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).