A student's history of education

by Frank Pierrepont Graves

The Development of the Natural Sciences in Modern Times.—We have already (chapter XV) witnessed the growth of the natural sciences and the beginning of their introduction into the curriculum toward the close of the seventeenth century. This tendency was also greatly Remarkable achievements during past two centuries. stimulated by Rousseau, who, we have seen ([pp. 218]-222), may be held to advocate the scientific, as well as the sociological and psychological movements. And during the past two centuries this development has become most rapid and extensive. The desire for scientific investigation steadily grew throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries until its ideals, methods, and results became patent in every department of human knowledge. The strongholds of ignorance, superstition, and prejudice were rapidly stormed and taken through new discoveries or new marshallings of facts already discovered. But evident as this movement has been, it is scarcely possible here even to mention the more important scientific achievements, or to outline the broad sweep of progress in astronomy, geology, biology, physiology, chemistry, physics, and other sciences within a century. The Newtonian theory has been confirmed by the investigations of Lagrange and Laplace and by the discovery of Neptune by mathematical reasoning from the effects Hutton, Agassiz, Darwin, and others. of its gravitation. Hutton’s ‘Plutonic’ theory of continents and Agassiz’s hypothesis of a universal ice-age have been formulated; the doctrine of evolution of Darwin ([Fig. 51]) and Mendel’s law of inheritance have been established; Liebig and others have thrown light upon the process of digestion and the functioning of the lungs and liver; atoms, molecules, and ions have been defined; Joule and Mayer have demonstrated the conservation of energy; and the periodic law of chemical elements has been discovered by Newlands.

The Growth of Inventions and Discoveries in the Nineteenth Century.—It should be noted, however, that the majority of these investigations were for a long time carried on outside the universities, and, owing to the almost proverbial conservatism of educational institutions, the natural sciences scarcely entered the course of study anywhere. In fact, these great discoveries at first seem not to have affected practical life in any direction. Huxley tells us that in the eighteenth century “weaving and spinning were carried on with the old appliances; nobody could travel faster by sea or by land than at any previous time in the world’s history, and King George could send a message from London to York no faster than King John might have done.” But a little later, as he adds, “that growth of knowledge beyond imaginable utilitarian ends, which is the condition During nineteenth century science applied precedent of its practical utility, began to produce some effect upon practical life.” The nineteenth century will, on this account, always be known for its development to problems of labor, transportation, communication, comfort, and hygiene. of inventions and the arts, as well as of pure science. During this period science rapidly grew and took the form of applications to the problems of labor, production, transportation, communication, hygiene, and sanitation. The reaper, the sewing machine, the printing press, and the typewriter greatly reduced the cost of labor; the steamboat, locomotive, electric railway, telegraph, and telephone linked all parts of the world together; anthracite, friction matches, petroleum, and electric lighting and heating greatly enlarged the comforts of life; and stethoscopes, anæsthetics, antiseptics, and antitoxines added wonderfully to the span of human life.

Herbert Spencer and What Knowledge is of Most Worth.—Because of these practical results, the vital importance of a knowledge of natural phenomena to human welfare and social progress was more and more felt throughout the century. It gradually became evident that the natural sciences were demanded by modern life and constituted elements of the greatest value in modern culture and education. Many English and American writers began to maintain that an exclusive Contest between advocates of classics and sciences. study of the classics did not provide a suitable preparation for life, and that the sciences should be included in the curriculum. This step was bitterly opposed by conservative institutions and educators. During a greater part of the century a contest was waged between the advocates of the classical monopoly and the progressives, who urged that the sciences should be introduced.

A representative argument for sciences in the course of study is that made by Herbert Spencer ([Fig. 52]) in his essay on What Knowledge Is of Most Worth. He ventured to raise the whole question of the purpose of Preparation for complete living as the purpose of education. education. He held that “to prepare us for complete living is the function which education has to discharge; and the only rational mode of judging of any educational course is, to judge in what degree it discharges such function. Our first step must obviously be to classify, in the order of their importance, the leading kinds of activity which constitute human life. They may be arranged into: 1. Those activities which directly minister Leading kinds of activity; to self-preservation; 2. Those activities which, by securing the necessaries of life, indirectly minister to self-preservation; 3. Those activities which have for their end the rearing and discipline of offspring; 4. Those activities which are involved in the maintenance of proper social and political relations; 5. Those miscellaneous activities which make up the leisure part of life, devoted to the gratification of the tastes and feelings. The ideal of education is complete preparation in all these divisions. But failing this ideal, the aim should be to maintain a due proportion between the degrees of preparation in each, greatest where the value is greatest, less where the value is less, least where the value is least.”

for all of these, sciences are most useful;

Applying this test, Spencer finds that a knowledge of the sciences is always most useful in life, and therefore of most worth. He considers each one of the five groups of activities and demonstrates the need of the knowledge of some science or sciences to guide it rightly. An acquaintance with physiology is necessary to the maintenance of health, and so for self-preservation. Any form of industry or other means of indirect self-preservation will require some understanding of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, and sociology. To care for the physical, intellectual, and moral training of their children, parents should know the general principles of physiology, psychology, and ethics. A man is best fitted for citizenship through a knowledge of the science of history in its political, economic, and social aspects. And even the æsthetic or leisure side of life depends upon physiology, and a change of educational content is advocated. mechanics, and psychology as a basis for art, music, and poetry. Hence Spencer advocates a complete change from the type of training that had dominated education since the Renaissance and calls for a release from the traditional bondage to the classics. Instead of Greek and Latin for ‘culture’ and ‘discipline,’ and an order of society where the few are educated for a life of elegant leisure, he recommends the sciences and a new scheme of life where every one shall enjoy all advantages in the order of their relative value. But Spencer uses the term ‘science’ rather loosely, and seeks to denote the social, political, and moral sciences, as well as the physical and biological, as being ‘of most worth.’ Hence he does not deserve to be severely arraigned for his ‘utilitarianism,’ as he has been so frequently. His ‘preparation for complete living’ includes more than ‘how to live in the material sense only,’ and with him education should contain such material as will elevate conduct and make life pleasanter, nobler, and more effective.

Advocacy of the Sciences by Huxley and Others.—Another great popularizer of the scientific elements in Huxley’s ridicule of the education in vogue. education, who also stressed the value of the sciences for ‘complete living’ and social progress, was Thomas H. Huxley ([Fig. 53]). His use of English was vigorous and epigrammatic, and he showed great skill in bringing his conclusions into such simple language that the most unscientific persons could understand them. Especially in an address on A Liberal Education before a ‘workingmen’s college,’ he has most forcefully depicted the value of the sciences and other modern subjects in training for concrete living, and ridiculed the ineffectiveness of the current classical education. He maintains that “the life, the fortune, and the happiness of every one of us depend upon our knowing something of the phenomena of the universe and the laws of Nature. And yet this is what people tell to their sons: ‘At the cost of from one to two thousand pounds of our hard-earned money, we devote twelve of the most precious years of your life to school. There you shall not learn one single thing of all those you will most want to know directly you leave school and enter upon the practical business of life.’” Instead of this, “the middle class school substitutes what is usually comprised under the compendious title of the ‘classics’—that is to say, the languages, the literature, and the history of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and the geography of so much of the world as was known to these two great nations of antiquity.” Thus “the British father denies his children all the knowledge they might turn to account in life, not merely for the achievement of vulgar success, but for guidance in the great crises of human existence.”

Many other vigorous lecturers and writers entered into this reform of the curriculum. Opposition to the over-emphasis of languages, especially the classics, in the content of education was undertaken even earlier in Combe. the century by the distinguished phrenologist, George Combe. In his ‘secular’ schools and in his work on Education, he emphasized instruction in the sciences relating to moral, religious, social, and political life, as well as those bearing upon man’s physical and mental constitution. After the middle of the century a number of men undertook to popularize the sciences in America by tongue and pen. One of the most effective Youmans. of these was Edward L. Youmans, who collected and edited a set of lectures urging the claims of the various sciences under the title of Culture Demanded by Modern Life (1867). He also founded the International Science Series (1871) and the Popular Science Monthly (1872). A service for the sciences, bearing more directly upon the educational world, was that performed by Eliot. Charles W. Eliot ([Fig. 54]), President of Harvard. This he accomplished largely by an extension of the elective system and an emphasis upon science in the curriculum of school and college. In his description of ‘a liberal education,’ he argues that “the arts built upon chemistry, physics, botany, zoölogy, and geology are chief factors in the civilization of our time, and are growing in material and moral influence at a marvelous rate. They are not simply mechanical or material forces; they are also moral forces of great intensity.”

The Disciplinary Argument for the Sciences.—Thus, in general, the writers and lecturers interested in the scientific movement held that a knowledge of nature was indispensable for human welfare and that the content of studies rather than the method was of importance in education. Many of them also expressed their dissent from the disciplinary conception of education urged by the classicists. Huxley, for example, parodies the usual Huxley parodies the argument of formal discipline. linguistic drill by stating: “I could get up an osteological primer so arid, so pedantic in its terminology, so altogether distasteful to the youthful mind, as to beat the recent famous production of the head-master out of the field in all these excellences. Next, I could exercise my boys upon easy fossils, and bring out all their powers of memory and all their ingenuity in the application of my osteogrammatical rules to the interpretation, or construing, of those fragments.”

Yet the tradition of ‘formal discipline’ and the belief in faculties or general powers of the mind that might be trained by certain favored studies and afterward applied in any direction (see [pp. 182]f.) were too firmly rooted to be entirely upset. Even the greatest of the scientists seem to have been influenced by this notion and to have attempted occasionally a defense of their subjects on the basis of superiority in this direction. After Spencer But Spencer and others borrow the disciplinary argument of the classicists. has made his effective argument for the sciences on the ground that their ‘content’ is so much more valuable for the activities of life, he shifts his whole point of view, and attempts to anticipate the classicists by occupying their own ground. He admits that “besides its use for guidance in conduct, the acquisition of each order of facts has also its use as mental exercise.” As evidence of this, he undertakes to show that science, like language, trains the memory, and, in addition, exercises the understanding; that it is superior to language in cultivating judgment; that, by fostering independence, perseverance, and sincerity, it furnishes a moral discipline. A similar argument is made by Combe, when he maintains that “it is not so much the mere knowledge of the details of Chemistry, of Natural Philosophy, or of any other science that I value, as the strengthening of the intellect, which follows from these studies.” So Youmans declares that “by far the most priceless of all things is mental power. Science made the basis of culture will accomplish this result.” In fact, nearly every apologist for the natural sciences at some time or other has advocated these subjects from the standpoint of formal discipline, although the implied attitude toward the transfer of a generalized ideal is often in harmony with modern psychology (see p. 184).