THE BEGINNINGS OF NORMAL-SCHOOL TRAINING. The training of would-be teachers for the work of instruction is an entirely modern proceeding. The first class definitely organized for imparting training to teachers, concerning which we have any record, was a small local training group of teachers of reading and the Catechism, conducted by Father Démia, at Lyons, France, in 1672. The first normal school to be established anywhere was that founded at Rheims, in northern France, in 1685, by Abbé de la Salle (p. 347). He had founded the Order of "The Brothers of the Christian Schools" the preceding year, to provide free religious instruction for children of the working classes in France (R. 182), and he conceived the new idea of creating a special school to train his prospective teachers for the teaching work of his Order. Shortly afterward he established two similar institutions in Paris. Each institution he called a "Seminary for Schoolmasters." In addition to imparting a general education of the type of the time, and a thorough grounding in religion, his student teachers were trained to teach in practice schools, under the direction of experienced teachers. This was an entirely new idea.
The beginnings elsewhere, as we have previously pointed out were made in German lands, Francke'sSeminarium Praeceptorum, established at Halle (p. 419), in 1697, coming next in point of time. In 1738 Johann Julius Hecker (1707-68), one of Francke's teachers (p. 562), established the first regular Seminary for Teachers in Prussia, and in 1748 he established a privateLehrerseminarin Berlin. In these two institutions he first showed the German people the possibilities of special training for teachers in the secondary school. In 1753 the Berlin institution was adopted as a Royal Teachers' Seminary (p. 563) by Frederick the Great. After this, and in part due to the enthusiastic support of the Berlin institution by the King, the teacher-training idea for secondary teachers began to find favor among the Germans. We accordingly find something like a dozen Teachers' Seminaries had been founded in German lands before the close of the eighteenth century. [1] A normal school was established in Denmark, by royal decree, as early as 1789, and five additional schools when the law organizing public instruction in Denmark was enacted, in 1814. In France the beginnings of state action came with the action of the National Convention, which decreed the establishment of the "Superior Normal School for France," in 1794 (p. 517). This institution, though, was short lived, and the real beginnings of the French higher normal school awaited the reorganizing work of Napoleon, in 1808 (p. 595; R. 283).
The schools just mentioned represent the first institutions in the history of the world organized for the purpose of training teachers to teach. The teachers they trained, though, were intended primarily for the secondary schools, and the training was largely academic in character. Only in Silesia was any effort made, before the nineteenth century, to give training in special institutions to teachers intended for the vernacular schools. There Frederick the Great, in his "Regulations for the Catholic Schools of Silesia" (R. 275, a § 2) designated six cathedral and monastery schools as model schools, where teachers could "have the opportunity for learning all that is needed by a good teacher." In another place he defined this as "skill in singing and playing the organ sufficient to perform the services of the Church," and "the art of instructing the young in the German language" (R. 275, a § 1). So long as the instruction in the vernacular school consisted chiefly of reading and the Catechism, and of hearing pupils recite what they had memorized, there was of course but little need for any special training for the teachers. It was not until after Pestalozzi had done his work and made his contribution that there was anything worth mentioning to train teachers for.
PESTALOZZI'S CONTRIBUTION. The memorable work done by Pestalozzi in Switzerland, during his quarter-century (1800-25) of effort at Burgdorf and Yverdon, changed the whole face of the preparation of teachers problem. His work was so fundamental that it completely redirected the education of children. Taking the seed-thought of Rousseau that sense- impression was "the only true foundation of human knowledge" (R. 267), he enlarged this to the conception of the mental development of human beings as being organic, and proceeding according to law. His extension of this idea of Rousseau's led him to declare that education was an individual development, a drawing-out and not a pouring-in; that the basis of all education exists in the nature of man; and that the method of education is to be sought and constructed. [2] These were his great contributions. These ideas fitted in well with the rising tide of individualism which marked the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries, and upon these contributions the modern secular elementary school has been built.
These ideas led Pestalozzi to emphasize sense perception and expression; to formulate the rule that in teaching we must proceed from the concrete to the abstract; and to construct a "faculty psychology" which conceived of education as "a harmonious development" of the different "faculties" of the mind. He also tried, unsuccessfully to be sure, to so organize the teaching process that eventually it could be so "mechanized" that there would be a regular A, B, C, for each type of instruction, which, once learned, would give perfection to a teacher. In his Report of 1800 (R. 267), which forms a very clear statement of his aims, he had said:
I know what I am undertaking; but neither the difficulties in the way, nor my own limitations in skill and insight, shall hinder me from giving my mite for a purpose which Europe needs so much… The most essential point from which I start is this:—Sense-impression of Nature is the only true foundation of human knowledge. All that follows is the result of this sense-impression, and the process of abstraction from it….
Then the problem I have to solve is this:—How to bring the elements of every art into harmony with the very nature of mind, by following the psychological mechanical laws by which mind rises from physical sense-impressions to clear ideas.
Largely out of these ideas and the new direction he gave to instruction the modern normal school for training teachers for the elementary schools arose.
ORAL AND OBJECTIVE TEACHING DEVELOPED. Up to the time of Pestalozzi, and for years after he had done his work, in many lands and places the instruction of children continued to be of the memorization of textbook matter and of the recitation type. The children learned what was down in the book, and recited the answers to the teacher. Many of the early textbooks were constructed on the plan of the older Catechism—that is, on a question and answer plan (R. 351 a). There was nothing for children to do but to memorize such textbook material, or for the teacher but to see that the pupils knew the answers to the questions. It was school-keeping, not teaching, that teachers were engaged in.
The form of instruction worked out by Pestalozzi, based on sense- perception, reasoning, and individual judgment, called for a complete change in classroom procedure. What Pestalozzi tried most of all to do was to get children to use their senses and their minds, to look carefully, to count, to observe forms, to get, by means of their five important senses, clear impressions and ideas as to objects and life in the world about them, and then to think over what they had seen and be able to answer his questions, because they had observed carefully and reasoned clearly. Pestalozzi thus clearly subordinated the printed book to the use of the child's senses, and the repetition of mere words to clear ideas about things. Pestalozzi thus became one of the first real teachers.
This was an entirely new process, and for the first time in history a real "technique of instruction" was now called for. Dependence on the words of the text could no longer be relied upon. The oral instruction of a class group, using real objects, called for teaching skill. The class must be kept naturally interested and under control; the essential elements to be taught must be kept clearly in the mind of the teacher; the teacher must raise the right kind of questions, in the right order, to carry the class thinking along to the right conclusions; and, since so much of this type of instruction was not down in books, it called for a much more extended knowledge of the subject on the part of the teacher than the old type of school-keeping had done. The teacher must now both know and be able to organize and direct. Class lessons must be thought out in advance, and teacher-preparation in itself meant a great change in teaching procedure. Emancipated from dependence on the words of a text, and able to stand before a class full of a subject and able to question freely, teachers became conscious of a new strength and a professional skill unknown in the days of textbook reciting. Out of such teaching came oral language lessons, drill in speech usage, elementary science instruction, observational geography, mental arithmetic, music, and drawing, to add to the old instruction in the Catechism, reading, writing, and ciphering, and all these new subjects, taught according to Pestalozzian ideas as to purpose, called for an individual technique of instruction.
[Illustration: FIG. 224. THE FIRST MODERN NORMAL SCHOOL The old castle at Yverdon, where Pestalozzi's Institute was conducted and his greatest success achieved.]
THE NORMAL SCHOOL FINDS ITS PLACE. These new ideas of Pestalozzi proved so important that during the first five or six decades of the nineteenth century the elementary school was made over. The new conception of the child as a slowly developing personality, demanding subject-matter and method suited to his stage of development, and the new conception of teaching as that of directing mental development instead of hearing recitations and "keeping school," now replaced the earlier knowledge- conception of school work. Where before the ability to organize and discipline a school had constituted the chief art of instruction, now the ability to teach scientifically took its place as the prime professional requisite. A "science and art" of teaching now arose; methodology soon became a great subject; the new subject of pedagogy began to take form and secure recognition; and psychology became the guiding science of the school.
As these changes took place, the normal school began to come into favor in the leading countries of Europe and in the United States, and in time has established itself everywhere as an important educational institution. Pestalozzi had himself conducted the first really modern teacher-training school, and his work was soon copied in a number of the Swiss cantons. Other cantons, on the contrary, for a time would have nothing to do with the new idea.
1.The German States.The first nation, though, to take up the teacher- training idea and establish it as an important part of its state school system was Prussia. Beginning in 1809 with the work of Zeller (p. 569), by 1840 there were thirty-eight Teachers' Seminaries, as the normal schools in German lands have been called, in Prussia alone. The idea was also quickly taken up by the other German States, and from the first decade of the nineteenth century on no nation has done more with the normal school, or used it, ends desired considered, to better advantage than have the Germans. One of the features of the Prussian schools which most impressed Professor Bache, when he visited the schools of the German States in 1838, was the excellence of the Seminaries for Teachers (R. 344), and these he described (R. 345) in some detail in his Report. Horace Mann, similarly, on his visit to Europe, in 1843, was impressed with the thoroughness of the training given prospective teachers in the Teachers' Seminaries of the German States (R. 278). University pedagogical seminars were also established early (c. 1810) [3] in the universities, for the training of secondary teachers, and this training was continued with increasing thoroughness up to 1914. Every teacher in the German States, elementary or secondary, before that date, was a carefully-trained teacher. This was a feature of the German state school systems of the pre-War period of which no other nation could boast.
2.France.After the German States, France probably comes next as the nation in which the normal school has been most used for training teachers. The Superior Normal School had been recreated in 1808 (R. 283), and after the downfall of Napoleon the creation of normal schools for elementary-school teachers was begun. Twelve had been established by 1830, and between 1830 and 1833 thirty additional schools for training these teachers were begun (R. 285). These rendered a service for France (R. 346) quite similar to that rendered by the Teachers' Seminaries in German lands. During the period of reaction, from 1848 to 1870, the normal school did not prosper in France, but since 1870 a normal school to train elementary teachers has been established for men and one for women in each of the eighty-seven departments into which France, for administrative purposes, has been divided. Satisfactory provision has also been made for the training of teachers for the secondary schools.
3.The United States.The United States has also been prominent, especially since about 1870, in the development of normal schools for the training of elementary teachers. The Lancastrian schools had trained monitors for their work, but the first teacher-training school in the United States to give training to individual teachers was opened privately, [4] in 1823, and the second in a similar manner, [5] in 1827. These were almost entirely academic institutions, being in the nature of tuition high schools, with a little practice teaching and some lectures on the "Art of Teaching" added in the last year of the course. In 1826 Governor Clinton recommended to the legislature of New York the establishment by the State of "a seminary for the education of teachers in the monitorial system of instruction." Nothing coming of this, in 1827 he recommended the creation of "a central school in each county for the education of teachers" (R. 349). That year (1827) the New York legislature appropriated money to aid the academies "to promote the education of teachers"—the first state aid in the United States for teacher-training.
The publication of an English edition of Cousin'sReport(p. 597; R. 284) in New York, in 1835; Calvin E. Stowe'sReport on Elementary Education in Europe, [6] in 1837; and Alexander D. Bache'sReport on Education in Europe(Rs. 344, 345), in 1838, with their strong commendations of the German teacher-training system, awakened new interest in the United States, in the matter of teacher-training. Finally, in 1839, the legislature of Massachusetts duplicated a gift of $10,000, and placed the money in the hands of the newly created State Board of Education (p. 689) to be used "in qualifying teachers for the common schools of Massachusetts" (R. 350 a). After careful consideration it was decided to create special state institutions, after the German and French plans, in which to give the desired training, and the French term of Normal School was adopted and has since become general in the United States.
[Illustration: TEACHER-TRAINING IN THE UNITED STATES BY 1860. A few private training-schools also existed, though less than half a dozen in all.]
On July 3, 1839, the first state normal school in the United States opened in the town hall at Lexington, Massachusetts, with one teacher and three students. Later that same year a second state normal school was opened at Barre, and early the next year a third at Bridgewater, both in Massachusetts. For these the State Board of Education adopted a statement as to entrance requirements and a course of instruction (R. 350 b) which shows well the academic character of these early teaching institutions. Their success was largely due to the enthusiastic support given the new idea by Horace Mann. In an address at the dedication of the first building erected in America for normal-school purposes, in 1846, he expressed his deep belief as to the fundamental importance of such institutions (R. 350 c). By 1860 eleven state normal schools had been established in eight of the States of the American Union, and six private schools were also rendering similar services. Closely related was the Teachers' Institute, first definitely organized by Henry Barnard in Connecticut, in 1839, to offer four- to six-weeks summer courses for teachers in service, and these had been organized in fifteen of the American States by 1860. Since 1870 the establishment of state normal schools has been rapid in the United States, two hundred having been established by 1910, and many since. The United States, though, is as yet far from having a trained body of teachers for its elementary schools. For the high schools, it is only since about 1890 that the professional training of teachers for such service has really been begun.
4.England.In England the beginnings of teacher-training came with the introduction of monitorial instruction, both the Bell and the Lancaster Societies (p. 625) finding it necessary to train pupils for positions as monitors, and to designate certain schools as model and training schools. In 1833, it will be remembered (p. 638), Parliament made its first grant of money in aid of education. Up to 1840 this was distributed through the two National Societies, and in 1839 a portion of this aid was definitely set aside to enable these Societies to establish model schools (R. 347). From this beginning, the model training-schools for the different religious Societies were developed. In these model schools prospective teachers were educated, being trained in religious instruction and in the art of teaching. In 1836, with the founding of the "Home and Colonial Infant Society," a Pestalozzian Training College was founded by it.
In a further effort to secure trained teachers the government, in 1846, adopted a plan then in use in Holland, and instituted what became known as the "pupil-teacher system" (R. 348). This was an improvement on the waning monitorial training system previously in use. Under this, a favorite old English method, used somewhat for the same purpose a century earlier (R. 243), was adapted to meet the new need.' Under it promising pupils were apprenticed to a head teacher for five years (usually from thirteen to eighteen), he agreeing to give them instruction in both secondary-school subjects and in the art of teaching in return for their help in the schoolroom. Beginning in 1846, there were, by 1848, 200 pupil teachers; by 1861, 13,871; and by 1870, 14,612. This system formed the great dependence of England before the days of national education. In 1874 the pupil- teacher-center system was begun, and between 1878 and 1896 the age for entering as a pupil-teacher was raised from thirteen to sixteen, and the years of apprenticeship reduced from five to two. In most cases now the academic preparation continues to seventeen or eighteen, and is followed by one year of practice teaching in an elementary school, under supervision. After that the teacher may, or may not, enter what is there known as a Training-College. [7] So far the training of teachers has not made such headway in England and Wales as has been the case in the German States, France, the United States, or Scotland, but important progress may be expected in the near future as an outcome of new educational impulses arising as a result of the World War.
SPREAD OF THE NORMAL-SCHOOL IDEA. The movement for the creation of normal schools to train teachers for the elementary schools has in time spread to many nations. As nation after nation has awakened to the desirability of establishing a system of modern-type state schools, a normal school to train leaders has often been among the first of the institutions created. The normal school, in consequence, is found to-day in all the continental European States; in all the English self-governing dominions; in nearly all the South American States; and in China, [8] Japan, Siam, the Philippines, Cuba, Algiers, India, and other less important nations. In all these there is an attempt, often reaching as yet to but a small percentage of the teachers, to extend to them some of that training in the theory and art of instruction which has for long been so important a feature of the education of the elementary teacher in the German States, France, and the United States. Since about 1890 other nations have also begun to provide, as the German States and France have done for so long, some form of professional training for the teachers intended for their secondary schools [9] as well.
PSYCHOLOGY BECOMES THE MASTER SCIENCE. Everywhere the establishment of normal schools has meant the acceptance of the newer conceptions as to child development and the nature of the educational process. These are that the child is a slowly developing personality, needing careful study, and demanding subject-matter and method suited to his different stages of development. The new conception of teaching as that of directing and guiding the education of a child, instead of hearing recitations and "keeping school," in time replaced the earlier knowledge-conception of school work. Psychology accordingly became the guiding science of the school, and the imparting to prospective teachers proper ideas as to psychological procedure, and the proper methodology of instruction in each of the different elementary-school subjects, became the great work of the normal school. Teachers thus trained carried into the schools a new conception as to the nature of childhood; a new and a minute methodology of instruction; and a new enthusiasm for teaching;—all of which were important additions to school work.
A new methodology was soon worked out for all the subjects of instruction, both old and new. The centuries-old alphabet method of teaching reading was superseded by the word and sound methods; the new oral language instruction was raised to a position of first importance in developing pupil-thinking; spelling, word-analysis, and sentence-analysis were given much emphasis in the work of the school; the Pestalozzian mental arithmetic came as an important addition to the old ciphering of sums; the old writing from copies was changed into a drill subject, requiring careful teaching for its mastery; the "back to nature" ideas of Rousseau and Pestalozzi proved specially fruitful in the new study of geography, which called for observation out of doors, the study of type forms, and the substitution of the physical and human aspects of geography for the older political and statistical; object lessons on natural objects, and later science and nature study, were used to introduce children to a knowledge of nature and to train them in thinking and observation; while the new subjects of music and drawing came in, each with an elaborate technique of instruction.
By 1875 the normal school in all lands was finding plenty to do, and teaching, by the new methods and according to the new psychological procedure, seemed to many one of the most wonderful and most important occupations in the world. How great a change in the scope, as well as in the nature of elementary-school instruction had been effected in a century, the above diagram of American elementary-school development will reveal. History and literature, it will be noticed, had also come in as additional new subjects, but these were relatively unimportant in either the elementary school or the normal school until after the coming of Herbartian ideas, to which we shall refer a little further on.
[Illustration: FIG. 226. EVOLUTION OF THE ELEMENTARY-SCHOOL CURRICULUM ANDOF METHODS OF TEACHING]
Accompanying the organization of professional instruction for teachers, another important change in the nature of the elementary school was effected.
THE GRADING OF SCHOOLROOM INSTRUCTION. For some time after elementary schools began it was common to teach all the children of the different ages together in one room, or at most in two rooms. In the latter case the subjects of instruction were divided between the teachers, rather than the children. [10] Many of the pictures of early elementary schools show such mixed-type schools. In these the children were advanced individually and by subjects as their progress warranted, [11] until they had progressed as far as the instruction went or the teacher could teach (R. 352). From this point on the division of the elementary school into classes and a graded organization has proceeded by certain rather well-defined steps.
The first step (Rs. 353, 354) was the division of the school into two schools, one more advanced than the other, such as lower and higher, or primary and grammar. Another division was introduced when the Infant School was added, beneath. The next step was the division of each school into classes. This began by the employment of assistant teachers, in England and America known as "ushers," to help the "master," and the provision of small recitation rooms, off the main large schoolroom, to which the usher could take his class to hear recitations. The third and final step came with the erection of a new type of school building, with smaller and individual classrooms, or the subdivision of the larger schoolrooms. It was then possible to assign a teacher to each classroom, sort and grade the pupils by ages and advancement, outline the instruction by years, and the modern graded elementary school was at hand.
The transition to the graded elementary school came easily and naturally. For half a century the course of instruction in the evolving elementary state school had been in process of expansion. Pestalozzi paved the way for its creation by changing the purpose and direction, and greatly enlarging (p. 543) the field of instruction of the vernacular school. After him other new subjects of study were added (see diagram, Figure 226), new and better and longer textbooks were prepared (R. 351), and the school term was gradually lengthened. The way in time became clear, earliest in the German lands and in a few American cities, but by about 1850 in most leading nations, for that simple reorganization of school work which would divide the school into a number of classes, or forms, or grades, and give one to each teacher to handle. When this point had been reached, which came about 1850 to 1860 in most nations, but earlier in a few, the modern type of town or city graded elementary school was at hand. Teaching had by this time become an organized and a psychological process; graded courses of study began to appear; professional school superintendents began to be given the direction and supervision of instruction; and the modern science of school organization and administration began to take shape. From this point on the further development of the graded elementary public school has come through the addition of new materials of instruction, and by changing the direction of the school to adapt it better to meeting the new needs of society brought about by the scientific, industrial, social, and political revolutions which we, in previous chapters, have described. A few of the more important of these additions and changes in direction we shall now briefly describe.
[Illustration: FIG. 227. AN "USHER" AND HIS CLASS. The usher, or assistant teacher, is here shown with a class in one of the small recitation-rooms, off the large schoolroom.]
THE WORK OF HERBART. Taking up the problem as Pestalozzi left it, a German by the name of Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841) carried it forward by organizing a truer psychology for the whole educational process, by erecting a new social aim for instruction, by formulating new steps in method, and by showing the place and the importance of properly organized instruction in history and literature in the education of the child. Though the two men were entirely different in type, and worked along entirely different lines, the connection between Herbart and Pestalozzi was, nevertheless, close. [12]
The two men, however, approached the educational problem from entirely different angles. Pestalozzi gave nearly all his long life to teaching and human service, while Herbart taught only as a traveling private tutor for three years, and later a class of twenty children in his university practice school. Pestalozzi was a social reformer, a visionary, and an impractical enthusiast, but was possessed of a remarkable intuitive insight into child nature. Herbart, on the other hand, was a well-trained scholarly thinker, who spent the most of his life in the peaceful occupation of a professor of philosophy in a German university. [13] It was while at Königsberg, between 1810 and 1832, and as an appendix to his work as professor of philosophy, that he organized a small practice school, conducted a Pedagogical Seminar, and worked out his educational theory and method. His work was a careful, scholarly attempt at the organization of education as a science, carried out amid the peace and quiet which a university atmosphere almost alone affords. He addressed himself chiefly to three things: (1) the aim, (2) the content, and (3) the method of instruction.
THE AIM AND THE CONTENT OF EDUCATION. Locke had set up as the aim of education the ideal of a physically sound gentleman. Rousseau had declared his aim to be to prepare his boy for life by developing naturally his inborn capacities. Pestalozzi had sought to regenerate society by means of education, and to prepare children for society by a "harmonious training" of their "faculties." Herbart rejected alike the conventional-social education of Locke, the natural and unsocial education of Rousseau, and the "faculty-psychology" conception of education of Pestalozzi. Instead he conceived of the mind as a unity, instead of being divided into "faculties," and the aim of education as broadly social rather than personal. The purpose of education, he said, was to prepare men to live properly in organized society, and hence the chief aim in education was not conventional fitness, natural development, mere knowledge, nor personal mental power, but personal character and social morality. This being the case, the educator should analyze the interests and occupations and social responsibilities of men as they are grouped in organized society, and, from such analyses, deduce the means and the method of instruction. Man's interests, he said, come from two main sources—his contact with the things in his environment (real things, sense- impressions), and from his relations with human beings (social intercourse). His social responsibilities and duties are determined by the nature of the social organization of which he forms a part.
Pestalozzi had provided fairly well for the first group of contacts, through his instruction in objects, home geography, numbers, and geometric form. For the second group of contacts Pestalozzi had developed only oral language, and to this Herbart now added the two important studies of literature and history, and history with the emphasis on the social rather than the political side. Two new elementary-school subjects were thus developed, each important in revealing to man his place in the social whole. History in particular Herbart conceived to be a study of the first importance for revealing proper human relationships, and leading men to social and national "good-will."
The chief purpose of education Herbart held to be to develop personal character and to prepare for social usefulness (R. 355). These virtues, he held, proceeded from enough of the right kind of knowledge, properly interpreted to the pupil so that clear ideas as to relationships might be formed. To impart this knowledge interest must be awakened, and to arouse interest in the many kinds of knowledge needed, a "many-sided" development must take place. From full knowledge, and with proper instruction by the teacher, clear ideas or concepts might be formed, and clear ideas ought to lead to right action, and right action to personal character—the aim of all instruction. Herbart was the first writer on education to place the great emphasis on proper instruction, and to exalt teaching and proper teaching-procedure instead of mere knowledge or intellectual discipline. He thus conceived of the educational process as a science in itself, having a definite content and method, and worthy of special study by those who desire to teach.
HERBARTIAN METHOD. With these ideas as to the aim and content of instruction, Herbart worked out a theory of the instructional process and a method of instruction (R. 356). Interest he held to be of first importance as a prerequisite to good instruction. If given spontaneously, well and good; but, if necessary, forced interest must be resorted to. Skill in instruction is in part to be determined by the ability of the teacher to secure interest without resorting to force on the one hand or sugar-coating of the subject on the other. Taking Pestalozzi's idea that the purpose of the teacher was to give pupils new experiences through contacts with real things, without assuming that the pupils already had such, Herbart elaborated the process by which new knowledge is assimilated in terms of what one already knows, and from his elaboration of this principle the doctrine of apperception—that is, the apperceiving or comprehending of new knowledge in terms of the old—has been fixed as an important principle in educational psychology. Good instruction, then, involves first putting the child into a proper frame of mind to apperceive the new knowledge, and hence this becomes a corner-stone of all good teaching method.
Herbart did not always rely on such methods, holding that the "committing to memory" of certain necessary facts often was necessary, but he held that the mere memorizing of isolated facts, which had characterized school instruction for ages, had little value for either educational or moral ends. The teaching of mere facts often was very necessary, but such instruction called for a methodical organization of the facts by the teacher, so as to make their learning contribute to some definite purpose. This called for a purpose in instruction; the organization of the facts necessary to be taught so as to select the most useful ones; the connection of these so as to establish the principle which was the purpose of the instruction; and training in systematic thinking by applying the principle to new problems of the type being studied. The carrying-out of such ideas meant the careful organization of the teaching process and teaching method, to secure certain predetermined ends in child development, instead of mere miscellaneous memorizing and school-keeping.
THE HERBARTIAN MOVEMENT IN GERMANY. Herbart died in 1841, without having awakened any general interest in his ideas, and they remained virtually unnoticed until 1865. In that year a professor at Leipzig, Tuiskon Ziller (1817-1883), published a book setting forth Herbart's idea of instruction as a moral force. This attracted much attention, and led to the formation (1868) of a scientific society for the study of Herbart's ideas. Ziller and his followers now elaborated Herbart's ideas, advanced the theory of culture-epochs in child development, the theory of concentration in studies, and elaborated the four steps in the process of instruction, as described by Herbart, into the five formal steps of the modern Herbartian school.
In 1874 a pedagogical seminary and practice school was organized at the University of Jena, and in 1885 this came under the direction of Professor William Rein, a pupil of Ziller's, who developed the practice school according to the ideas of Ziller. A detailed course of study for this school, filling two large volumes, was worked out, and the practice lessons given were thoroughly planned beforehand and the methods employed were subjected to a searching analysis after the lesson had been given.
HERBARTIAN IDEAS IN THE UNITED STATES. For a time, under the inspiration of Ziller and Rein, Jena became an educational center to which students went from many lands. From the work at Jena Herbartian ideas have spread which have modified elementary educational procedure generally. In particular did the work at Jena make a deep impression in the United States. Between 1885 and 1890 a number of Americans studied at Jena and, returning, brought back to the United States this Ziller-Rein-Jena brand of Herbartian ideas and practices. [14] From the first the new ideas met with enthusiastic approval.
[Illustration: PLATE 18. TWO LEADERS IN THE REORGANIZATION OF EDUCATIONALTHEORY
JOHANN FRIEDRICH HERBART (1776-1841)Organizer of the Psychology of Instruction
FRIEDRICH WILHELM TROEBEL (1782-1852)Founder of the Kindergarten]
New methods of instruction in history and literature, and a new psychology, were now added to the normal-school professional instruction. Though this psychology has since been outgrown (R. 357), it has been very useful in shaping pedagogical thought. New courses of study for the training-schools were now worked out in which the elementary-school subjects were divided into drill subjects, content subjects, and motor- activity subjects. [15]
Apperception, interest, correlation, social purpose, moral education, citizenship training, and recitation methods became new terms to conjure with. From the normal schools these ideas spread rapidly to the better city school systems of the time, and soon found their way into courses of study everywhere. Practice schools and the model lessons in dozens of normal schools were remodeled after the pattern of those at Jena, and for a decade Herbartian ideas and the new child study vied with one another for the place of first importance in educational thinking. The Herbartian wave of the nineties resembled the Pestalozzian enthusiasm of the sixties. Each for a time furnished the new ideas in education, each introduced elements of importance into the elementary-school instruction, each deeply influenced the training of teachers in normal schools by giving a new turn to the instruction there, and each gradually settled down into its proper place in educational practice and history.
THE HERBARTIAN CONTRIBUTION. To the Herbartians we are indebted in particular for important new conceptions as to the teaching of history and literature, which have modified all our subsequent procedure; for the introduction of history teaching in some form into all the elementary- school grades; for the emphasis on a new social point of view in the teaching of history and geography; for the new emphasis on the moral aim in instruction; for a new and a truer educational psychology; and for a better organization of the technique of classroom instruction. In particular Herbart gave emphasis to that part of educational development which comes from without—environment acting upon the child—as contrasted with the emphasis Pestalozzi had placed on mental development from within and according to organic law. With the introduction of normal child activities, which came from another source about this same time, the elementary-school curriculum as we now have it was practically complete, and the elementary school of 1850 was completely made over to form the elementary school of the beginning of the twentieth century.
To another German, Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852), we are indebted, directly or indirectly, for three other additions to elementary education —the kindergarten, the play idea, and handwork activities.
ORIGIN OF THE KINDERGARTEN. Of German parentage, the son of a rural clergyman, early estranged from his parents, retiring and introspective by nature, having led a most unhappy childhood, and apprenticed to a forester without his wishes being consulted, at twenty-three Froebel decided to become a schoolteacher and visited Pestalozzi in Switzerland. Two years later he became the tutor of three boys, and then spent the years 1808-10 as a student and teacher in Pestalozzi's Institute at Yverdon. During his years there Froebel was deeply impressed with the great value of music and play in the education of children, and of all that he carried away from Pestalozzi's institution these ideas were most persistent. After serving in a variety of occupations—student, soldier against Napoleon, and curator in a museum of mineralogy—he finally opened a little private school, in 1816, which he conducted for a decade along Pestalozzian lines. In this the play idea, music, and the self-activity of the pupils were uppermost. The school was a failure, financially, but while conducting it Froebel thought out and published (1826) his most important pedagogical work—The Education of Man.
Gradually Froebel became convinced that the most needed reform in education concerned the early years of childhood. His own youth had been most unhappy, and to this phase of education he now addressed himself. After a period as a teacher in Switzerland he returned to Germany and opened a school for little children in which plays, games, songs, and occupations involving self-activity were the dominating characteristics, and in 1840 he hit upon the nameKindergartenfor it. In 1843 hisMutter- und Kose-Lieder, a book of fifty songs and games, was published. This has been translated into almost all languages.
SPREAD OF THE KINDERGARTEN IDEA. After a series of unsuccessful efforts to bring his new idea to the attention of educators, Froebel, himself rather a feminine type, became discouraged and resolved to address himself henceforth to women, as they seemed much more capable of understanding him, and to the training of teachers in the new ideas. Froebel was fortunate in securing as one of his most ardent disciples, just before his death, the Baroness Bertha von Marenholtz Bulow-Wendhausen (1810-93), who did more than any other person to make his work known. Meeting, in 1849, the man mentioned to her as "an old fool," she understood him, and spent the remainder of her life in bringing to the attention of the world the work of this unworldly man who did not know how to make it known for himself. In 1851 the Prussian Government, fearing some revolutionary designs in the new idea, and acting in a manner thoroughly characteristic of the political reaction which by that time had taken hold of all German official life, forbade kindergartens in Prussia. The Baroness then went to London and lectured there on Froebel's ideas, organizing kindergartens in the English "ragged schools." Here, by contrast, she met with a cordial reception. She later expounded Froebelian ideas in Paris, Italy, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, and (after 1860, when the prohibition was removed) in Germany. In 1870 she founded a kindergarten training-college in Dresden. Many of her writings have been translated into English, and published in the United States.
Considering the importance of this work, and the time which has since elapsed, the kindergarten idea has made relatively small progress on the continent of Europe. Its spirit does not harmonize with autocratic government. In Germany and the old Austro-Hungary it had made but little progress up to 1914. Its greatest progress in Europe, perhaps, has been in democratic Switzerland. [16] In England and France, the two great leaders in democratic government, the Infant-School development, which came earlier, has prevented any marked growth of the kindergarten. In England, though, the Infant School has recently been entirely transformed by the introduction into it of the kindergarten spirit. [17] In France, infant education has taken a somewhat different direction. [18]
In the United States the kindergarten idea has met with a most cordial reception. In no country in the world has the spirit of the kindergarten been so caught and applied to school work, and probably nowhere has the original kindergarten idea been so expanded and improved. [19] The first kindergarten in the United States was a German kindergarten, established at Watertown, Wisconsin, in 1855, by Mrs. Carl Schurz, a pupil of Froebel. During the next fifteen years some ten other kindergartens were organized in German-speaking communities. The first English-speaking kindergarten was opened privately in Boston, in 1860, by Miss Elizabeth Peabody. In 1868 a private training-college for kindergartners was opened in Boston, largely through Miss Peabody's influence, by Madame Matilde Kriege and her daughter, who had recently arrived from Germany. In 1872 Miss Marie Boelte opened a similar teacher-training school in New York City, and in 1873 her pupil, Miss Susan Blow, accepted the invitation of Superintendent William T. Harris, of St. Louis, to go there and open the first public-school kindergarten in the United States. [20]
To-day the kindergarten is found in some form in nearly all countries in the world, having been carried to all continents by missionaries, educational enthusiasts, and interested governments. [21] Japan early adopted the idea, and China is now beginning to do so.
THE KINDERGARTEN IDEA. The dominant idea in the kindergarten is natural but directed self-activity, focused upon educational, social, and moral ends. Froebel believed in the continuity of a child's life from infancy onward, and that self-activity, determined by the child's interests and desires and intelligently directed, was essential to the unfolding of the child's inborn capacities. He saw, more clearly than any one before him had done, the unutilized wealth of the child's world; that the child's chief characteristic is self-activity; the desirability of the child finding himself through play; and that the work of the school during these early years was to supplement the family by drawing out the child and awakening the ideal side of his nature. To these ends doing, self activity, and expression became fundamental to the kindergarten, and movement, gesture, directed play, song, color, the story, and human activities a part of kindergarten technique. Nature study and school gardening were given a prominent place, and motor-activity much called into play. Advancing far beyond Pestalozzi's principle of sense- impressions, Froebel insisted on motor-activity and learning by doing (R. 358).
Froebel, as well as Herbart, also saw the social importance of education, and that man must realize himself not independently amid nature, as Rousseau had said, but as a social animal in coöperation with his fellowmen. Hence he made his schoolroom a miniature of society, a place where courtesy and helpfulness and social coöperation were prominent features. This social and at times reverent atmosphere of the kindergarten has always been a marked characteristic of its work. To bring out social ideas many dramatic games, such as shoemaker, carpenter, smith, and farmer, were devised and set to music. The "story" by the teacher was made prominent, and this was retold in language, acted, sung, and often worked out constructively in clay, blocks, or paper. Other games to develop skill were worked out, and use was made of sand, clay, paper, cardboard, and color. The "gifts" and "occupations" which Froebel devised were intended to develop constructive and aesthetic power, and to provide for connection and development they were arranged into an organized series of playthings. Individual development as its aim, motor-expression as its method, and social coöperation as its means were the characteristic ideas of this new school for little children (R. 358).
THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE KINDERGARTEN. Wholly aside from the specific training given children during the year, year and a half, or two years they spend in this type of school, the addition of the kindergarten to elementary-school work has been a force of very large significance and usefulness. The idea that the child is primarily an active and not a learning animal has been given new emphasis, and that education comes chiefly by doing has been given new force. The idea that a child's chief business is play has been a new conception of large educational value. The elimination of book education and harsh discipline in the kindergarten has been an idea that has slowly but gradually been extended upward into the lower grades of the elementary school.
To-day, largely as a result of the spreading of the kindergarten spirit, the world is coming to recognize play and games at something like their real social, moral, and educational values, wholly aside from their benefits as concern physical welfare, and in many places directed play is being scheduled as a regular subject in school programs. Music, too, has attained new emphasis since the coming of the kindergarten, and methods of teaching music more in harmony with kindergarten ideas have been introduced into the schools.
INSTRUCTION IN THE MANUAL ACTIVITIES. Froebel not only introduced constructive work—paper-folding, weaving, needlework, and work with sand and clay and color—into the kindergarten, but he also proposed to extend and develop such work for the upper years of schooling in a school for hand training which he outlined, but did not establish. His proposed plan included the elements of the so-called manual-training idea, developed later, and he justified such instruction on the same educational grounds that we advance to-day. It was not to teach a boy a trade, as Rousseau had advocated, or to train children in sense-perception, as Pestalozzi had employed all his manual activities, but as a form of educational expression, and for the purpose of developing creative power within the child. The idea was advocated by a number of thinkers, about 1850 to 1860, but the movement took its rise in Finland, Sweden, and Russia.
The first country to organize such work as a part of its school instruction was Finland, where, as early as 1858, Uno Cygnaeus (1810-1888) outlined a course for manual training involving bench and metal work, wood-carving, and basket-weaving. In 1866 Finland made some form of manual work compulsory for boys in all its rural schools, and in its training- colleges for male teachers. In 1872 the government of Sweden decided to introduce sloyd work into its schools, partly to counteract the bad physical and moral effects of city congestion, and partly to revivify the declining home industries of the people. A sloyd school was established at Naas, in 1872, to train teachers, and in 1875 a second school, known as a "Sloyd Seminarium," was begun. The summer courses of these two schools were soon training teachers from many nations. In 1877 sloyd work was added to the Folk School instruction of Sweden. At first the old native sloyd occupations were followed, such as carpentering, turning, wood- carving, brush-making, book-binding, and work in copper and iron, but later the industrial element gave way to a well-organized course in educational tool work for boys from twelve to fifteen years of age, after the Finnish plan.
SPREAD OF THE MANUAL-TRAINING IDEA. France was the first of the larger European nations to adopt this new addition to elementary-school instruction, a training-school being organized at Paris in 1873, and, in 1882, the instruction in manual activities was ordered introduced into all the primary schools of France. It has required time, though, to provide work rooms and to realize this idea, and it is still lacking in complete accomplishment. In England the work was first introduced in London, about 1887. The government at once accepted the idea, encouraged its spread, and began to aid in the training of teachers. By 1900 the work was found in all the larger cities, and included cooking and sewing for girls, as well as manual work for boys. The training for girls goes back still farther, and was an outgrowth of the earlier "schools of industry" established to train girls for domestic service (R. 241). By 1846 instruction in needlework had been begun in earnest in England. In German lands needlework was also an early school subject, while some domestic training for girls had been provided in most of the cities, before 1914. Manual training for boys, though, despite much propaganda work, had made but little headway up to that time. As in the case of the kindergarten, the initiative and self-expression aspects of the manual-training movement made no appeal to those responsible for the work of the people's schools, and, in consequence, the manual activities have in German lands been reserved largely for the continuation and vocational schools for older pupils.
In the United States the manual-training and household-arts ideas have found a very ready welcome. Curious as it may seem, the first introduction to the United States of this new form of instruction came through the exhibit made by the Russian government at the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, showing the work in wood and iron made by the pupils at the Imperial Technical Institute at Moscow. This, however, was not the Swedish sloyd, but a type of work especially adapted to secondary-school instruction. In consequence the movement for instruction in the manual activities in the United States, unlike in other nations, began as a highly organized technical type of high-school instruction, [22] while the elementary- school sloyd and the household arts for girls came in later. This type of technical high school has since developed rapidly in this country, has rendered an important educational service, and is a peculiarly American creation. In Europe the manual-training idea has been confined to the elementary school, and no institution exists there which parallels these costly and well-equipped American technical secondary schools.
The introduction of manual work into the elementary schools came a little later, and a little more slowly. As early as 1880 the Workingmen's School, founded by the Ethical Culture Society of New York, had provided a kindergarten and had extended the kindergarten constructive-work idea upward, in the form of simple woodworking, into its elementary school. In the public schools, experimental classes in elementary-school woodworking were tried in one school in Boston, as early as 1882, the expense being borne privately. In 1888 the city took over these classes. In 1886 a teacher was brought to Boston from Sweden to introduce Swedish sloyd, and a teacher-training school which has been very influential was established there, in 1889. In 1876 Massachusetts permitted cities to provide instruction in sewing, and Springfield introduced such instruction in 1884, and elementary-school instruction in knifework in 1886.
From these beginnings the movement spread, [23] though at first rather slowly. By 1900 approximately forty cities, nearly all of them in the North Atlantic group of States, had introduced work in manual training and the household arts into their elementary schools, but since that time the work has been extended to practically all cities, and to many towns and rural communities as well.
[Illustration: FIG. 228. REDIRECTED MANUAL TRAININGA boy mending his shoe instead of making a mortice-joint ]
CONTRIBUTION OF THE MANUAL-ACTIVITIES IDEA. These new forms of school work were at first advocated on the grounds of formal discipline—that they trained the reasoning, exercised the powers of observation, and strengthened the will. The "exercises," true to such a conception, were quite formal and uniform for all. With the breakdown of the "faculty psychology," and the abandonment in large part of the doctrine of formal discipline in the training of the mind, the whole manual-training and household-arts work has had to be reshaped. As the writings of Pestalozzi, Herbart, and Froebel were studied more closely, and with the new light on child development gained from child-study and the newer psychology, these new subjects came to be conceived of in their proper light as means of individual expression, and to be extended to new forms, materials, colors, and new practical and artistic ends. To-day the instruction in manual work and the household arts in all their forms has been further changed to make of them educational instruments for interpreting the fields of art and industry and home-life in terms of their social significance and usefulness. Through these two new forms of education, also, the pupils in the elementary schools have been given training in expression and an insight into the practical work of life impossible in the old textbook type of elementary school. In the kindergarten, manual work, and the household arts, Froebel's principle of education through directed self- activity and self-expression has borne abundant fruit.
In the hands of French, English, and American educators the original manual-arts idea has been greatly expanded. In France some form of expression has been worked out for all grades of the primary school, and the work has been closely connected with art and industry on the one hand and with the home-life of the people on the other. In England the project system as applied to industry, and the household arts with reference to home-life, have been emphasized. In the United States the work has been individualized perhaps more than anywhere else, applied in many new directions—clay, leather, cement, metal—and used as a very important instrument for self-expression and the development of individual thinking.
THE GRADUAL EXTENSION OF THE INTEREST IN SCIENCE. A very prominent feature of world educational development, since about the middle of the nineteenth century, has been the general introduction into the schools of the study of science. It is no exaggeration of the importance of this to say that no addition of new subject-matter and no change in the direction and purpose of education, since that time, has been of greater importance for the welfare of mankind, or more significant of new world conditions, than has been the emphasis recently placed, in all divisions of state school systems, on instruction in the principles and the applications of science.
From the days of Francis Bacon (p. 390) on, the study of science has been making slow but steady progress. The early history of modern science we traced in chapter XVII. During the seventeenth century English scholars were most prominent in the further development, due largely to the greater tolerance of new ideas there, and the University of Cambridge early attained to some reputation (p. 423) as a place where instruction in the new scientific studies might be found. After the middle of the eighteenth century, in large part due to the illuminating work of Voltaire (p. 485), a great interest in science arose among the French. In the Revolutionary days we accordingly find the French creating important scientific institutions (p. 518), and Napoleon gave frequent evidence of his deep interest in scientific studies. [24] This interest the French have since retained.
From France this new interest in science passed quickly to the Germans. The new mathematical and physical studies had early found a home at the new University of Göttingen (p. 555), and largely under French influences scientific studies were later introduced into all the German universities. Early in the nineteenth century the German universities took the lead as centers for the new scientific studies (p. 576)—a lead they retained throughout the century. In England the universities had, by the nineteenth century, lost much of their seventeenth-century prominence in science, and had settled down into teaching colleges, instead of developing, as had the German universities, into institutions for scientific research. Compared with the reformed German universities, actuated by the new scientific spirit, the English universities of the mid-nineteenth century presented a very unfavorable [25] aspect (R. 359). In the United States, book instruction in the sciences came in near the close of the eighteenth century, but the first laboratory instruction in our colleges was not begun until 1846, and our real interest in science teaching dates from an even later period. Until the coming of German influences, after the middle of the century, the American college [26] largely followed English models and practices.
Yet, as we pointed out earlier, the early nineteenth century witnessed a vast expansion of scientific knowledge, and by 1860 the main keys of modern science (p. 727) were in the hands of scholars everywhere. The great early development of scientific study had been carried on in a few universities or had been done by independent scholars, and had influenced but little instruction in the colleges or the schools below.
SCIENCE INSTRUCTION REACHES THE SCHOOLS BUT SLOWLY. The textbook organization of this new scientific knowledge, for teaching purposes, and its incorporation into the instruction of the schools, took place but slowly.
1.The elementary schools.The greatest and the earliest success was made in German lands. There the pioneer work of Basedow (p. 534) and the Philanthropinists had awakened a widespread interest in scientific studies. In Switzerland, too, Pestalozzi had developed elementary science study and home geography, and, when Pestalozzian methods were introduced into the schools of Prussia, the study of elementary science (Realien) soon became a feature of theVolksschuleinstruction. From Prussia it spread to all German lands. In England the Pestalozzian idea was introduced into the Infant Schools, [27] though in a very formal fashion, under the heading of object lessons. In this form elementary science study reached the United States, about 1860, though a decade later well- organized courses in elementary science instruction began to be introduced into the American elementary schools. [28]
After the political reaction following the Napoleonic wars had set in, on the continent of Europe, all thought-provoking studies were greatly curtailed in the people's schools. In England, for other reasons, object lessons did not make any marked headway, and as late as 1865 practically nothing relating to the great new world of scientific knowledge had as yet been introduced into the private and religious elementary schools (R. 360) which, up to that time, constituted England's chief dependence for the elementary instruction of her people.
2.The secondary schools.In the secondary schools the earliest work of importance in introducing the new scientific subjects was done by the Germans and the French. In German lands theRealschuleobtained an early start (1747; p. 420), and the instruction in mathematics and science it included [29] had begun to be adopted by the German secondary schools, especially in the South German States, before the period of reaction set in. During the reign of Napoleon the scientific course in the FrenchLycéeswas given special prominence. After about 1815, and continuing until after 1848, practical and thought-provoking studies were under an official ban in both countries, and classical studies were specially favored. [30] Finally, in 1852 in France and in 1859 in Prussia, responding to changed political conditions and new economic demands, both the scientific course in theLycéesand theRealschulenwere given official recognition, and thereafter received increasing state favor and support. The scientific idea also took deep root in Denmark. There the secondary schools were modernized, in 1809, when the sciences were given an important place, and again in 1850, when many of the Latin schools were transformed intoRealskoler.
In the United States the academies and the early high schools both had introduced quite an amount of mathematics and book-science, [31] and, after about 1875, the development of laboratory instruction in science in the growing high schools took place rather rapidly. Fellenberg's work in Switzerland (p. 546) had also awakened much interest in the United States, and by 1830 a number of Schools of Industry and Science had begun to appear. [32] These made instruction in mathematics and science prominent features of their work. After the Napoleonic wars, England attained to the first place as an industrial and commercial nation. This led to a continual agitation on the part of manufacturers for some science and art instruction. In 1853, Parliament created a State Department of Science and Art (p. 638), and the promotion of science and art education by government grants was now begun. Though the nation had been the first to be transformed by the industrial revolution, and its foreign trade by 1850 reached all parts of the world, the secondary schools of England had remained largely untouched by the change. They were still mainly the Renaissance Latin grammar schools they had been ever since Dean Colet (1510) marked out the lines for such instruction by founding his reformed grammar school at St. Pauls (p. 275). Their courses of instruction contained little that was modern, and in their aims and purposes they went back to the days of the Revival of Learning for their inspiration (R. 361).
THE CHALLENGE OF HERBERT SPENCER. By the middle of the nineteenth century the scientific and industrial revolutions had produced important changes in the conditions of living in all the then important world nations. Particularly in the German States, France, England, and the United States had the effects of the revolutions in manufacturing and living been felt. In consequence there had been, for some time, a growing controversy between the partisans of the older classical training and the newer scientific studies as to their relative worth and importance, both for intellectual discipline and as preparation for intelligent living, and by the middle of the nineteenth century this had become quite sharp. The "faculty psychology," upon which the theory of the discipline of the powers of the mind by the classics was largely based, was attacked, and the contention was advanced that the content of studies was of more importance in education than was method and drill. The advocates of the newer studies contended that a study of the classics no longer provided a suitable preparation for intelligent living, and the question of the relative worth of the older and newer studies elicited more and more discussion as the century advanced.
[Illustration: FIG. 229. HERBERT SPENCER (1820-1903)]
In 1859 one of England's greatest scholars, Herbert Spencer, brought the whole question to a sharp issue by the publication of a remarkably incisive essay on "What Knowledge is of Most Worth?" In this he declared that the purpose of education was to "prepare us for complete living," and that the only way to judge of the value of an educational course was first to classify, in the order of their importance, [33] the leading activities and needs of life, and then measure the course of study by how fully it offers such a preparation. Doing so (R. 362), and applying such a test, he concluded that of all subjects a knowledge of science (R. 363) "was always most useful for preparation for life," and therefore the type of knowledge of most worth. In three other essays [34] he recommended a complete change from the classical type of training which had dominated English secondary education since the days of the Renaissance. Still more, instead of a few being educated by a "cultural discipline" for a life of learning and leisure, he urged general instruction in science, that all might receive training and help for the daily duties of life.
These essays attracted wide attention, not only in England but in many other lands as well. They were a statement, in clear and forceful English, of the best ideas of the educational reformers for three centuries. In his statement of the principles upon which sound intellectual education should be based he merely enunciated theses for which educational reformers had stood since the days of Ratke and Comenius. In his treatment of moral and physical education he voiced the best ideas of John Locke. Spencer's great service was in giving forceful expression to ideas which, by 1860, had become current, and in so doing he pushed to the front anew the question of educational values. The scientific and industrial revolutions had prepared the way for a redirection of national education, and the time was ripe in England, France, German lands, and the United States for such a discussion. As a result, though the questions he raised are still in part unsettled, a great change in assigned values has since been effected not only in these nations, but in most other nations and lands which have drawn the inspiration for their educational systems from them. Though his work was not specially original, we must nevertheless class Herbert Spencer as one of the great writers on educational aims and purposes, and his book as one of the great influences in reshaping educational practice. He gave a new emphasis to the work of all who had preceded him, and out of the discussion which ensued came a new and a greatly enlarged estimate as to the importance of science study in all divisions of the school.
[Illustration: FIG. 230. THOMAS H. HUXLEY (1825-95)]
THE NEW EDUCATIONAL PURPOSE. It is perhaps not too much to say that out of Spencer's gathering-up and forceful statement of the best ideas of his time, and the discussion which followed, a new conception of the educational purpose as adjustment to the life one is to live—physical, economic, social, moral, political—was clearly formulated, and a new definition of a liberal education was framed. The former found expression in a rather rapid introduction of science-study into the elementary school, the secondary school, and the college, after about 1865, in the school systems of all progressive nations, and the subsequent extension of the scientific method to such new fields as history, politics, government, and social welfare. The latter—the new definition of a liberal education —was wonderfully well stated in an address (1868) by the English scientist, Thomas Huxley, when he said: [35]
That man, I think, has had a liberal education who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with all its parts of equal strength, and in smooth working order; ready, like a steam engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of Nature and of the laws of her operations; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of Nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself.
Such an one and no other, I conceive, has had a liberal education; for he is, as completely as a man can be, in harmony with Nature. He will make the best of her, and she of him. They will get on together rarely: she as his ever-beneficent mother; he as her mouthpiece, her conscious self, her minister and interpreter.
The inter-relation between the movement for the study of the sciences and the other movements for the improvement of instruction which we have so far described in this chapter, was close. Pestalozzi had emphasized instruction in geography and the study of nature; Froebel had given a prominent place to nature study and school gardening; the manual-arts work tended to exhibit industrial processes and relationships; and the scientific emphasis on content rather than drill was in harmony with the theories of all the modern reformers. Still more, the scientific movement was in close harmony with the new individualistic tendency of the early part of the nineteenth century, and with the movements for the improvement of individual and national welfare which have been so prominent a characteristic of the latter half of the century.
A CENTURY OF PROGRESS. Pestalozzi, true to the individualistic spirit of the age in which he lived and worked, had seen education as an individual development, and the ends of education as individual ends. The spirit of the French Revolutionary period was the spirit of individualism. With the progress of the Industrial Revolution and the consequent rise of new social problems, the emphasis was gradually shifted from the individual to society—from the single man to the man in the mass. The first educational thinker of importance to see and clearly state this new conception in terms of the school was Herbart. Seeing the educational purpose in far clearer perspective than had those who had gone before him, he showed that education must have for its function the preparation of man to live in organized society, and that character and social morality, rather than individual development, must in consequence be the larger aims. Froebel, possessed of something of the same insight, and seeing clearly the educational importance of activity and expression, had opened up for children a wealth of new contacts with the world about them in the new type of educational institution which he created. His principles, he said, when thoroughly worked out and applied to education "would revolutionize the world." He did not complete the full educational organization he had planned, but in the hands of the Swedes and Finns similar ideas were worked out in practical form and made a part of school work. Applying Froebel's idea to instruction in the old trades and industries, declining in importance in the face of the rise of the factory system, they evolved the manual-training activities, and these have since been made important tools for giving to young people some intelligent ideas as to the industrial relationships and economic problems of our complex modern life.
Since this early pioneer work changes in school work have been numerous and of far-reaching importance. The methods and purpose of instruction in the older subjects have been revised; new studies, which would serve to interpret to the young the industrial and social revolutions of the nineteenth century, have been introduced; the expression-subjects—the domestic arts, music, drawing, clay-modeling, color work, the manual arts, nature study, gardening—have given a new direction to school work; and the study of science and the vocations has attained to a place of importance previously unknown. During the past half-century the school has been transformed, in the principal world nations, from a disciplinary institution where drill in mastering the rudiments of knowledge was given, into an instrument of democracy calculated to train young people for living, for useful service in the office and shop and home, and to prepare them for intelligent participation in the increasingly complex social and political and industrial life of a modern world. This transformation of the school has not always been easy (R. 365), but the vastly changed conditions of modern life have demanded such a transformation in all progressive nations.