I wish, in the first instance, to express my sense of gratification. I felt that I was leaving the matter in a very imperfect form.
Now, I had said all that I care to say about the arts in the elementary schools. There are the studies, I mean the real studies, those we study for the purpose of getting out of them all that there is in them. Now, there is a discussion as to the relation in which the two classes of studies shall stand at the beginning. Now, the old idea was, that some of the first time in school should be devoted to these arts, and the studies were permitted to fall into the background, or perhaps fall clear out. Now, if I understand some of the pedagogists, their idea is to put the beginner at the real thing, or perhaps I should say to keep him at the real thing, that the arts should be acquired during the studies. Now, the question occurs to me, whether, in the elementary schools, these arts can ever be successfully taught when we are pretending to teach something else? I must say that if the object were to have a pupil advance the greatest distance for the first three months or six months, you had better say nothing about the arts at all. But we put him at the arts, knowing that when we put these gifts into his hands we are giving him an instrument of power that he will be able to use throughout his whole life. [Applause.]
Now, the question of concentration, so-called, is involved in this matter. I want to ask the question, and I would discuss it if I had a quarter of an hour,—I want to ask the question, how far it is possible to do two things in an intense manner at the same time. When I was superintendent of schools, a gentleman picked off the table a so-called physiological reader, and, looking at the title page, said, “For one, I could never teach physiology as a subject and reading as an art at the same time. The physiology is not and it cannot be made a proper material for a school reading book; a proper school reading book cannot be made a good physiology.” Yet I believe in concentration, if it means letting one subject assist and enforce another. I hope none of the brethren will become so enthusiastic as to assume that the whole round of information can be brought under the teaching of one subject. [Applause.]
Dr. E. E. White, Columbus, O.: I have a little hesitation in speaking on this question, where I am only a learner. I am anxious to know what my young friends mean. I hope I shall get the correlation of their ideas in time. [Laughter.]
As it seems to me, correlation, as a distinctive method, assumes to do more than it is possible for a method to accomplish. In my judgment, there is no one method of education, whether it be Herbartian or otherwise. To assume that a human soul is to be exclusively educated by the Herbartian method is a great assumption. I do not believe that we are to supplement and supplant now all that has been known in the education of the young based on the psychology which the defenders of this method are willing to discard. There are many of its methods we are willing to accept, but the Herbartian pedagogy is based on the Herbartian psychology, and if you discard that, you have no system of pedagogy, but you have many elements which you can utilize. Now, we make a mistake when we assume that there is only one method by which the young man in college and the children can be educated. The lady who spoke last night, Miss Arnold, had not such an idea. Now there is a blending in the primary grades which is not possible in the upper grades. That is emphasized completely in what we call the special courses in colleges. That blending may be on mere surface relations which will be discarded as soon as we pass above the primary grades. While we may concede that this is possible in one exercise, it is not possible in higher instruction. Our methods change, so let as not be too sweeping, too confident in our terms. Further, I think that Dr. Harris is entirely right in the position he has taken as to the meaning of coördination or correlation. He uses the term correlation, not only in its scientific, but in its recognized pedagogic sense. Concentration is a different process, and should receive separate consideration. May I add that the views I recently presented under what is called concentration seem to make class instruction impossible. They lead clearly to the one conclusion, that every child should be taught as an individual, by himself, and this means that all class instruction is to be given up. Individual instruction can alone meet the conditions assumed to be essential by concentration, as explained. What does this involve?
There have been many scholars since the Flood,—scholars who have honored learning and widened its domain. How were they produced? Not by any one method, and certainly not by “concentration.” These hosts of scholars cannot be accounted for on any such assumption, for they were produced under very unlike systems of elementary training. The history of school education shows that we are not shut up to a diet of pedagogic hash on the one hand, or one of baked beans on the other. There is clearly no one universal method or process in education by which alone a human soul is to be brought to power.
Dr. Nicholas Murry Butler, Columbia College, New York: This is an interesting and exciting field of battle; it has not been a Bull Run, and it is manifestly not an Appomattox. But let us be fair, and let us discuss the question that is presented by this report. I shall spend no time in eulogizing this report. I do say that such a report, presented at this time, dealing with this specific topic in these words, is little less than a misrepresentation.
Such a document as this, presented at this particular time in the history of our educational development, and supposed to deal with the practical problem of the correlation of studies, is extremely unfortunate. This discussion has made it plain that there is among us a difference of opinion as to what the term “correlation of studies” means. This report interprets it to mean the correlation between the studies of the school curriculum and the intellectual environment of the pupil. Certainly that is not what the term is taken to mean in our current educational literature and in our current educational discussions. It has been claimed on this platform that those who use the phrase “correlation of studies,” in reference to the interdependence of school subjects one with another, are making a strained and improper use of the word. This criticism is not correct. The highest authority that we have, the “Century Dictionary,” gives as a definition of correlation, “the act of bringing into orderly connection or reciprocal relation.” It recites a passage from the great work of Grove, who first made this term familiar in English scientific literature, in illustration of the meaning of correlation. This is precisely the sense in which the word is used by Dr. McMurry and others, and it is precisely the sense in which we expect to find it used in this report. Therefore, I say I am disappointed, and grievously disappointed, that we have in these pages only a passing reference to the real problem of correlation or concentration as it is before American teachers at the present moment.