The Elements of General Method, Based on the Principles of Herbart

by Charles A. McMurry

This great undertaking has had to run the gauntlet of a severe criticism. Its fundamental principles, as well as its details of execution, have been sharply questioned. But a long-continued effort, extending through many years, by able and thoroughly-equipped teachers, to solve one of the greatest problems of education, deserves careful attention. The general theory of concentration, the selection and value of the materials, the previous history of method, and the best present method of treating each subject, with detailed illustrations, are all worked out with great care and ability.

The Jewish and German historical materials, which are made the moral-educative basis of the common school course by the Herbartians, can be of no service to us except by way of example. Neither sacred nor German history can form any important part of an American course of study. Religious instruction has been relegated to the church, and German history touches us indirectly if at all. The epochs of history from which American schools must draw are chiefly those of the United States and Great Britain. France, Germany, Italy, and Greece may furnish some collateral matter, as the story of Tell, of Siegfried, of Alaric, and of Ulysses; but some of the leading epochs must be those of our own national history.

Has the English-speaking race in North America passed through a series of historical epochs which, on account of their moral-educative worth, deserve to stand in the center of a common school course? Is this history adapted to cultivate the highest moral and intellectual qualities of children as they advance from year to year? There are few, if any, single nations whose history could furnish a favorable answer to this question. The English in America began their career so late in the world's history and with such advantages of previous European culture that several of the earlier historical epochs are not represented in our country. But perhaps Great Britain and Europe will furnish the earlier links of a chain whose later links were firmly welded in America.

The history of our country since the first settlements less than three hundred years ago is by far the best epitome of the world's progress in its later phases that the life of any nation presents. On reaching the new world the settlers began a hand-to-hand, tooth-and-nail conflict with hard conditions of climate, soil, and savage. The simple basis of physical existence had to be fought for on the hardest terms. The fact that everything had to be built up anew from small beginnings on a virgin soil gave an opportunity to trace the rise of institutions from their infancy in a Puritan dwelling or in a town meeting till they spread and consolidated over a continent. In this short time the people have grown from little scattered settlements to a nation, have experienced an undreamed-of material expansion; have passed through a rapid succession of great political struggles, and have had an unrivaled evolution of agriculture, commerce, manufactures, inventions, education, and social life. All the elements of society, material, religious, political, and social have started with the day of small things and have grown up together.

There is little in our history to appeal to children below the fourth grade, that is, below ten years; but from the beginning of the fourth grade on, American history is rich in moral-educative materials of the best quality and suited to children. We are able to distinguish four principal epochs: 1. The age of pioneers, the ocean navigators, like Columbus, Drake, and Magellan, and the explorers of the continent like Smith, Champlain, LaSalle, and Fremont. 2. The period of settlements, of colonial history, and of French and Indian wars. 3. The Revolution and life under the Articles of Confederation till the adoption of the Constitution. 4. Self-government under the Union and the growth and strengthening of the federal idea. While drawing largely upon general history for a full and detailed treatment of a few important topics in each of these epochs, we should make a still more abundant use of the biographical and literary materials furnished by each. The concentration of school studies, with a historical series suggested by the culture epochs as a basis, would utilize our American history, biography, and literature in a manner scarcely dreamed of heretofore.

We shall attempt to illustrate briefly this concentration of studies about materials selected from one of the culture epochs. Take, for example, the age of pioneers from which to select historical subject-matter for children of the fourth and fifth grades. It comprehends the biographies of eminent navigators and explorers, pioneers on land and sea. It describes the important undertakings of Columbus, Magellan, Cabot, Raleigh, Drake, and others, who were daring leaders at the great period of maritime discovery. The pioneer explorers of New England and the other colonies bring out strongly marked characters in the preparatory stage of our earliest history. Smith, Champlain, Winthrop, Penn, Oglethorpe, Stuyvesant, and Washington are examples. In the Mississippi valley De Soto, La Salle, Boone, Lincoln, and Robertson, are types. Still farther west Lewis and Clarke, and the pioneers of California complete this historical epoch in a series of great enterprises. Most of them are pioneers into new regions beset with dangers of wild beasts, savages, and sickness. A few are settlers, the first to build cabins and take possession of land that was still claimed by red men and still covered with forests. The men named were leaders of small bands sent out to explore rivers and forests or to drive out hostile claimants at the point of the sword.

Any one who has tried the effect of these stories upon children of the fourth grade will grant that they touch a deep native interest. But this must be a genuine and permanent interest to be of educative value. The moral quality in this interest is its virtue. Standish, Boone, La Salle, and the rest were stalwart men, whose courage was keenly and powerfully tempered. They were leaders of men by virtue of moral strength and superiority. Their deeds have the stamp of heroism and in approving them the moral judgments of children are exercised upon noble material. These men and stories constitute an epoch in civilization because they represent that stage which just precedes the first form of settled society. In fact some of the stories fall in the transition stage, where men followed the plow and wielded the woodman's axe, or turned to the war-path as occasion required. In every part of the United States there has been such a period, and something corresponding to it in other countries. We are prepared to assume, therefore, that these historical materials arouse a strong interest, implant moral ideas, and illustrate a typical epoch. They are also very real. These men, especially the land pioneers, were our own predecessors, traversing the same rivers, forests, and prairies where we now live and enjoy the fruits of their hardihood and labor.

Let us suppose that such a historical series of stories has its due share of time on the school program and that the stories are properly presented by the teacher and orally reproduced by the pupils. Into what relations shall the other studies of the school enter to these historical materials? How shall language, reading, geography, natural science, and arithmetic be brought into the close relation to history required by the idea of concentration.

The oral reproduction of the stories by the children is the best possible oral language drill, while their partial written review is the basis of much of the regular composition work. Language lessons on isolated and unconnected topics can thus be entirely omitted. The element of interest will be added to oral and written language lessons by the use of such lively stories.

Reading is chiefly tributary to the historical series. Such selections should be made for reading lessons as will throw additional light upon pioneer history and its related geography. Descriptions of natural scenery and choice selections from our best historians, as Irving and Bancroft, describing events or men of this period, should be used for reading lessons. Especially the best literary selections are to be utilized, as the Landing of the Pilgrims, Webster's and Everett's orations at Plymouth, Evangeline and Hiawatha, Indian legends and life, Miles Standish, The Knickerbocker History, and some of the original papers and letters of the early settlers. Whatever poems or prose selections from our best literature are found to bear directly or indirectly upon pioneer events, will add much interest and beauty to the whole subject. A second series of reading materials for these grades would be those masterpieces and traditions of European literature, which are drawn from a corresponding pioneer epoch in those countries; for example, Siegfried in Germany, Alaric in Italy, and Ulysses in Greece. A selection of reading material along these lines would exhibit much variety of prose and poetry, history, and geography. Unity would be given to it by the spirit and labors of a typical age and an intimate relation to history at all points established.