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

by Ellwood Patterson Cubberley

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. What does the emphasis on the People's High Schools in Denmark indicate as to the political status of the common people there?

2. Explain the educational prominence of Finland, compared with its neighbor Russia.

3. Show the close relation between the character of the school system developed in Japan and the character of its government. In China.

4. Show why the state-function conception of education is destined to be the ruling plan everywhere.

5. Show the close connection between the Industrial Revolution and a somewhat general diffusion of the fundamental principles revealed by the study of science.

6. Show how the Industrial Revolution has created entirely new problems in education, and what some of these are.

7. Show the connection between the Industrial Revolution and political enfranchisement.

8. Enumerate some of the educational problems we now face that we should not have had to deal with had the Industrial Revolution not taken place.

9. Why has the result of these changes been to extend the period of dependence and tutelage of children?

10. Outline an educational solution of the problem of Mexico. Of Russia. Of Persia.

11. Show how Germany found it profitable to establish Realschulen in such distant countries as Turkey, Mesopotamia, and the Argentine.

12. Describe the expansion of the educational idea since the days when Pestalozzi formulated the theory for the secular school.

13. What is the social significance of the development of parallel secondary schools and courses, in all lands?

14. Contrast the American and the European secondary school in purpose. Why should the American be a free school, while those in Europe are tuition schools?

15. Show why the essentially democratic school system maintained in the United States would not be suited to an autocratic form of government.

16. Show that the weight of a priesthood and the force of religious instruction in the schools would be strong supports for monarchical forms of government.

17. Homogeneous monarchical nations look after the training of their teachers much better than does such a cosmopolitan nation as the United States. Why?