[29] Annual report of the Columbus Public Schools, 1913, p. 18.
CHAPTER XIII
THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION
I The Standard of Education
The educational experiments described in the preceding chapters are replete with the spirit of the New Education. From the virile educational systems of the country a protest is being sounded against traditional formalism. School men have learned that that which is is not necessarily right. Each concept, each method, must run the gauntlet of critical analysis. It is not sufficient to allege in support of an educational principle that the results derived from its application have been satisfactory in the past. Insistently the question is repeated, “What are its effects upon the problems of to-day?”
Educational ancestor worship is no more acceptable to the progressive spirit of the Western World than is ancestor worship in any other form. The past has made its contribution, and has died in making it. For the contribution the present is grateful, but it must steadfastly refuse in its own name, and in the name of the future, to be bound by any decree of the past which will not stand the acid test of present experience.
The old education was beset by traditionalism. Under its dominance, education, defined once and for all, was established as a standard to which men must attain; hence a preceptor, guiding his young charges along the straight path to knowledge, might, with perfect confidence, admonish them, “Lo here, the three R’s is education,” or “Lo there, Greek and higher mathematics is education,” according as his training had been in the three R’s or in Greek. In either case he felt certain of his general ground. Once and for all the educational standard had been set. By that standard new ideas were judged, and either justified or condemned.
Under this predetermined scheme there was a formula for education—a formula as definite as that for making bread or pickling pork. The formula was applied to each child who presented himself to the administration. If the formula worked successfully the child was declared educated in the same way that pork which has been successfully treated by the proper processes is declared to be pickled. If the formula did not work the child was not educated. He sat in school with a dunce-cap upon his head, or else played hookey and spent his hours in fishing, swimming or idling.
Perhaps, in view of the recent contributions of science, it would be more illuminating to say that the old education inoculated the child with a predetermined educational virus. If the virus “took” the child was declared immune to the bacteria of ignorance, illiteracy, stupidity and other prevalent social complaints. If the virus did not take the schoolmaster ostentatiously washed his hands of the recreant.