A student's history of education

by Frank Pierrepont Graves

Moral Training in the Schools To-day.—But present day tendencies in education have to do with more than the material side of civilization. There is a growing sentiment in favor of moral instruction in the schools. There are many reasons why this need should be especially felt in the complex business life of to-day. When men work for impersonal corporations, sell products to people they never see, or intrust their welfare to officials whose names are scarcely known, one strong factor making for honesty and virtue, that of personal relations, is lost. Moreover, as a result of the weakening of old religious sanctions, the new conditions in large cities, and other causes, moral traditions are in need of being buttressed.

Fig. 55.—Vocational education for boys in Germany (Commercial, Industrial, and Professional) in Relation to Public School Organization.

(Reproduced by permission from Farrington’s Commercial Education in Germany.)

The educational systems of Europe have for a quarter of a century given more or less attention to moral training. In France secular training, but in England and Germany religious. In France this training has been purely secular and excluded all religious elements. But the education of England and Germany has always associated the teaching of morality with religion. In England, the ‘board’ schools have furnished religious instruction of a nonsectarian character, but the religious training of the ‘voluntary’ schools has occupied more time and has stressed the creed and denominational teaching of some church, usually the Church of England (see [pp. 380] f.). The contest over religious teaching since the Act of Sadler’s commission. 1902 (see p. 390) caused a self-constituted commission, with Michael E. Sadler as chairman, to investigate the subject of moral instruction, and in 1908-1909 it presented a large and illuminating report. In Germany the moral and religious instruction in all elementary schools is sectarian, and Catholic and Protestant schools are alike supported, wherever needed, at public expense. During the past decade there has been considerable discussion in the United States concerning moral education. In response to the demand for an investigation of Work of the N. E. A. in the United States. the subject, a committee of the National Education Association in 1908-1909 made a report upon various phases of moral training, and recommended special instruction in ethics, not in the form of precepts, but through consideration of existing moral questions. In 1911 the Summary of the R. E. A. Religious Education Association, whose convention in that year was devoted to moral training, gave in its Journal a broad summary of the progress of moral education in the United States. The report reveals a wide difference of opinion and practice, but an evident tendency to trust other agencies than direct moral instruction. As a rule, state legislation seems as yet to have failed to provide a general system of training, but has confined itself to specific subjects, such as instruction in citizenship, the effects of alcohol and narcotics, and the humane treatment of animals.

Impulse given by Seguin’s ‘physiological’ methods.

The Development of Training for Mental Defectives.—One of the most patent evidences of the growth of the humane spirit in modern times is found in the universal attention now given to the education of mental defectives. This movement was given its greatest impulse through Édouard Seguin, who came to the United States in 1850 and developed his methods here. His general plan was to appeal to the mind through the senses by means of a training of the hand, taste and smell, and eye and ear. He used pictures, photographs, cards, patterns, figures, wax, clay, scissors, compasses, and pencils as his chief instruments of education. The stimulus he gave to the training of defectives has been epoch-making, and his ‘physiological’ methods have remained the chief means of education. Although there has grown up a Attempts to introduce intellectual elements. tendency to introduce intellectual elements into the training of the feeble-minded, the advantages of such a procedure are doubtful.

All the great nations now provide schools for the Schools in Germany, training of defectives. Germany has over one hundred institutions, with some twenty thousand pupils in them, although nine-tenths of them are not supported by the state, but are under church or private auspices. These schools generally stress manual education, but give some attention to intellectual lines, especially to speech training. There are but few schools for defectives in France, and England. France, aside from the two near Paris and the juvenile department of the insane hospital at Bicêtre, but these institutions largely follow the physical work formulated by Seguin. In London there is one excellent institution with two thousand pupils, where manual training constitutes almost the entire course. But there are five other schools so located as to serve the various parts of England, in which the training is rather bookish and emphasis is especially laid upon number work.

Training in the United States.

Thanks to the start given by Seguin, America has taken up the education of defectives more fully than any other country. Schools for the feeble-minded now exist in almost all the states, and there are some thirty-five or forty private institutions of considerable merit. Not far from twenty thousand defectives are being trained, although this is probably only about one-tenth of the total number of such cases in the country. The type of education differs greatly according to the institution, ranging from almost purely manual training to a large proportion of the intellectual rudiments, but in all the work is adapted to the various grades in such a way as to raise them a little in the scale of efficiency and to keep them as far as possible from being a burden to themselves and to society. Likewise, special clinics and investigations, like those of Lightner Witmer of the University of Pennsylvania and of H. H. Goddard of the Training School at Vineland (New Jersey), are greatly adding to our knowledge of the best methods for training defectives.