Once I asked a group of college students to write a frank reaction on a sixty-hour course they had just completed in the general history of education. One wrote as follows: "The history of education makes me feel that a number of what we call innovations today are a renaissance of something as 'old as the hills.' We hear a lot about pupil self-government, and we find it back in the seventeenth century. The trade school also is not a modern tendency.
"I also feel that maybe we are not giving our boys and girls a liberal education; maybe we are too utilitarian (I was very much inclined that way myself before I took this course).
"That when we wish to try something new, let's go back and see if it has not been tried before, study the circumstances, the mistakes made, the results attained, and see whether we can't profit by the experience given us by the past.
"I was also very much surprised to learn the close connection that there is between civilization and education.
"I feel that we are laying too much stress on the thinking side of training rather than on the volitional side: not doing in the sense of utility alone, but as a means of expression."
It is easy to see the parts of the course that particularly gripped him. Another wrote as follows:
Another reaction
"The history of education makes me feel as follows about teaching:
(1) It shows the knowledge of method to be obtained from the experiences of others.
(2) It makes me feel the importance of the teacher.