the pupil for play, which loses all its charm of freedom when not set off by its antithesis of earnest labor, but he undermines in the pupil's mind all respect for any real existence. On the other hand, he who does not give to the child space, time, and opportunity for play prevents the originality of his pupil from free development through the exercise of his creative ingenuity. Play sends the child back to his work refreshed, because in it he loses himself without constraint and according to his own fancy, while in work he is required to yield himself up in a manner prescribed for him by another.
Let the teacher watch his pupils while at play if he would discover their individual peculiarities, for it is then that they unconsciously betray their real propensities. This antithesis of work and play runs through the entire life, the form only of play varying with years and occupations. To do what we please, as we please, and when we please, not for any reason, but just because we please, remains play always. Children in their sports like nothing better than to counterfeit what is to be the earnest work of their after-lives. The little girl plays with her dolls, and the boy plays he is a soldier and goes to mimic wars.
It is, of course, an error to suppose that the play of a child is simply muscular. The lamb and the colt find their full enjoyment in capering aimlessly about the field. But to the child play would be incomplete which did not bring the mindinto action. Children derive little enjoyment from purely muscular exercise. They must at the same time have an object requiring mental action to attain it. A number of children set simply to run up and down a field would tire of the exercise in five minutes; but put a ball amongst them and set them to a game and they will be amused by it for hours.
Exceptional mental development is always preceded, and is, indeed, produced by, an exceptional amount of exercise in the form of play on the part of the special faculties concerned. The peculiar tendencies exhibited in play are due to the large development of particular faculties, and the ultimate giant strength of a faculty is brought about by play. The genius is no doubt born, not made; but, although born, it would dwindle away in infancy were it not for the constant exercise taken in play, which is as necessary for development as food for the maintenance of life.
§ 27. Work should never be treated as if it were play, nor play as if it were work. Those whose work is creative activity of the mind may find recreation in the details of science; and those, again, whose vocation is scientific research can find recreation in the practice of art in its different departments. What is work to one may thus be play to another. This does not, however, contradict the first statement.
§ 28. It is the province of education so to accustom us to different conditions or ways of thinking and acting that they shall no longer seem strange or foreign to us. When these have become, as we say, "natural" to us—when we find the acquired mode of thinking or acting just what our inclination leads us to adopt unconsciously, aHabithas been formed. A habit is, then, the identity of natural inclination with the special demands of any particular doing or suffering, and it is thus the external condition of all progress. As long as we require the conscious act of our will to the performance of a deed, that deed is somewhat foreign to ourselves, and not yet a part of ourselves. The practical work of the educator may thus be said to consist in leading the mind of the pupil over certain lines of thought till it becomes "natural" or spontaneous for him to go by that road. Much time is wasted inschools where the pupil's mind is not led aright at first, for then he has to unlearn habits of thought which are already formed. The work of the teacher is to impress good methods of studying and thinking upon the minds of his pupils, rather than to communicate knowledge.
§ 29. It is, at first sight, entirely indifferent what a Habit shall relate to—i.e., the point is to get the pupil into the way of forming habits, and it is not at first of so much moment what habit is formed as that a habit is formed. But we cannot consider that there is anything morally neutral in the abstract, but only in the concrete, or in particular examples. An action may be of no moral significance to one man, and under certain circumstances, while to another man, or to the same man under different circumstances, it may have quite a different significance, or may possess an entirely opposite character. Appeal must be made, then, to the individual conscience of each one to decide what is and what is not permissible to that individual under the given circumstances. Education must make it its first aim to awaken in the pupil a sensitiveness to spiritual and ethical distinctions which knows that nothing is in its own nature morally insignificant or indifferent, but shall recognize, even in things seemingly small, a universal human significance. But, yet, in relation to the highest interests of morality or the well-being of society, the pupil must be taught to subordinate without hesitation all that relates exclusively to his own personal comfort or welfare for the well-being of his fellow-men, or for moral rectitude.
When we reflect upon habit, it at once assumes for us the character of useful or injurious. The consequences of a habit are not indifferent.
Whatever action tends as a harmonious means to the realization of our purpose is desirable or advantageous, and whatever either partially contradicts or wholly destroys it is disadvantageous. Advantage and disadvantage being, then, only relative terms, dependent upon the aim or purpose which we happen to have in view, a habit which may be advantageous to one man under certain circumstances may be disadvantageous to another man, or even to the same man, under other circumstances.Education must, then, accustom the youth to consider for himself the expediency or inexpediency of any action in relation to his own vocation in life. He must not form habits which will be inexpedient with regard to that.
§ 31. There is, however, anabsolutedistinction of habits as morally good and bad. From this absolute stand-point we must, after all, decide what is for us allowable or forbidden, what is expedient and what inexpedient.
§ 32. As to its form, habit may be either passive or active. By passive habit is meant a habit of composure which surveys undisturbed whatever vicissitudes, either external or internal, may fall to our lot, and maintains itself superior to them all, never allowing its power of acting to be paralyzed by them. It is not, however, merely a stoical indifference, nor is it the composure which comes from inability to receive impressions—a sort of impassivity. It is that composure which is the highest result of power. Nor is it a selfish love of ease which intentionally withdraws itself from annoyances in order to remain undisturbed. It is not manifested because of a desire to be out of these vicissitudes. It is, while in them, to be not of them. It is the composure which does not fret itself over what it cannot change. The soul that has built for itself this stronghold of freedom within itself may vividly experience joy and sorrow, pain and pleasure, and yet serenely know that it is intrenched in walls which are inaccessible to their attacks, because it knows that it is infinitely superior to all that may chance or change. What is meant by active habit in distinction from passive habit is found in our external activity, as skill, facility, readiness of information, etc. It might be considered as the equipping of our inner selves for active contest with the external world; while passive habit is the fortifying of our inner selves against the attack of the external world. The man who possesses habit in both these forms impresses himself in many different ways on the outer world, while at the same time, and all the time, he preserves intact his personality from the constant assaults of the outer world. He handles both spear and shield.
§ 33. All education, in whatever line, must work by forminghabits physical, mental, or moral. It might be said to consist in a conversion of actions which are at first voluntary, by means of repetition, into instructive actions which are performed, as we say, naturally—i.e., without any conscious volition. We teach a child to walk, or he teaches himself to walk by a constant repetition of the action of the will upon the necessary muscles; and, when the thinking brain hands over the mechanism to the trained spinal cord, the anxious, watchful look disappears from the face, and the child talks or laughs as he runs: then that part of his education is completed. Henceforth the attention that had been necessary to manage the body in walking is freed for other work. This is only an illustration, easily understood, of what takes place in all education. Mental and moral acts, thoughts, and feelings in the same way are, by repetition, converted into habits and become our nature; and character, good or bad, is only the aggregate of our habits. When we say a person has no character, we mean exactly this: that he has no fixed habits. But, as the great end of human life is freedom, he must be above even habit. He must not be wholly a machine of habits, and education must enable him to attain the power of breaking as well as of forming habits, so that he may, when desirable, substitute one habit for another. For habits may be (§29), according to their nature, proper or improper, advantageous or disadvantageous, good or bad; and, according to their form, may be (§32) either the acceptance of the external by the internal or the reaction of the internal upon the external. Through our freedom we must be able, not only to renounce any habit formed, but to form a new and better one. Man should be supreme above all habits, wearing them as garments which the soul puts on and off at will. It must so order them all as to secure for itself a constant progress of development into still greater freedom. In this higher view habits become thus to our sight only necessary accompaniments of imperfect freedom. Can we conceive of God, who is perfect Freedom, as having any habits? We might say that, as a means toward the ever-more decided realization of the Good, we must form a habit of voluntarily making and breaking off habits. We must characterize as bad those habits whichrelate only to our personal convenience or enjoyment. They are often not essentially blameworthy, but there lies in them a hidden danger that they may allure us into luxury or effeminacy. It is a false and mechanical way of looking at the affair to suppose that a habit which had been formed by a certain number of repetitions can be broken off by an equal number of refusals. We can never utterly renounce a habit which we decide to be undesirable for us except through decision and firmness.
§ 34. Education, then, must consider the preparation for authority and obedience (§17); for a rational ordering of one's actions according to universal principles, and, at the same time, a preservation of individuality (§18); for work and play (§25); for habits of spontaneity or originality (§28). To endeavor by any set rules to harmonize in the pupil these opposites will be a vain endeavor, and failure in the solution of the problem is quite possible by reason of the freedom of the pupil, of surrounding circumstances, or of mistakes on the part of the teacher, and the possibility of this negative result must, therefore, enter as an element of calculation into the work itself. All the dangers which may in any way threaten the youth must be considered in advance, and he must be fortified against them. While we should not intentionally expose the youth to temptation in order to prove his strength of resistance, neither should we, on the other hand, endeavor to seclude him from all chance of dangerous temptation. To do the former would be satanic; while to do the latter would be ridiculous, useless, and in fact dangerous in the highest degree, for temptation comes more from within than from without, and any secret inclination will in some way seek, or even create, its own opportunity for gratification. The real safety from sin lies, not in seclusion of one's self from the world10—for all the elements of worldliness are innate in each individual—but in an occupying of the restless activity in other ways, in learning and discipline; these being varied as time goes on, according to the age and degree of proficiency. Not to crush out, but to direct,the child's activity, whether physical or mental, is the key to all real success in education. The sentimentalism which has, during the last few years, in this country (the United States), tended to diminish to so great an extent the actual work to be performed by our boys and girls, has set free a dangerous amount of energy whose new direction gives cause for grave alarm. To endeavor to prevent the youth from all free and individual relations with the real world, implies a never-ending watch kept over him. The consciousness of being thus "shadowed" destroys in the youth all elasticity of spirit, all confidence, and all originality. A constant feeling of, as it were, a detective police at his side obscures all sense of independent action, systematically accustoming him to dependence. Though, as the tragic-comic story of Peter Schlemihl shows, the loss of a man's own shadow may involve him in a series of fatalities,11yet to be "shadowed" constantly by a companion, us in the pedagogical system of the Jesuits, undermines all naturalness. And, if we endeavor to guard too strictly against what is evil and wrong, the pupil reacts, bringing all his intelligence into the service of his craft and cunning, till the would-be educator stands aghast at the discovery of such evil-doing as he had supposed impossible under his strict supervision. Within the circle of whatever rules it may be found necessary to draw around the young there must always be left space for freedom. Pupils should always be led to see that all rules against which they fret are only of their own creation; and that as grave-stones mark the place where some one has fallen, so every law is only a record of some previous wrong-doing. The law "Thou shalt not kill" was not given till murder had been committed. In other words, the wrong deed preceded the law against it, and perfect obedience is the same as perfect freedom. No obedience except that which we gain from the pupil's own convictions has real educational significance.
§ 35. If there appears in the youth any decided deformity opposed to the ideal which we would create in him, we should atonce inquire into its history and origin. The negative and positive are so closely related, and depend so intimately on each other, in our being that what appears to us to be negligence, rudeness, immorality, foolishness, or oddity may arise from some real necessity of the pupil which in its process of development has only taken a wrong direction.
§ 36. If it should appear, on such examination, that the wrong action was the result of avoidable ignorance, of caprice, or willfulness on the part of the pupil, this calls for a simple prohibition on the part of the teacher, no reason being assigned. His authority must be sufficient for the pupil without any reason. When the fault is repeated, and the pupil is old enough to understand, then only should the grounds of the prohibition be stated with it. This should, however, be done in few words, and the educator must never allow himself to lose, in a doctrinal lecture, the idea of discipline. If he do, the pupil will soon forget that it was his own misbehavior which was the cause of all the remarks. The statement of the reason must be honest, and must be presented to the youth on the side most easy for him to appreciate. False reasons are not only morally wrong, but they lead the mind astray. We also commit a grave error when we try to unfold to the youth all the possible consequences of his wrong act, for those possible consequences are too far off to affect his mind. The long lecture wearies him, especially if it be in a stereotyped form; and with teachers who are fault-finding, and who like to hear themselves talk, this is apt to be the case. Still more unfortunate would it be if we really should affect the lively imagination of a sensitive youth by our description of the wretchedness to which his wrong-doing, if persisted in, might lead him, for then the conviction that he has already taken one step in that direction may produce in him a fear which in the future man may become terrible depression and lead to degradation.
§ 37. If to censure we add the threat of punishment, we have then what in common language is called scolding.
If threats are made, the pupil must be made to feel that they will be faithfully executed according to the word.
The threat of punishment is, however, to be avoided; for circumstances may arise which will render its fulfillment not only objectionable, but wrong, and the teacher will then find himself in the position of Herod and bound "for his oath's sake" to a course of action which no longer seems the best. Even the law in affixing a penalty to definite crimes allows a certain latitude in a maximum and minimum of awarded punishment.
§ 38. It is only after other means of reformation have been tried, and have failed, that punishment is justifiable for error, transgression, or vice. When our simple prohibition (§36), the statement of our reason for the prohibiting (§36), and threat of punishment (§37) have all failed, then punishment comes and intentionally inflicts pain on the youth in order to force him by this last means to a realization of his wrong-doing. And here the punishment must not be given for general bad conduct or for a perverse disposition—those being vague generalities—but for a special act of wrong-doing at that time. He should not be punished because he is naturally bad or because he is generally naughty, but for this one special and particular act which he has committed. Thus the punishment will act on the general disposition, not directly, but through this particular act, as a manifestation of the disposition. Then it will not accuse the innermost nature of the culprit. This way of punishment is not only demanded by justice, but it is absolutely necessary in view of the fact of the sophistry inherent in human nature which is always busy in assigning various motives for its actions. If the child understands, then, that he is punished for that particular act which he knows himself to have committed, he cannot feel the bitter sense of injustice and misunderstanding which a punishment inflicted for general reasons, and which attributes to him a depravity of motives and intentions, so often engenders.
§ 39. Punishment as an educational means must, nevertheless, be always essentially corrective, since it seeks always to bring the youth to a comprehension of his wrong-doing and to a positive alteration in his behavior, and, hence, has for its aim to improve him. At the same time it is a sad testimony of the insufficiency of the means which have been previously tried.We should on no account aim to terrify the youth by physical force, so that to avoid that he will refrain from doing the wrong or from repeating a wrong act already done. This would lead only to terrorism, and his growing strength would soon put him beyond its power and leave him without motive for refraining from evil. Punishment may have this effect in some degree, but it should, above all, be made to impress deeply upon his mind the eternal truth that the evil deed is never allowed in God's universe to act unrestrained and according to its own will, but that the good and true is the only absolute power in the world, and that it is never at a loss to avenge any contradiction of its will and design.
It may be questioned whether the moral teaching in our schools be not too negative in its measures; whether it do not confine itself too much to forbidding the commission of the wrong deed, and spend too little force in securing the performance of the right deed. Not a simple refraining from the wrong, but an active doing of the right would be the better lesson to inculcate.
In the laws of the state the office of punishment is first to satisfy justice,12and only after this is done can the improvement of the criminal be considered. If government should proceed on the same basis as the educator, it would make a grave mistake, for it has to deal, not with children, but with adults, to whom it concedes the dignity of full responsibility for all their acts. It has not to consider the reasons, either psychological or ethical, which prompted the deed. The actual deed is what it has first of all to deal with, and only after that is considered and settled can it take into view anymitigating circumstances connected therewith, or any peculiarity of the individual. The educator, on the other hand, has to deal with those who are immature and only growing toward responsibility. As long as they are under the care of a teacher, he is at any rate partially accountable for what they do. We must never confound the nature of punishment in the State with that of punishment as an educational means.
§ 40. As to punishment, as with all other work in education, it can never be abstractly determined beforehand, but it must be regulated with a view to the individual pupil and his peculiar circumstances. What it shall be, and how and when administered, are problems which call for great ingenuity and tact on the part of the educator. It must never be forgotten that punishments vary in intensity at the will of the educator. He fixes the standard by which they are measured in the child's mind. Whipping is actual physical pain, and an evil in itself to the child. But there are many other punishments which involve no physical pain, and the intensity of which, as felt by the child, varies according to an artificial standard in different schools. "To sit under the clock" was a great punishment in one of our public schools—not that the seat was not perfectly comfortable, but that one was never sent there to sit unless for some grave misdemeanor. The teacher has the matter in his own hands, and it is well to remember this and to grade his punishments with much caution, so as to make all pass for their full value. In some schools even suspension is so common that it does not seem to the pupil a very terrible thing. "Familiarity breeds contempt," and frequency implies familiarity. A punishment seldom resorted to will always seem to the pupil to be severe. As we weaken, and in fact bankrupt, language by an inordinate use of superlatives, so, also, do we weaken any punishment by its frequent repetition. Economy of resources should be always practiced.
§ 41. In general, we might say that, for very young children, corporal punishment is most appropriate; for boys and girls, isolation; and for older youth, something which appeals to the sense of honor.
§ 42. (1) Corporal punishment implies physical pain. Generally it consists of a whipping, and this is perfectly justifiable in case of persistent defiance of authority, of obstinate carelessness, or of malicious evil-doing, so long or so often as the higher perceptions of the offender are closed against appeal. But it must not be administered too often, or with undue severity. To resort to deprivation of food is cruel. But, while we condemn the false view of seeing in the rod the only panacea for all embarrassing questions of discipline on the teacher's part, we can have no sympathy for the sentimentality which assumes that the dignity of humanity is affected by a blow given to a child. It is wrong thus to confound self-conscious humanity with child-humanity, for to the average child himself a blow is the most natural form of retribution, and that in which all other efforts at influence at last end. The fully grown man ought, certainly, not to be flogged, for this kind of punishment places him on a level with the child; or, where it is barbarously inflicted, reduces him to the level of the brute, and thus absolutely does degrade him. In English schools the rod is said to be often used; if a pupil of the first class, who is never flogged, is put back into the second, he becomes again subject to flogging. But, even if this be necessary in the schools, it certainly has no proper place in the army and navy.
§ 43. (2) To punish a pupil by isolation is to remove him temporarily from the society of his fellows. The boy or girl thus cut off from companionship, and forced to think only of himself, begins to understand how helpless he is in such a position. Time passes wearily, and he is soon eager to return to the companionship of parents, brothers and sisters, teachers and fellow-students.
But to leave a child entirely by himself without any supervision, and perhaps in a dark room, is as wrong as to leave two or three together without supervision. It often happens when they are kept after school by themselves that they give the freest rein to their childish wantonness, and commit the wildest pranks.
§ 44. (3) Shutting children up in this way does not touchtheir sense of honor, and the punishment is soon forgotten, because it relates only to certain particular phases of their behavior. But it is quite different when the pupil is isolated from his fellows on the ground that by his conduct he has violated the very principles which make civilized society possible, and is, therefore, no longer a proper member of it. This is a punishment which touches his sense of honor, for honor is the recognition of the individual by others as their equal, and by his error, or by his crime, he had forfeited his right to be their equal, their peer, and has thus severed himself from them.
The separation from them is thus only the external form of the real separation which he himself has brought to pass within his soul, and which his wrong-doing has only made clearly visible. This kind of punishment, thus touching the whole character of the youth and not easily forgotten, should be administered with the greatest caution lest a permanent loss of self-respect follow. When we think our wrong-doing to be eternal in its effects, we lose all power of effort for our own improvement.
This sense of honor cannot be developed so well in family life, because in the family the ties of blood make all in a certain sense equal, no matter what may be their conduct. He who has by wrong-doing severed himself from society is still a member of the family, and within its sacred circle is still beloved, though it may be with bitter tears. No matter how wrong he may have been, he still can find there the deepest sympathy, for he is still father, brother, etc. It is in the contact of one family with another that the feeling of honor is first developed, and still more in the contact of the individual with an institution which is not bound to him by any natural ties, but is an organism entirely external to him. Thus, to the child, the school and the school-classes offer a means of development which can never be found in the family.
This fact is often overlooked by those who have the charge of the education of children. No home education, no private tutorship, can take the place of the school as an educational influence. For the first time in his life the child, on beingsent to school, finds himself in a community where he is responsible for his own deeds, and where he has no one to shield him. The rights of others for whom he has no special affection are to be respected by him, and his own are to be defended. The knowledge gained at the school is by no means the most valuable acquisition there obtained. It must never be forgotten by the teacher that the school is an institution on an entirely different basis from the family, and that personal attachment is not the principle on which its rule can be rightly based.
§ 45. This gradation of punishment from physical pain, up through occasional isolation, to the touching of the innermost sense of honor is very carefully to be considered, both with regard to the different ages at which they are severally appropriate and to the different discipline which they necessarily produce. Every punishment must, however, be always looked at as a means to some end, and is thus transitory in its nature. The pupil should always be conscious that it is painful to the teacher to punish him. Nothing can be more effectual as a means of cure for the wrong-doer than to perceive in the manner and tone of the voice, in the very delay with which the necessary punishment is administered, that he who punishes also suffers in order that the wrong-doer may be cured of his fault. The principle of vicarious suffering lies at the root of all spiritual healing.
III.—The Limits of Education.
§ 46. As far as the external form of education is concerned, its limit is reached in the instrumentality of punishment in which we seek to turn the activity which has been employed in a wrong direction into its proper channel, to make the deed positive instead of negative, to substitute for the destructive deed one which shall be in harmony with the constructive forces of society. But education implies its real limits in its definition, which is to build up the individual into theoretical and practical Reason. When this work goes properly on, the authority of the educator, as authority, necessarilyloses, every day, some of its force, as the guiding principles come to form a part of the pupil's own character, instead of being super-imposed on him from without through the mediation of the educator. What was authority becomes now advice and example; unreasoning and implicit obedience passes into gratitude and affection. The pupil wears off the rough edges of his crude individuality, which is transfigured, so to speak, into the universality and necessity of Reason, but without losing his identity in the process. Work becomes enjoyment, and Play is found only in a change of activity. The youth takes possession of himself, and may now be left to himself. There are two widely differing views with regard to the limits of education; one lays great stress on the powerlessness of the pupil and the great power of the teacher, and asserts that the teacher must create something out of the pupil.
This view is often seen to have undesirable results, where large numbers are to be educated together. It assumes that each pupil is only "a sample of the lot" on whom the teacher is to affix his stamp, as if they were different pieces of goods from some factory. Thus individuality is destroyed, and all reduced to one level, as in cloisters, barracks, and orphan asylums, where only one individual seems to exist. Sometimes it takes the form of a theory which holds that one can at will flog anything into or out of a pupil. This may be called a superstitious belief in the power of education. The opposite extreme may be found in that system which advocates a "severe letting alone," asserting that individuality is unconquerable, and that often the most careful and circumspect education fails of reaching its aim because the inherent nature of the youth has fought against it with such force as to render abortive all opposing efforts. This idea of Pedagogy produces a sort of indifference about means and ends which would leave each individuality to grow as its own instinct and the chance influences of the world might direct. The latter view would, of course, preclude the possibility of any science of education, and make the youth only the sport of blind fate. The comparative power of inherited tendencies and of educational appliances is, however, one which every educator should carefullystudy. Much careless generalization has been made on this topic, and opinion is too often based upon some one instance where accurate observation of methods and influences have been wanting.
§ 47. Education has necessarily a definitesubjective limitin the individuality of the youth, for it can develop in him only that which exists in him as a possibility. It can lead and assist, but it has no power to create. What nature has denied to a man education cannot give him, any more than it can on the other hand annihilate his original gifts, though it may suppress, distort, and measurably destroy them. And yet it is impossible to decide what is the real essence of a man's individuality until he has left behind him the years of growth, because it is not till then that he fully attains conscious possession of himself. Moreover, at this critical time many traits which were supposed to be characteristic may prove themselves not to be so by disappearing, while long-slumbering and unsuspected talents may crop out. Whatever has been forced upon a child, though not in harmony with his individuality, whatever has been driven into him without having been actively accepted by him, or having had a definite relation to his culture—will remain perhaps, but only as an external foreign ornament, only as a parasitic growth which weakens the force of his real nature. But we must distinguish from these little affectations which arise from a misconception of the limits of individuality that effort of imitation which children and young people often exhibit in trying to copy in their own actions those peculiarities which they observe and admire in perfectly-developed persons with whom they may come in contact. They see a reality which corresponds to their own possibility, and the presentiment of a like or a similar attainment stirs them to imitation, although this external imitation may be sometimes disagreeable or ridiculous to the lookers-on. We ought not to censure it too severely, remembering that it springs from a positive striving towards true culture, and needs only to be properly directed, and never to be roughly put down.
§ 48.The objective limitof education consists in the meanswhich can be applied for it. That the capacity for culture should exist is the first condition of success, but it is none the less necessary that it be cultivated. But how much cultivation shall be given to it must depend in very great degree on the means which are practicable, and this will undoubtedly again depend on the worldly possessions and character of the family to which the pupil belongs. If he comes of a cultivated and refined family, he will have a great advantage at the start over his less favored comrades; and, with regard to many of the arts and sciences, this limitation of education is of great significance. But the means alone will not answer. Without natural capacity, all the educational apparatus possible is of no avail. On the other hand, real talent often accomplishes incredible feats with very limited means; and, if the way is only once open, makes of itself a center of attraction which draws to itself as with magnetic power the necessary means. Moral culture is, however, from its very nature, raised above such dependence.
If we fix our thought on the subjective limit—that of individuality (§47)—we detect the ground for that indifference which lays little stress on education (§46, end). If, on the other hand, we concentrate our attention on the means of culture, we shall perceive the reason of the other extreme spoken of—of that pedagogical despotism (§46) which fancies that it is able to prescribe and enforce at will upon the pupil any culture whatever, without regard to his special characteristics.
§ 49. Education comes to itsabsolute limitwhen the pupil has apprehended the problem which he is to solve, has comprehended the means which are at his disposal, and has acquired the necessary skill in using them. The true educator seeks to render himself unnecessary by the complete emancipation of the youth. He works always towards the independence of the pupil, and always with the design of withdrawing so soon as he shall have reached this stand-point, and of leaving him to the full responsibility for his own deeds. To endeavor to hold him in the position of a pupil after this time has been reached would be to contradict the very essence of education, which must find its result in the independent maturity of the youth. The inequality which formerly existed between pupil andteacher is now removed, and nothing becomes more oppressive to the former than any endeavor to force upon him the authority from which, in reality, his own efforts have freed him. But the undue hastening of this emancipation is as bad an error as an effort after delay. The question as to whether a person is really ready for independent action—as to whether his education is finished—may be settled in much the same way in education as in politics. When any people has progressed so far as to put the question whether they are ready for freedom, it ceases to be a question; for, without the inner consciousness of freedom itself, the question would never have occurred to them.
§ 50. But, although the pupil may rightly now be freed from the hands of instructors, and no longer obtain his culture through them, it is by no means to be understood that he is not to go on with the work himself. He is now to educate himself. Each must plan out for himself the ideal toward which he must daily strive. In this process of self-transformation a friend may aid by advice and example, but he cannot educate, for the act of educating necessarily implies inequality between teacher and pupil. The human necessity for companionship gives rise to societies of different kinds, in which we may, perhaps, say that there is some approach to educating their members, the necessary inequality being supplied by various grades and orders. They presuppose education in the usual sense of the word, but they wish to bring about an education in a higher sense, and, therefore, they veil the last form of their ideal in mystery and secrecy.
By the termPhilisterthe Germans indicate the man of a civilized state who lives on, contented with himself and devoid of any impulse towards further self-culture. To one who is always aspiring after an Ideal, such a one cannot but be repulsive. But how many are they who do not, sooner or later, in mature life, crystallize, as it were, so that any active life, any new progress, is to them impossible?
ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY.
§ 1. Pedagogics is not a complete, independent science by itself. It borrows the results of other sciences [e.g., it presupposes the science of Rights, treating of the institutions of the family and civil society, as well as of the State; it presupposes the science of anthropology, in which is treated the relations of the human mind to nature. Nature conditions the development of the individual human being. But the history of the individual and the history of the race presents a continual emancipation from nature, and a continual growth into freedom,i.e., into ability to know himself and to realize himself in the world by making the matter and forces of the world his instruments and tools. Anthropology shows us how man as a natural being—i.e., as having a body—is limited. There is climate, involving heat and cold and moisture, the seasons of the year, etc.; there is organic growth, involving birth, growth, reproduction, and decay; there is race, involving the limitations of heredity; there is the telluric life of the planet and the circulation of the forces of the solar system, whence arise the processes of sleeping, waking, dreaming, and kindred phenomena; there is the emotional nature of man, involving his feelings, passions, instincts, and desires; then there are the five senses, and their conditions. Then, there is the science of phenomenology, treating of the steps by which mind rises from the stage of mere feeling and sense-perception to that of self-consciousness,i.e., to a recognition of mind as true substance, and of matter as mere phenomenon created by Mind (God). Then, there is psychology, including the treatment of the stages of activity of mind, as so-called "faculties" of the mind,e.g., attention, sense-perception, imagination, conception, understanding, judgment, reason, and the like. Psychology is generally made (by English writers) to include, also, what is here called anthropology and phenomenology. After psychology, there is the science of ethics, or of morals and customs; then, the Science of Rights, already mentioned; then, Theology, or the Science of Religion, and, after all these, there is Philosophy, or the Science of Science. Now, it is clear that the Science of Education treats of the process of development, by and through which man, as a merelynatural being, becomes spirit, or self-conscious mind; hence, it presupposes all the sciences named, and will be defective if it ignores nature, or mind, or any stage or process of either, especially Anthropology, Phenomenology, Psychology, Ethics, Rights, Æsthetics, or Science of Art and Literature, Religion, or Philosophy].
§ 2. The scope of pedagogics being so broad, and its presuppositions so vast, its limits are not well defined, and its treatises are very apt to lack logical sequence and conclusion; and, indeed, frequently to be mere collections of unjustified and unexplained assumptions, dogmatically set forth. Hence the low repute of pedagogical literature as a whole.
§ 3. Moreover, education furnishes a special vocation, that of teaching. (All vocations are specializing—being cut off, as it were, from the total life of man. The "division of labor" requires that each individual shall concentrate his endeavors and be apartof the whole).
§ 4. Pedagogics, as a special science, belongs to the collection of sciences (already described, in commenting on §1) included under the philosophy of Spirit or Mind, and more particularly to that part of it which relates to the will (ethics and science of rights, rather than to the part relating to the intellect and feeling, as anthropology, phenomenology, psychology, æsthetics, and religion. "Theoretical" relates to theintellect, "practical" relates to thewill, in this philosophy). The province of practical philosophy is the investigation of the nature of freedom, and the process of securing it by self-emancipation from nature. Pedagogics involves the conscious exertion of influence on the part of the will of the teacher upon the will of the pupil, with a purpose in view—that of inducing the pupil to form certain prescribed habits, and adopt prescribed views and inclinations. The entire science of mind (as above shown), is presupposed by the science of education, and must be kept constantly in view as a guiding light. The institution of thefamily(treated in practical philosophy) is the starting-point of education, and without this institution properly realized, education would find no solid foundation. The right to be educated on the part of children, and the duty to educate on the part of parents, are reciprocal; and there is no family life so poor and rudimentary that it does not furnish the most important elements of education—no matter what the subsequent influence of the school, the vocation, and the state.
§ 5. Pedagogics as science, distinguished from the same as an art: the former containing the abstract general treatment, and the lattertaking into consideration all the conditions of concrete individuality,e.g., the peculiarities of the teacher and the pupil, and all the local circumstances, and the power of adaptation known as "tact."
§ 6. The special conditions and peculiarities, considered in education as an art, may be formulated and reduced to system, but they should not be introduced as a part of thescienceof education.
§ 7. Pedagogics has three parts: first, it considers the idea and nature of education, and arrives at its true definition; second, it presents and describes the special provinces into which the entire field of education is divided; third, it considers the historical evolution of education by the human race, and the individual systems of education that have arisen, flourished, and decayed, and their special functions in the life of man.
§ 8. The scope of the first part is easy to define. The history of pedagogics, of course, contains all the ideas or definitions of the nature of education; but it must not for that reason be substituted for the scientific investigation of the nature of education, which alone should constitute this first part (and the history of education be reserved for the third part).
§ 9. The second part includes a discussion of the threefold nature of man as body, intellect, and will. The difficulty in this part of the science is very great, because of its dependence upon other sciences (e.g., upon physiology, anthropology, etc.), and because of the temptation to go into details (e.g., in the practical department, to consider the endless varieties of schools for arts and trades).
§ 10. The third part contains the exposition of the various national standpoints furnished (in the history of the world) for the bases of particular systems of education. In each of these systems will be found the general idea underlying all education, but it will be found existing under special modifications, which have arisen through its application to the physical, intellectual, and ethical conditions of the people. But we can deduce the essential features of the different systems that may appear in history, for there are only a limited number of systems possible. Each lower form finds itself complemented in some higher form, and its function and purpose then become manifest. The systems of "national" education (i.e., Asiatic systems, in which the individuality of each person is swallowed up in the substantiality of the national idea—just as the individual waves get lost in the ocean on whose surface they arise) find their complete explanation in the systems of education that arise in Christianity (the preservation of human life being the object of the nation, it followsthat when realized abstractly or exclusively, it absorbs and annuls the mental independence of its subjects, and thus contradicts itself by destroying the essence of what it undertakes to preserve,i.e., life (soul, mind); but within Christianity the principle of the state is found so modified that it is consistent with the infinite, untrammelled development of the individual, intellectually and morally, and thus not only life is saved, but spiritual, free life is attainable for each and for all).
§ 11. The history of pedagogy ends with the present system as the latest one. As science sees the future ideally contained in the present, it is bound to comprehend the latest system as a realization (though imperfect) of the ideal system of education. Hence, the system, as scientifically treated in the first part of our work, is the system with which the third part of our work ends.
§ 12. The nature of education, its form, its limits, are now to be investigated. (§§13-50.)
§ 13. The nature of education determined by the nature of Mind or Spirit, whose activity is always devoted to realizing for itself what it is potentially—to becoming conscious of its possibilities, and to getting them under the control of its will. Mind is potentially free. Education is the means by which man seeks to realize in man his possibilities (to develop the possibilities of the race in each individual). Hence, education has freedom for its object.
§ 14. Man is the only being capable of education, in the sense above defined, because the only conscious being. He must know himself ideally, and then realize his ideal self, in order to become actually free. The animals not the plants may betrained, orcultivated, but, as devoid of self-consciousness (even the highest animals not getting above impressions, not reaching ideas, not seizing general or abstract thoughts), they are not realized forthemselves, but only for us. (That is, they do not know their ideal as we do.)
§ 15. Education, taken in its widest compass, is the education of the human race by Divine Providence.
§ 16. In a narrower sense, education is applied to the shaping of the individual, so that his caprice and arbitrariness shall give place to rational habits and views, in harmony with nature and ethical customs. He must not abuse nature, nor slight the ethical code of his people, nor despise the gifts of Providence (whether for weal or woe), unless he is willing to be crushed in the collision with these more substantial elements.
§ 17. In the narrowest, but most usual application of the term,we understand by "education" the influence of the individual upon the individual, exerted with the object of developing his powers in a conscious and methodical manner, either generally or in special directions, the educator being relatively mature, and exercising authority over the relatively immature pupil. Without authority on the one hand and obedience on the other, education would lack its ethical basis—a neglect of the will-training could not be compensated for by any amount of knowledge or smartness.
§ 18. The general province of education includes the development of the individual into the theoretical and practical reason immanent in him. The definition which limits education to the development of the individual into ethical customs (obedience to morality, social conventionalities, and the laws of the state—Hegel's definition is here referred to: "The object of education is to make men ethical") is not comprehensive enough, because it ignores the side of theintellect, and takes note only of thewill. The individual should not only be man in general (as he is through the adoption of moral and ethical forms—which aregeneralforms, customs, or laws, and thus the forms imposed by thewillof therace), but he should also be a self-conscious subject, a particular individual (man, through his intellect, exists for himself as an individual, while through his general habits and customs he loses his individuality and spontaneity).
§ 19. Education has a definite object in view and it proceeds by grades of progress toward it. The systematic tendency is essential to all education, properly so called.
§ 20. Division of labor has become requisite in the higher spheres of teaching. The growing multiplicity of branches of knowledge creates the necessity for the specialist as teacher. With this tendency to specialties it becomes more and more difficult to preserve what is so essential to the pupil—his rounded human culture and symmetry of development. The citizen of modern civilization sometimes appears to be an artificial product by the side of the versatility of the savage man.
§ 21. From this necessity of the division of labor in modern times there arises the demand for two kinds of educational institutions—those devoted to general education (common schools, colleges, etc.), and special schools (for agriculture, medicine, mechanic arts, etc).
§ 22. The infinite possibility of culture for the individual leaves, of course, his actual accomplishment a mere approximation to a complete education. Born idiots are excluded from the possibility of education, because the lack of universal ideas in their consciousnessprecludes to that class of unfortunates anything beyond a mere mechanical training.
§ 23. Spirit, or mind, makes its own nature; itiswhat it produces—a self-result. From this follows theformof education. It commences with (1) undeveloped mind—that of the infant—wherein nearly all is potential, and but little is actualized; (2) its first stage of development is self-estrangement—it is absorbed in the observation of objects around it; (3) but it discovers laws and principles (universality) in external nature, and finally identifies them with reason—it comes to recognize itself in nature—to recognize conscious mind as the creator and preserver of the external world—and thus becomes at home in nature. Education does not create, but it emancipates.
§ 24. This process of self-estrangement and its removal belongs to all culture. The mind must fix its attention upon what is foreign to it, and penetrate its disguise. It will discover its own substance under the seeming alien being. Wonder is the accompaniment of this stage of estrangement. The love of travel and adventure arises from this basis.
§ 25. Labor is distinguished from play: The former concentrates its energies on some object, with the purpose of making it conform to its will and purpose; play occupies itself with its object according to its caprice and arbitrariness, and has no care for the results or products of its activity; work is prescribed by authority, while play is necessarily spontaneous.
§ 26. Work and Play: the distinction between them. In play the child feels that he has entire control over the object with which he is dealing, both in respect to its existence and the object for which it exists. His arbitrary will may change both with perfect impunity, since all depends upon his caprice; he exercises his powers in play according to his natural proclivities, and therein finds scope to develope his own individuality. In work, on the contrary, he must have respect for the object with which he deals. It must be held sacred against his caprice, must not be destroyed nor injured in any way, and its object must likewise be respected. His own personal inclinations must be entirely subordinated, and the business that he is at work upon must be carried forward in accordance with its own ends and aims, and without reference to his own feelings in the matter.
Thus work teaches the pupil the lesson of self-sacrifice (the right of superiority which the general interest possesses over the particular), while play develops his personal idiosyncrasy.
§ 27. Without play, the child would become more and more a machine, and lose all freshness and spontaneity—all originality. Without work, he would develop into a monster of caprice and arbitrariness.
From the fact that man must learn to combine with man, in order that the individual may avail himself of the experience and labors of his fellow-men, self-sacrifice for the sake of combination is the great lesson of life. But as this should bevoluntaryself-sacrifice, education must train the child equally in the two directions of spontaneity and obedience. The educated man finds recreation in change of work.
§ 28. Education seeks to assimilate its object—to make what was alien and strange to the pupil into something familiar and habitual to him. [The pupil is to attack, one after the other, the foreign realms in the world of nature and man, and conquer them for his own, so that he can be "at home" in them. It is the necessary condition of all growth, all culture, that one widens his own individuality by this conquest of new provinces alien to him. By this the individual transcends the narrow limits of particularity and becomes generic—the individual becomes the species. A good definition of education is this: it is the process by which the individual man elevates himself to the species.]
§ 29. (1) Therefore, the first requirement in education is that the pupil shall acquire the habit of subordinating his likes and dislikes to the attainment of a rational object.
It is necessary that he shall acquire this indifference to his own pleasure, even by employing his powers on that which does not appeal to his interest in the remotest degree.
§ 30. Habit soon makes us familiar with those subjects which seemed so remote from our personal interest, and they become agreeable to us. The objects, too, assume a new interest upon nearer approach, as being useful or injurious to us. That is useful which serves us as a means for the realization of a rational purpose; injurious, if it hinders such realization. It happens that objects are useful in one sense and injurious in another, andvice versa. Education must make the pupil capable of deciding on the usefulness of an object, by reference to its effect on his permanent vocation in life.
§ 31. Butgood and evilare the ethical distinctions which furnish the absolute standard to which to refer the question of the usefulness of objects and actions.
§ 32. (2) Habit is (a)passive, or (b)active. The passive habit is that which gives us the power to retain our equipoise of mind in themidst of a world of changes (pleasure and pain, grief and joy, etc). The active habit gives us skill, presence of mind, tact in emergencies, etc.
§ 33. (3) Education deals altogether with the formation of habits. For it aims to make some condition or form of activity into a second nature for the pupil. But this involves, also, the breaking up of previous habits. This power to break up habits, as well as to form them, is necessary to the freedom of the individual.
§ 34. Education deals with these complementary relations (antitheses): (a) authority and obedience; (b) rationality (generalforms) and individuality; (c) work and play; (d) habit (general custom) and spontaneity. The development and reconciliation of these opposite sides in the pupil's character, so that they become his second nature, removes the phase of constraint which at first accompanies the formal inculcation of rules, and the performance of prescribed tasks. The freedom of the pupil is the ultimate object to be kept in view, but a too early use of freedom may work injury to the pupil. To remove a pupil from all temptation would be to remove possibilities of growth in strength to resist it; on the other hand, to expose him needlessly to temptation is fiendish.
§ 35. Deformities of character in the pupil should be carefully traced back to their origin, so that they may be explained by their history. Only by comprehending the historic growth of an organic defect are we able to prescribe the best remedies.
§ 36. If the negative behavior of the pupil (his bad behavior) results from ignorance due to his own neglect, or to his wilfulness, it should be met directly by an act of authority on the part of the teacher (and without an appeal to reason). An appeal should be made to the understanding of the pupil only when he is somewhat mature, or shows by his repetition of the offence that his proclivity is deep-seated, and requires an array of all good influences to reinforce his feeble resolutions to amend.
§ 37. Reproof, accompanied by threats of punishment, is apt to degenerate into scolding.
§ 38. After the failure of other means, punishment should be resorted to. Inasmuch as the punishment should be for the purpose of making the pupil realize that it is the consequence of his deed returning on himself, it should always be administered for some particular act of his, and this should be specified. The "overt act" is the only thing which a man can be held accountable for in a court of justice; although it is true that the harboringof evil thoughts or intentions is a sin, yet it is not a crime until realized in an overt act.
§ 40. Punishment should be regulated, not by abstract rules, but in view of the particular case and its attending circumstances.
§ 41. Sex and age of pupil should be regarded in prescribing the mode and degree of punishment. Corporal punishment is best for pupils who are very immature in mind; when they are more developed they may be punished by any imposed restraint upon their free wills which will isolate them from the ordinary routine followed by their fellow-pupils. (Deprivation of the right to do as others do is a wholesome species of punishment for those old or mature enough to feel its effects, for it tends to secure respect for the regular tasks by elevating them to the rank of rights and privileges.) For young men and women, the punishment should be of a kind that is based on a sense of honor.
§ 42. (1) Corporal punishment should be properly administered by means of the rod, subduing wilful defiance by the application of force.
§ 48. (2) Isolation makes the pupil realize a sense of his dependence upon human society, and upon the expression of this dependence by coöperation in the common tasks. Pupils should not be shut up in a dark room, nor removed from the personal supervision of the teacher. (To shut up two or more in a room without supervision is not isolation, but association; only it is association for mischief, and not for study.)
§ 44. (3) Punishment based on the sense of honor may or may not be based on isolation. It implies a state of maturity on the part of the pupil. Through his offence the pupil has destroyed his equality with his fellows, and has in reality, in his inmost nature, isolated himself from them. Corporal punishment is external, but it may be accompanied with a keen sense of dishonor. Isolation, also, may, to a pupil, who is sensitive to honor, be a severe blow to self-respect. But a punishment founded entirely on the sense of honor would be wholly internal, and have no external discomfort attached to it.
§ 45. The necessity of carefully adapting the punishment to the age and maturity of the pupil, renders it the most difficult part of the teacher's duties. It is essential that the air and manner of the teacher who punishes should be that of one who acts from a sense of painful duty, and not from any delight in being the cause of suffering. Not personal likes and dislikes, but the rational necessity whichis over teacher and pupil alike, causes the infliction of pain on the pupil.
§ 46. Punishment is the final topic to be considered under the head of "Form of Education."
In the act of punishment the teacher abandons the legitimate province of education, which seeks to make the pupil rational or obedient to what is reasonable, as a habit, and from his own free will. The pupil is punished in order that he may bemadeto conform to the rational, by the application of constraint. Another will is substituted for the pupil's, and good behavior is produced, but not by the pupil's free act. While education finds a negative limit in punishment, it finds a positive limit in the accomplishment of its legitimate object, which is the emancipation of the pupil from the state of imbecility, as regards mental and moral self-control, into the ability to direct himself rationally, When the pupil has acquired the discipline which enables him to direct his studies properly, and to control his inclinations in such a manner as to pursue his work regularly, the teacher is no longer needed for him—he becomes his own teacher.
There may be two extreme views on this subject—the one tending towards the negative extreme of requiring the teacher to do everything for the pupil, substituting his will for that of the pupil, and the other view tending to the positive extreme, and leaving everything to the pupil, even before his will is trained into habits of self-control, or his mind provided with the necessary elementary branches requisite for the prosecution of further study.
§ 47. (1) The subjective limit of education (on the negative side) is to be found in the individuality of the pupil—the limit to his natural capacity.
§ 48. (2) The objective limit to education lies in the amount of time that the person may devote to his training. It, therefore, depends largely upon wealth, or other fortunate circumstances.
§ 49. (3) The absolute limit of education is the positive limit (see §46), beyond which the youth passes into freedom from the school, as a necessary instrumentality for further culture.
§ 50. The pre-arranged pattern-making work of the school is now done, but self-education may and should go on indefinitely, and will go on if the education of the school has really arrived at its "absolute" limit—i.e., has fitted the pupil for self-education. Emancipation from the school does not emancipate one from learning through his fellow-men. Man's spiritual life is one depending upon coöperation with his fellow-men. Each must avail himself of theexperience of his fellow-men, and in turn communicate his own experience to the common fund of the race. Thus each lives the life of the whole, and all live for each. School-education gives the pupil the instrumentalities with which to enable him to participate in this fund of experience—this common life of the race. After school-education comes the still more valuable education, which, however, without the school, would be in a great measure impossible.