The History of Education / Educational Practice and Progress Considered as a Phase of the Development and Spread of Western Civilization

by Ellwood Patterson Cubberley

I. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ORGANIZATION OF ELEMENTARY INSTRUCTION

THE BEGINNINGS OF NORMAL-SCHOOL TRAINING. The training of would-be teachers for the work of instruction is an entirely modern proceeding. The first class definitely organized for imparting training to teachers, concerning which we have any record, was a small local training group of teachers of reading and the Catechism, conducted by Father 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's Seminarium Praeceptorum, established at Halle (p. 419), in 1697, coming next in point of time. In 1738 Johann Julius Hecker (1707-68), one of Francke's teachers (p. 562), established the first regular Seminary for Teachers in Prussia, and in 1748 he established a private Lehrerseminar in Berlin. In these two institutions he first showed the German people the possibilities of special training for teachers in the secondary school. In 1753 the Berlin institution was adopted as a Royal Teachers' Seminary (p. 563) by Frederick the Great. After this, and in part due to the enthusiastic support of the Berlin institution by the King, the teacher-training idea for secondary teachers began to find favor among the Germans. We accordingly find something like a dozen Teachers' Seminaries had been founded in German lands before the close of the eighteenth century. [1] A normal school was established in Denmark, by royal decree, as early as 1789, and five additional schools when the law organizing public instruction in Denmark was enacted, in 1814. In France the beginnings of state action came with the action of the National Convention, which decreed the establishment of the "Superior Normal School for France," in 1794 (p. 517). This institution, though, was short lived, and the real beginnings of the French higher normal school awaited the reorganizing work of Napoleon, in 1808 (p. 595; R. 283).

The schools just mentioned represent the first institutions in the history of the world organized for the purpose of training teachers to teach. The teachers they trained, though, were intended primarily for the secondary schools, and the training was largely academic in character. Only in Silesia was any effort made, before the nineteenth century, to give training in special institutions to teachers intended for the vernacular schools. There Frederick the Great, in his "Regulations for the Catholic Schools of Silesia" (R. 275, a § 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's Report (p. 597; R. 284) in New York, in 1835; Calvin E. Stowe's Report on Elementary Education in Europe, [6] in 1837; and Alexander D. Bache's Report on Education in Europe (Rs. 344, 345), in 1838, with their strong commendations of the German teacher-training system, awakened new interest in the United States, in the matter of teacher-training. Finally, in 1839, the legislature of Massachusetts duplicated a gift of $10,000, and placed the money in the hands of the newly created State Board of Education (p. 689) to be used "in qualifying teachers for the common schools of Massachusetts" (R. 350 a). After careful consideration it was decided to create special state institutions, after the German and French plans, in which to give the desired training, and the French term of Normal School was adopted and has since become general in the United States.

[Illustration: TEACHER-TRAINING IN THE UNITED STATES BY 1860. A few private training-schools also existed, though less than half a dozen in all.]

On July 3, 1839, the first state normal school in the United States opened in the town hall at Lexington, Massachusetts, with one teacher and three students. Later that same year a second state normal school was opened at Barre, and early the next year a third at Bridgewater, both in Massachusetts. For these the State Board of Education adopted a statement as to entrance requirements and a course of instruction (R. 350 b) which shows well the academic character of these early teaching institutions. Their success was largely due to the enthusiastic support given the new idea by Horace Mann. In an address at the dedication of the first building erected in America for normal-school purposes, in 1846, he expressed his deep belief as to the fundamental importance of such institutions (R. 350 c). By 1860 eleven state normal schools had been established in eight of the States of the American Union, and six private schools were also rendering similar services. Closely related was the Teachers' Institute, first definitely organized by Henry Barnard in Connecticut, in 1839, to offer four- to six-weeks summer courses for teachers in service, and these had been organized in fifteen of the American States by 1860. Since 1870 the establishment of state normal schools has been rapid in the United States, two hundred having been established by 1910, and many since. The United States, though, is as yet far from having a trained body of teachers for its elementary schools. For the high schools, it is only since about 1890 that the professional training of teachers for such service has really been begun.

4. England. In England the beginnings of teacher-training came with the introduction of monitorial instruction, both the Bell and the Lancaster Societies (p. 625) finding it necessary to train pupils for positions as monitors, and to designate certain schools as model and training schools. In 1833, it will be remembered (p. 638), Parliament made its first grant of money in aid of education. Up to 1840 this was distributed through the two National Societies, and in 1839 a portion of this aid was definitely set aside to enable these Societies to establish model schools (R. 347). From this beginning, the model training-schools for the different religious Societies were developed. In these model schools prospective teachers were educated, being trained in religious instruction and in the art of teaching. In 1836, with the founding of the "Home and Colonial Infant Society," a Pestalozzian Training College was founded by it.

In a further effort to secure trained teachers the government, in 1846, adopted a plan then in use in Holland, and instituted what became known as the "pupil-teacher system" (R. 348). This was an improvement on the waning monitorial training system previously in use. Under this, a favorite old English method, used somewhat for the same purpose a century earlier (R. 243), was adapted to meet the new need.' Under it promising pupils were apprenticed to a head teacher for five years (usually from thirteen to eighteen), he agreeing to give them instruction in both secondary-school subjects and in the art of teaching in return for their help in the schoolroom. Beginning in 1846, there were, by 1848, 200 pupil teachers; by 1861, 13,871; and by 1870, 14,612. This system formed the great dependence of England before the days of national education. In 1874 the pupil- teacher-center system was begun, and between 1878 and 1896 the age for entering as a pupil-teacher was raised from thirteen to sixteen, and the years of apprenticeship reduced from five to two. In most cases now the academic preparation continues to seventeen or eighteen, and is followed by one year of practice teaching in an elementary school, under supervision. After that the teacher may, or may not, enter what is there known as a Training-College. [7] So far the training of teachers has not made such headway in England and Wales as has been the case in the German States, France, the United States, or Scotland, but important progress may be expected in the near future as an outcome of new educational impulses arising as a result of the World War.

SPREAD OF THE NORMAL-SCHOOL IDEA. The movement for the creation of normal schools to train teachers for the elementary schools has in time spread to many nations. As nation after nation has awakened to the desirability of establishing a system of modern-type state schools, a normal school to train leaders has often been among the first of the institutions created. The normal school, in consequence, is found to-day in all the continental European States; in all the English self-governing dominions; in nearly all the South American States; and in China, [8] Japan, Siam, the Philippines, Cuba, Algiers, India, and other less important nations. In all these there is an attempt, often reaching as yet to but a small percentage of the teachers, to extend to them some of that training in the theory and art of instruction which has for long been so important a feature of the education of the elementary teacher in the German States, France, and the United States. Since about 1890 other nations have also begun to provide, as the German States and France have done for so long, some form of professional training for the teachers intended for their secondary schools [9] as well.

PSYCHOLOGY BECOMES THE MASTER SCIENCE. Everywhere the establishment of normal schools has meant the acceptance of the newer conceptions as to child development and the nature of the educational process. These are that the child is a slowly developing personality, needing careful study, and demanding subject-matter and method suited to his different stages of development. The new conception of teaching as that of directing and guiding the education of a child, instead of hearing recitations and "keeping school," in time replaced the earlier knowledge-conception of school work. Psychology accordingly became the guiding science of the school, and the imparting to prospective teachers proper ideas as to psychological procedure, and the proper methodology of instruction in each of the different elementary-school subjects, became the great work of the normal school. Teachers thus trained carried into the schools a new conception as to the nature of childhood; a new and a minute methodology of instruction; and a new enthusiasm for teaching;—all of which were important additions to school work.

A new methodology was soon worked out for all the subjects of instruction, both old and new. The centuries-old alphabet method of teaching reading was superseded by the word and sound methods; the new oral language instruction was raised to a position of first importance in developing pupil-thinking; spelling, word-analysis, and sentence-analysis were given much emphasis in the work of the school; the Pestalozzian mental arithmetic came as an important addition to the old ciphering of sums; the old writing from copies was changed into a drill subject, requiring careful teaching for its mastery; the "back to nature" ideas of Rousseau and Pestalozzi proved specially fruitful in the new study of geography, which called for observation out of doors, the study of type forms, and the substitution of the physical and human aspects of geography for the older political and statistical; object lessons on natural objects, and later science and nature study, were used to introduce children to a knowledge of nature and to train them in thinking and observation; while the new subjects of music and drawing came in, each with an elaborate technique of instruction.

By 1875 the normal school in all lands was finding plenty to do, and teaching, by the new methods and according to the new psychological procedure, seemed to many one of the most wonderful and most important occupations in the world. How great a change in the scope, as well as in the nature of elementary-school instruction had been effected in a century, the above diagram of American elementary-school development will reveal. History and literature, it will be noticed, had also come in as additional new subjects, but these were relatively unimportant in either the elementary school or the normal school until after the coming of Herbartian ideas, to which we shall refer a little further on.

[Illustration: FIG. 226. EVOLUTION OF THE ELEMENTARY-SCHOOL CURRICULUM AND
OF METHODS OF TEACHING]

Accompanying the organization of professional instruction for teachers, another important change in the nature of the elementary school was effected.

THE GRADING OF SCHOOLROOM INSTRUCTION. For some time after elementary schools began it was common to teach all the children of the different ages together in one room, or at most in two rooms. In the latter case the subjects of instruction were divided between the teachers, rather than the children. [10] Many of the pictures of early elementary schools show such mixed-type schools. In these the children were advanced individually and by subjects as their progress warranted, [11] until they had progressed as far as the instruction went or the teacher could teach (R. 352). From this point on the division of the elementary school into classes and a graded organization has proceeded by certain rather well-defined steps.

The first step (Rs. 353, 354) was the division of the school into two schools, one more advanced than the other, such as lower and higher, or primary and grammar. Another division was introduced when the Infant School was added, beneath. The next step was the division of each school into classes. This began by the employment of assistant teachers, in England and America known as "ushers," to help the "master," and the provision of small recitation rooms, off the main large schoolroom, to which the usher could take his class to hear recitations. The third and final step came with the erection of a new type of school building, with smaller and individual classrooms, or the subdivision of the larger schoolrooms. It was then possible to assign a teacher to each classroom, sort and grade the pupils by ages and advancement, outline the instruction by years, and the modern graded elementary school was at hand.

The transition to the graded elementary school came easily and naturally. For half a century the course of instruction in the evolving elementary state school had been in process of expansion. Pestalozzi paved the way for its creation by changing the purpose and direction, and greatly enlarging (p. 543) the field of instruction of the vernacular school. After him other new subjects of study were added (see diagram, Figure 226), new and better and longer textbooks were prepared (R. 351), and the school term was gradually lengthened. The way in time became clear, earliest in the German lands and in a few American cities, but by about 1850 in most leading nations, for that simple reorganization of school work which would divide the school into a number of classes, or forms, or grades, and give one to each teacher to handle. When this point had been reached, which came about 1850 to 1860 in most nations, but earlier in a few, the modern type of town or city graded elementary school was at hand. Teaching had by this time become an organized and a psychological process; graded courses of study began to appear; professional school superintendents began to be given the direction and supervision of instruction; and the modern science of school organization and administration began to take shape. From this point on the further development of the graded elementary public school has come through the addition of new materials of instruction, and by changing the direction of the school to adapt it better to meeting the new needs of society brought about by the scientific, industrial, social, and political revolutions which we, in previous chapters, have described. A few of the more important of these additions and changes in direction we shall now briefly describe.

[Illustration: FIG. 227. AN "USHER" AND HIS CLASS. The usher, or assistant teacher, is here shown with a class in one of the small recitation-rooms, off the large schoolroom.]