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

by Ellwood Patterson Cubberley

A CENTURY OF PROGRESS. Pestalozzi, true to the individualistic spirit of the age in which he lived and worked, had seen education as an individual development, and the ends of education as individual ends. The spirit of the French Revolutionary period was the spirit of individualism. With the progress of the Industrial Revolution and the consequent rise of new social problems, the emphasis was gradually shifted from the individual to society—from the single man to the man in the mass. The first educational thinker of importance to see and clearly state this new conception in terms of the school was Herbart. Seeing the educational purpose in far clearer perspective than had those who had gone before him, he showed that education must have for its function the preparation of man to live in organized society, and that character and social morality, rather than individual development, must in consequence be the larger aims. Froebel, possessed of something of the same insight, and seeing clearly the educational importance of activity and expression, had opened up for children a wealth of new contacts with the world about them in the new type of educational institution which he created. His principles, he said, when thoroughly worked out and applied to education "would revolutionize the world." He did not complete the full educational organization he had planned, but in the hands of the Swedes and Finns similar ideas were worked out in practical form and made a part of school work. Applying Froebel's idea to instruction in the old trades and industries, declining in importance in the face of the rise of the factory system, they evolved the manual-training activities, and these have since been made important tools for giving to young people some intelligent ideas as to the industrial relationships and economic problems of our complex modern life.

Since this early pioneer work changes in school work have been numerous and of far-reaching importance. The methods and purpose of instruction in the older subjects have been revised; new studies, which would serve to interpret to the young the industrial and social revolutions of the nineteenth century, have been introduced; the expression-subjects—the domestic arts, music, drawing, clay-modeling, color work, the manual arts, nature study, gardening—have given a new direction to school work; and the study of science and the vocations has attained to a place of importance previously unknown. During the past half-century the school has been transformed, in the principal world nations, from a disciplinary institution where drill in mastering the rudiments of knowledge was given, into an instrument of democracy calculated to train young people for living, for useful service in the office and shop and home, and to prepare them for intelligent participation in the increasingly complex social and political and industrial life of a modern world. This transformation of the school has not always been easy (R. 365), but the vastly changed conditions of modern life have demanded such a transformation in all progressive nations.

THE CONTRIBUTION OF JOHN DEWEY. The foremost American interpreter, in terms of the school, of the vast social and industrial changes which have marked the nineteenth century, is John Dewey [36] (1859- ). Better perhaps than anyone else he has thought out and stated a new educational philosophy, suited to the changed and changing conditions of human living. His work, both experimental and theoretical, has tended both to re- psychologize (R. 364) and socialize education; to give to it a practical content, along scientific and industrial lines; and to interpret to the child the new social and industrial conditions of modern society by connecting the activities of the school closely with those of real life.

[Illustration: FIG. 231. A REORGANIZED KINDERGARTEN Drawn from a photograph showing the reconstruction of the kindergarten activities, as worked out by Dewey at Chicago.]

Starting with the premises that "the school cannot be a preparation for social life except as it reproduces the typical conditions of social life"; that "industrial activities are the most influential factors in determining the thought, the ideals, and the social organization of a people"; and that "the school should be life, not a preparation for living"; Dewey for a time conducted an experimental school, for children from four to thirteen years of age, to give concrete expression to his educational ideas. These, first consciously set forth by Froebel, were: [37]

1. That the primary business of the school is to train in coöperative and mutually helpful living….

2. That the primary root of all educational activity is in the instinctive, impulsive attitudes and activities of the child, and not in the presentation and application of external material.

3. That these individual tendencies and activities are organized and directed through the uses made of them in keeping up the coöperative living … taking advantage of them to reproduce, on the child's plane, the typical doings and occupations of the larger, maturer society into which he is finally to go forth; and that it is through production and creative use that valuable knowledge is clinched.

The work of this school [38] was of fundamental importance in directing the reorganization of the work of the kindergarten along different and larger lines, and also has been of significance in redirecting the instruction in both the social subjects—history (R. 366), literature, etc.—and the manual, domestic, and artistic activities of the school. In his subsequent writings he may be said to have stated an important new philosophy for the school in terms of modern social, political, and industrial needs.

THE DEWEY EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY. Believing that the public school is the chief remedy for the ills of organized society, Professor Dewey has tried to show how to change the work of the school so as to make it a miniature of society itself. Social efficiency, and not mere knowledge, he has conceived to be the end, and this social efficiency is to be produced through participation in the activities of an institution of society, the school. The different parts of the school system thus become a unified institution, in which children are taught how to live amid the constantly increasing complexities of modern social and industrial life.