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

by Ellwood Patterson Cubberley

IV. THE ADDITION OF SCIENCE STUDY

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 the Volksschule instruction. 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 the Realschule obtained 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 French Lycées was 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 the Lycées and the Realschulen were 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 into Realskoler.

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.