Report of the Committee of Fifteen / Read at the Cleveland Meeting of the Department of Superintendence, February 19-21, 1884, with the Debate

by William Torrey Harris; A. S. Draper; H. S. Tarbell

Second, there is a still higher form of correlation which is definitely referred to later in the report as that “of the several branches of human learning in the unity of the spiritual view furnished by religion to our civilization.” This in the report is assigned absolutely to the province of higher education. While I do not wish to dissent wholly from this view, since it is doubtless true that this higher unity cannot be comprehensively stated for the use of a child, yet a wise teacher can so present subjects to even a young child that a sense of the unity of all knowledge will, to a certain degree, be unconsciously developed in his mind. In regard to certain of the great divisions of human knowledge, this relation is so evident that they cannot be properly presented at all unless the relation be made clear. Such studies are history and geography.

2. The recommendations upon the subject of language should be broadened to cover the production of good English by the child himself, with the suggestion of suitable topics and proper methods. This report confines itself to the absorptive side of education and ignores that development of power over nature, man, and self, which comes from free exercise of faculties and free expression of thought. The study of language as something for the child to use himself, the great means by which he is to assert his place in civilization, and exert his influence for good, is nowhere referred to except in the vaguest way. This statement in regard to language applies almost equally well to drawing, and here is made evident the importance of the form of correlation to which I have just referred. The proper material for the training of the child in expression is that which is furnished by the study of man and nature. His mind being filled with high themes, he asserts his individuality, expresses himself in regard to them, and thereby gains at once both a closer and clearer comprehension of what he has studied, and also the power by which he may become a factor in his generation.

3. I would wish to omit the word “weekly” where it occurs in the discussion of the subjects of general history and science, unless it be understood to mean that an amount of time in the school year equivalent to sixty minutes weekly be given to each of these subjects. It is often better to condense these studies into certain portions of the year, giving more time to them each week, and using them as the basis, to a certain degree, of language work. I believe that, especially with young children, clearer concepts are produced by such connected study, pursued for fewer weeks, than by lessons seven days apart.

4. In my judgment manual training should not be limited to the seventh and eighth grades, but should begin in the kindergarten with the simple study of form from objects and the reproduction in paper of the objects presented, and should extend, in a series of carefully graded lessons, through all the grades, leaving, however, the heavier tools, such as the plane, for the seventh and eighth grades. By these means an interest is kept up in the various human industries, sympathy for all labor is created, and a certain degree of skill is developed; moreover, the interest of the pupils in their school is greatly enhanced. Manual training has often proved the magnet by which boys at the restless age have been kept in school instead of leaving for some gainful occupation.

5. I desire to suggest that geometry may be so taught as to be a better mathematical study than algebra to succeed or accompany arithmetic in the seventh and eighth grades. I do not refer particularly to inventional geometry, to which the Committee accords a slighting attention, but to constructive geometry and the simplest propositions in demonstrative geometry, thus involving the comprehension of the elementary geometric forms and their more obvious relations. This study may be made of special interest in connection with manual training and drawing, while it presents fewer difficulties to the immature mind than the abstractions of algebra, since it connects more directly with the concrete, by which its presentation may often be aided.

6. While agreeing fully with the majority of the Committee that the full scientific method should not be applied to the study of elementary science by young children, yet I am compelled to favor more of experimentation and observation by the child, and less of telling by the teacher than the report would seem to favor.

7. I would go farther than the majority of the Committee, and insist that, except in rare cases, there should be no specialization of the teaching force below the high school, and that even in the first years of the high school, so far as possible, specialization should be subordinated to a general care of the child’s welfare and oversight of his methods of study, which are impossible when a corps of teachers give instruction, each in one subject, and see the student only during the hour of recitation.

8. While in the main I agree with the bald statements under the head “Correlation by synthesis of studies,” since reference is made to only a very artificial mode of synthesis not at all in vogue in this country, I must dissent emphatically from this portion of the report as by inference condemning a most important department of correlation, to which I have referred earlier. The doctrine of concentration is not necessarily artificial; rather it refers to the higher unity, of which this Committee has spoken in glowing terms as belonging to the province of higher education. It also includes the division of the school curriculum into content and form, which this Committee inferentially adopts in its treatment of language. I do not believe, any more than do the majority of the Committee, that the entire course of study can be literally and exactly centred about a single subject, nor do I believe in any artificial correlation; but there is a natural relation of all knowledges, which this Committee admits in various places, and which is the basis of a proper synthesis of studies, according to the psychological principle of apperception.

9. If by the term “oral,” as applied to lessons in biography and in natural science, the Committee means, as the word would imply, that the instruction is to be given in the form of lectures by the teacher, I cannot in full agree with the Committee’s conclusions. As I have already stated, in natural science the work should be largely that of observation, and in history and biography, while in the very lowest grades the teachers should tell the children stories, as soon as it is possible the desired information should be obtained by the student through reading. To this end the reading lesson in school should be properly correlated with his other studies, and he should be advised as to his home reading. The information thus obtained should be the subject of conversation in the class, and should furnish the material for much of the written language work of the children.

10. I must dissent emphatically and entirely from that portion of the report which recommends that a text-book in grammar be introduced into the fifth year of the child’s school life. It is a question in my mind whether it would not be better if the text-book were not introduced into the grades below the high school at all. Certainly it should not appear before the seventh year. Such knowledge of grammar as will familiarize the child with the structure of the sentence, the basis of all language and as will enable him to use correctly forms of speech which the necessities of expression require, should be given orally by the teacher in connection with the child’s written work, when needed; but against the introduction of a text-book upon grammar, the most abstruse of all the subjects of the school curriculum, when the pupil is not more than ten years old, I must protest. Instead of that, the child should devote much time, some every day, to writing upon proper themes in the best English he can command, furnishing occasion to the teacher to correct such errors as he may make, and acquiring by use acquaintance with the correct forms of grammar. If, as will doubtless be the case in most cities, local conditions render the introduction of Latin into the eighth grade inadvisable, this study of grammar may be made in that grade somewhat more intensive.