II Standardization Was a Failure
Only one argument need be urged against this method of attacking the educational problem—it did not work. In the first place, the most brilliant school successes often turned out to be the most arrant life failures, while the school derelicts frequently became life successes of stellar magnitude. To the thinking man the inference was plain; the formula was not an unqualified success. Not only was this true of the children who went through school, but there were crowds of children for whom the school held no attraction whatever. They attended a few sessions, wasted a scant bit of energy in educational effort, and then dropped out, hopeless of obtaining results by further “study.”
The old education read out of the school those children who could not benefit by its teachings. How utterly different the concept which has gripped the minds of progressive, modern educators! Under their guidance education has become what Herbert Spencer called it—a preparation for complete living. No longer a fixed, objective standard, education has been recognized as an enlargement of the life horizon of each individual boy or girl in the community. “Teach us individual needs,” proclaim the educational progressives, “and we will tell you what the character of education must be.”
Thus has education ceased to be an objective standard, created by one age and handed down rigidly immobile to the ages succeeding. Instead it is accepted as a fulfilment—a complement—to child needs. Always education has been regarded as a process of molding life and character. The chief difference between the old and the new education is that the old education made a mold, and then forced the child to fit the mold, while the new education begins by determining the character of child needs, and then fits the mold to the needs. The old education was like the farmer who built a corn-sheller, and then attempted to find ears of corn which would fit into the sheller; the new education is like the farmer who first measured the corn and then built his sheller to fit the corn. The old education selected the class which was able to conform to its requirements; the new education serves all classes.
III Education as Growth
Under the impetus given to it by modern thinkers, education has become the direction of growth, rather than the application of a formula. The child is a developing creature. It has become the function of education to watch over and guide the development.
Nor do the modern schools consider mental development as the sole object of educational endeavor. Physical growth is an equally essential part of child life. Therefore the direction of physical growth becomes just as vital a part of the educational machinery. Aesthetic and spiritual growth require like emphasis. Each phase of child life receives independent consideration.
The old education through mental impression is giving way before the new education through physical, mental and spiritual expression. Expression is the essence of growth; and since the school is to foster child growth it must place child expression in a place of paramount importance.
Child needs, rather than abstract standards, have thus become the basis of school activity. The old education developed its course of study by surveying the interests of adults, and picking from among them those, apparently the most simple, which were fit for children. The new education applies the laboratory method—studying children and their interests—reports, among its other findings, the quite evident fact that children enter into life as whole-heartedly as adults; that the field of their interest lies, not in the left-over problems of older people, but in their own problems and processes; and that therefore the educator must found his philosophy and his practice on an understanding of the child and child needs.
There is in the world a phenomenon called adult life, with its phases, problems and ideals. There is likewise in the world a phenomenon called child life, with its phases, problems and ideals. A complete understanding of either may not be derived through a study of the other. Child needs exist separate from and different from adult needs. It is the business of the new education to understand them and meet them.