The History of Education by Ellwood P. CubberleyEducational practice and progress considered as a phase of the development and spread of western civilization (page 14)

in different parts of the world. The continental European two-class school system, the American educational ladder, and the English tendency to combine the two and use the best parts of each, have been reproduced in the different national educational systems which have been created by the various political governments of the world. The continental European idea of a centralized ministry for education, with an appointed head or a cabinet minister in control, has also been widely copied. The Prussian two-class plan has been most influential among the Teutonic and Slavic peoples of Europe, and has also deeply influenced educational development among the Japanese; English ideas have been extensively copied in the English self-governing dominions; and the American plan has been clearly influential in Canada, the Argentine, and in China. The French centralized plan for organization and administration has been widely copied in the state educational organizations of the Latin nations of Europe and South America. In a general way it may be stated that the more democratic the government of a nation has become the greater has been the tendency to break away from the two-class school system, to introduce more of an educational ladder, and to bring in more of the English conception of granting to localities a reasonable amount of local liberty in educational affairs.

SPREAD OF THE STATE CONTROL IDEA AMONG NORTHERN NATIONS. The development of schools under the control of the government, and the extension of state supervision to the existing religious schools, took place in the different cantons of Switzerland, and in Holland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, somewhat contemporaneously with the development described for the five type nations. The work of Pestalozzi and Fellenberg, and of their disciples and followers, had given an early impetus to the establishment of schools and teacher-training in the Swiss cantons, most being done in the German-speaking portions.

In Holland, where the Reformation zeal for schools largely died out in the eighteenth century, the organization of the “Society of Public Good,” in 1784, by a Mennonite clergyman, did much to awaken a new interest in schools for the people and to inaugurate a new movement for educational organization. In 1795 a revolution took place in Holland, a republic was established, and the extension of educational advantages followed. From 1806 to 1815 Holland was under the rule of Napoleon. A school law of 1806 forms the basis of public education in Holland. This asserted the supremacy of the State in education, and provided for state inspection of schools. In 1812 the French scientist, M. Cuvier, reported to Napoleon that there were 4451 schools in little Holland, and that one tenth of the total population was in school. In 1816 a normal school was established at Haarlem. Both the constitutions of 1815 and 1848 provided for state control of education, which has been steadily extended since the beginning of the revival in 1784. Today Holland provides a good system of public instruction for its people.

[Illustration: Fig. 210. THE SCHOOL SYSTEM OF DENMARK]

In Denmark and Sweden the development of state schools has been worked out, much as in England, in cooeperation with the Church, and the Church still assists the State in the administration and supervision of the school systems which were eventually evolved. In each of these countries, too, the continental two-class school system has been somewhat modified by an upward movement of the transfer point between the two and the development of people’s high schools, so as to produce a more democratic type of school and afford better educational opportunities to all classes of the population. The annexed diagram, showing the organization of education in Denmark, is typical of this modification and extension.

Finland should also be classed with these northern nations in matters of educational development. Lutheran ideas as to religion and the need for education took deep hold there at an early date (p. 297). A knowledge of reading and the Catechism was made necessary for confirmation as early as 1686, and democratic ideas also found an early home among this people. In consequence the Finns have for long been a literate people. The law making elementary education a function of the State, however, dates only from 1866, and secondary education was taken over from the ecclesiastical authorities only in 1872.

Similarly, Scotland, another northern nation, began schools as a phase of its Reformation fervor. During the eighteenth century the parish schools, created by the Acts of 1646 (R. 179; p. 335) and 1696, proved insufficient, and voluntary schools were added to supplement them. Together these insured for Scotland a much higher degree of literacy than was the case in England. The final state organization of education in Scotland dates from the Scottish Education Act of 1872.

[Illustration: FIG. 211. THE PROGRESS OF LITERACY IN EUROPE BY THE CLOSE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY]

The map reproduced here, showing the progress of general education by the close of the nineteenth century, as measured by the spread of the ability to read and write, reveals at a glance the high degree of literacy of the northern Teutonic and mixed Teutonic nations. It was among these nations that the Protestant Reformation ideas made the deepest impression; it was in these northern States that the Protestant elementary vernacular school, to teach reading and religion, attained its earliest start; it was there that the school was taken over from the Church and erected into an effective national instrument at an early date; and it was these nations which had been most successful, by the close of the nineteenth century, in extending the elements of education to all and thus producing literate populations.

THE STATE-CONTROL IDEA IN THE SOUTH AND EAST OF EUROPE. As we pass to the south and east of Europe we pass not only to lands which remained loyal to the Roman Church, or are adherents of the Greek Church, and hence did not experience the Reformation fervor with its accompanying zeal for education, but also to lands untouched by the French-Revolution movement and where democratic ideas have only recently begun to make any progress. Greece alone forms an exception to this statement, a constitutional government having been established there in 1843. Removed from the main stream of European civilization, these nations have been influenced less by modern forces; the hold of the Church on the education of the young has there been longest retained; and the taking-over of education by the State has there been longest deferred. In consequence, the schools provided have for long been inadequate both in number and scope, and the progress of literacy and democratic ideas among the people has been slow.

Despite the beginnings made by Maria Theresa (p. 475) in the late eighteenth century, Austria dropped backward to a low place in matters of education during the period of reaction following the Napoleonic wars, and the real beginnings of state elementary-schools there date from the law of 1867. The beginnings in Hungary date from 1868. The beginnings of other state elementary school systems are: Greece, 1823; Portugal, 1844; Spain, 1857; Roumania, 1859; Bulgaria, 1881; and Serbia, 1882. In many of these States, despite early beginnings, but little real progress has even yet been made in developing systems of national education that will provide gratuitous elementary-school training for all and inculcate the national spirit. In many of these States the illiteracy of the people is still high, [1] the people are poor, the nations are economically backward, the military and clerical classes still dominate, and intelligent and interested governments have not as yet been evolved.

In Russia, though Catherine II and her successors made earnest efforts to begin a system of state education, the period following Napoleon was one of extreme repressive reaction. The military class and the clergy of the Greek Church joined hands in a government interested in keeping the people submissive and devout. In consequence, at the time of the emancipation of the serfs, in 1861, it was estimated that not one per cent of the total population of Russia was then under instruction, and the ratio of illiteracy by the close of the nineteenth century was the highest in Europe outside of Spain, Portugal, and the Balkan States.

THE STATE-CONTROL IDEA IN THE ENGLISH SELF-GOVERNING DOMINIONS. The English and French settlers in Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritime Provinces of Canada brought the English and French parochial-school ideas from their home-lands with them, but these home conceptions were materially modified, at an early date, by settlers from the northern States of the American Union. These introduced the New England idea of state control and public responsibility for education. In part copying precedents recently established in the new American States, as an outcome of the struggles there to establish free, tax-supported, and state-controlled schools, both Ontario and Quebec early began the establishment of state systems of education for their people. A superintendent of education was appointed in Ontario in 1844, and the Common School Act of 1846 laid the foundation of the state school system of the Province. In the law of 1871 a system of uniform, free, compulsory, and state-inspected schools was definitely provided for. Quebec, in 1845, made the ecclesiastical parish the unit for school administration; in 1852 appointed government inspectors for the church schools; and in 1859 provided for a Council of Public Instruction to control all schools in the Province. The Dominion Act of 1867 left education, as in the United States, to the several Provinces to control, and state systems of education, though with large liberty in religious instruction, or the incorporation of the religious schools into the state school systems, have since been erected in all the Canadian Provinces. Following American precedents, too, a thoroughly democratic educational ladder has almost everywhere been created, substantially like that shown in the Figure on page 708.

In Australia and New Zealand education has similarly been left to the different States to handle, but a state centralized control has been provided there which is more akin to French practice than to English ideas. In each State, primary education has been made free, compulsory, secular, and state-supported. The laws making such provision in the different States date from 1872, in Victoria; 1875, in Queensland; 1878, in South Australia, West Australia, and New Zealand; and 1880, in New South Wales. Secondary education has not as yet been made free, and many excellent privately endowed or fee-supported secondary schools, after the English plan, are found in the different States.

In the new Union of South Africa all university education has been taken over by the Union, while the existing school systems of the different States are rapidly being taken over and expanded by the state governments, and transformed into constructive instruments of the States.

THE STATE-CONTROL IDEA IN THE SOUTH AMERICAN STATES. As we have seen in Chapter XX, the spirit of nationality awakened by the French Revolution spread to South America, and between 1815 and 1821 all of Spain’s South American colonies revolted, declared their independence from the mother country, and set up constitutional republics. Brazil, in 1822, in a similar manner severed its connections from Portugal. The United States, through the Monroe Doctrine (1823), helped these new States to maintain their independence. For approximately half a century these States, isolated as they were and engaged in a long and difficult struggle to evolve stable forms of government, left such education as was provided to private individuals and societies and to the missionaries and teaching orders of the Roman Church. After the middle of the nineteenth century, the new forces stirring in the modern world began to be felt in South America as well, and, after about 1870, a well-defined movement to establish state school systems began to be in evidence.

The Argentine constitution of 1853 had directed the establishment of primary schools by the State, but nothing of importance was done until after the election of Dr. Sarmiento as President, in 1868. Under his influence an American-type normal school was established, teachers were imported from the United States, and liberal appropriations for education were begun. In 1873 a general system of national aid for primary education was established, and in 1884 a new law laid the basis of the present state school system. Though some earlier beginnings had been made in some of the other South American nations, Argentine is regarded as the leader in education among them. This is largely due to the democratic nature of the government which, in connection with the deep interest in education of President Sarmiento, [2] found educational expression in the creation of an American-type educational ladder, as the accompanying diagram shows. Large emphasis has been placed on scientific and practical studies in the secondary _colegios_. The normal school has been given large importance, and made a parallel and connecting link in the educational ladder between the primary schools and the universities. The Argentine school system, probably due to American influences acting through President Sarmiento, forms an exception to the usual South American state school system, as nearly all the other States have followed the French model and created a European two-class school system.

[Illustration: FIG. 212. THE SCHOOL SYSTEM OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC]

In Chili, the constitution of 1833 declared education to be of supreme importance, and a normal school was established in Santiago, as early as 1840. The basic law for the organization of a state system of primary instruction, however, dates from 1860, and the law organizing a state system of secondary and higher education from 1872.

In Peru, an educational reform movement was inaugurated in 1876, but the war with Chili (1879-84) checked all progress. In 1896 an Educational Commission was appointed to visit the United States and Europe, and the law of 1901 marked the creation of a ministry for education and the real beginnings of a state school system.

The Brazilian constitution of 1824 left education to the several States (twenty and one Federal District), and a permissive law of 1827 allowed the different States to establish schools. It was not until 1854, however, that public schools were organized in the Federal District, and these mark the real beginning of state education in Brazil. Since then the establishment of state schools has gradually extended to the coast States, and inland with the building of railway lines and the opening-up of the interior to outside influences. The basis for state-controlled education has now been laid in all the States, but the attendance at the schools as yet is small. [3]

In some of the other South American States, such as Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela, but little progress in extending state-controlled schools has as yet been made, and the training of the young is still left largely to private effort, the Church, and the religious orders. The illiteracy in all the South American States is still high, in part due to the large native populations, and much remains to be done before education becomes general there. The state-control idea, though, has been definitely established in principle in these countries. With the establishment of stable governments, the building of railroads and steamship lines, and the development of an important international commerce–events which there have characterized the first two decades of the twentieth century–early and important progress in state educational organization and in the extension of educational advantages may be expected.

THE STATE-SCHOOL IDEA IN EASTERN ASIA. In 1854 Admiral Perry effected the treaty of friendship with Japan which virtually opened that nation to the influences of western civilization, and one of the most wonderful transformations of a people recorded in history soon began. In 1867 a new Mikado came to the throne, and in 1868 the small military class, which had ruled the nation for some seven hundred years, gave up their power to the new ruler. A new era in Japan, known as the _Meiji_, dates from this event. In 1871 the centuries-old feudal system was abolished, and all classes in the State were declared equal before the law. This same year the first newspaper in Japan was begun. In 1872 the first educational code for the nation was promulgated by the Mikado. This ordered the general establishment of schools, the compulsory education of the people (R. 334 a), and the equality of all classes in educational matters. Students were now sent abroad, especially to Germany and the United States; foreign teachers were imported; an American normal-school teacher was placed in charge of the newly opened state normal school; the American class method of instruction was introduced; schoolbooks and teaching apparatus were prepared, after American models; middle schools were organized in the towns; higher schools were opened in the cities; and the old Academy of Foreign Languages was evolved (1877) into the University of Tokyo. In 1884 the study of English was introduced into the courses of the public schools. In 1889 a form of constitution was granted to the people, and a parliament established. [4]

[Illustration: FIG. 213. THE JAPANESE TWO-CLASS SCHOOL SYSTEM.]

Adapting the continental European idea of a two-class school system to the peculiar needs of the nation, the Japanese have worked out, during the past half-century, a type of state-controlled school system which has been well adapted to their national needs. [5] Instruction in national morality, based on the ancestral virtues, brotherly affection, and loyalty to the constitution and the ruling class (R. 334 b-c), has been well worked out in their schools. Though the government has remained largely autocratic in form, the Japanese have, however, retained throughout all their educational development the fundamental democratic principle enunciated in the Preamble to the Educational Code of 1872 (R. 334 a), _viz_., that every one without distinction of class or sex shall receive primary education at least, and that the opportunity for higher education shall be open to all children. So completely has the education of the people been conceived of as one of the most important functions of the State that all education has been placed under a centralized state control, with a Cabinet Minister in charge of all administrative matters connected with the education of the nation.

[Illustration: FIG. 214. THE CHINESE EDUCATIONAL LADDER]

Since near the end of the nineteenth century what promises to be an even more wonderful transformation of a people-political, social, scientific, and industrial–has been taking place in China (R. 335). A much more democratic type of national school system than that of the Japanese has been worked out, and this the new (1912) Republic of China is rapidly extending in the provinces, and making education a very important function of the new democratic national life. [6] In the beginning, when displacing the centuries-old Confucian educational system, [7] the Chinese adopted Japanese ideas and organized their schools (1905) somewhat after the Japanese model. Later on, responding to the influence of many American- educated Chinese and to the more democratic impulses of the Chinese people, the new government established by the Republic of 1912 changed the school system at first established so as to make it in type more like the American educational ladder. The new Chinese school system is shown in the drawing on page 721. The university instruction is modern and excellent, and the addition of the cultural and scientific knowledge worked out in western Europe to the intellectual qualities of this capable people can hardly fail to result, in time, in the production of a wonderful modern nation, [8] probably in one of the greatest nations of the mid-twentieth century.

In 1891 the independent Kingdom of Siam, [9] awakened from its age-long isolation by new world influences, sent a prince to Europe to study and report on the state systems of education maintained there. As a result of his report a department of public education was created, which later evolved into a ministry of public instruction, and elementary schools were opened by the State in the thirteen thousand old Buddhist temples. These schools offered a two-year course in Siamese, followed by a five-year course in English, given by imported English teachers. Schools for girls were provided, as well as for boys. Since this beginning, higher schools of law, medicine, agriculture, engineering, and military science have been added, taught largely by imported English and American teachers. In consequence of the new educational organization, and the new influences brought in, the whole life of this little kingdom has been transformed during the past three decades.

GENERAL ACCEPTANCE OF THE STATE-FUNCTION CONCEPTION. The different national school systems, the creation of which has so far been briefly described, are typical and represent a great world movement which characterized the latter half of the nineteenth century. This movement is still under way, and increasing in strength. Other state school organizations might be added to the list, but those so far given are sufficient. Beginning with the nations which were earliest to the front of the onward march of civilization, the movement for the state control of education, itself an expression of new world forces and new national needs, has in a century spread to every continent on the globe. To-day progressive nations everywhere conceive of education for their people as so closely associated with their social, political, and industrial progress, and their national welfare and prosperity (R. 336), that the control of education has come to be regarded as an indispensable function of the State. State constitutions (R. 333) have accordingly required the creation of comprehensive state school systems; legislators have turned to education with a new interest; bulky state school codes have given force to constitutional mandates; national literacy has become a goal; the diffusion of political intelligence by means of the school has naturally followed the extension of the suffrage; while the many new forces and impulses of a modern world have served to make the old religious type of education utterly inadequate, and to call for national action to a degree never conceived of in the days when religious, private, and voluntary educational effort sufficed to meet the needs of the few who felt the call to learn. What a few of the more important of these new nineteenth-century forces have been, which have so fundamentally modified the character and direction of education, it may be worth while to set forth briefly, before proceeding further.

II. NEW MODIFYING FORCES

THE ADVANCE OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE. The first and most important of these nineteenth-century forces, and the one which preceded and conditioned all the others, was the great increase of accurate knowledge as to the forces and laws of the physical world, arising from the application of scientific method to the investigation of the phenomena of the material world (R. 337). During the nineteenth century the intellect of man was stimulated to activity as it had not been before since the days when little Athens was the intellectual center of the world. What the Revival of Learning was to the classical scholars of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the movement for scientific knowledge and its application to human affairs was to the nineteenth. It changed the outlook of man on the problems of life, vastly enlarged the intellectual horizon, and gave a new trend to education and to scholarly effort. What the scholars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had been slowly gathering together as interesting and classified phenomena, the scientific scholars of the nineteenth century organized, interpreted, expanded, and applied. Since the day of Copernicus (p. 386) and Newton (p. 388) a growing appreciation of the permanence and scope of natural law in the universe had been slowly developing, and this the scholars of the nineteenth century fixed as a principle and applied in many new directions. A few of the more important of these new directions may profitably be indicated here.

[Illustration: FIG. 215. BARON JUSTUS VON LIEBIG (1803-73)]

In the domain of the physical sciences very important advances characterized the century. Chemistry, up to the end of the first quarter of the nineteenth century largely a collection of unrelated facts, was transformed by the labors of such men as Dalton (1766-1844), Faraday (1791-1867), and Liebig into a wonderfully well-organized and vastly important science. Liebig carried chemistry over into the study of the processes of digestion and the functioning of the internal organs, and reshaped much of the instruction in medicine. Liebig is also important as having opened, at Giessen, in 1826, the first laboratory instruction in chemistry for students provided in any university in the world. By many subsequent workers chemistry has been so applied to the arts that it is not too much to say that a knowledge of chemistry underlies the whole manufacturing and industrial life of the present, and that the degree of industrial preeminence held by a nation to-day is largely determined by its mastery of chemical processes.

Physics has experienced an equally important development. It, too, at the beginning of the nineteenth century was in the preliminary state of collecting, cooerdinating, and trying to interpret data. In a century physics has, by experimentation and the application of mathematics to its problems, been organized into a number of exceedingly important sciences. In dynamics, heat, light, and particularly in electricity, discoveries and extension of previous knowledge of the most far-reaching significance have been made. What at the beginning of the nineteenth century was a small textbook study of natural philosophy has since been subdivided into the two great sciences of physics and chemistry, and these in turn into numerous well-organized branches. Today these are taught, not from textbooks, but in large and costly laboratories, while manufacturing establishments and governments now find it both necessary and profitable to maintain large scientific institutions for chemical and physical research.

The great triumph of physics, from the point of view of the reign of law in the world of matter, was the experimental establishment (1849) of the fundamental principle of the conservation of energy. This ranks in importance in the world of the physical sciences with the theory of evolution in the biological. The perfection of the spectroscope (1859) revealed the rule of chemical law among the stars, and clinched the theory of evolution as applied to the celestial universe. The atomic theory of matter [10] was an extension of natural laws in another direction. In 1846 occurred the most spectacular proof of the reign of natural law which the nineteenth century witnessed. Two scientists, in different lands, [11] working independently, calculated the orbit of a new planet, Neptune, and when the telescope was turned to the point in the heavens indicated by their calculations the planet was there. It was a tremendous triumph for both mathematics and astronomy. Such work as this meant the firm establishment of scientific accuracy, and the ultimate elimination of the old theories of witchcraft, diabolic action, and superstition as controlling forces in the world of human affairs.

The publication by Charles Lyell (1797-1875) of his _Principles of Geology_, in 1830, marked another important advance in the knowledge of the operations of natural law in the physical world, and likewise a revolution in thinking in regard to the age and past history of the earth. Few books have ever more deeply influenced human thinking. The old theological conception of earthly “catastrophes” [12] was overthrown, and in its place was substituted the idea of a very long and a very orderly evolution of the planet. Geology was created as a new science, and out of this has come, by subsequent evolution, a number of other new sciences [13] which have contributed much to human progress.

[Illustration: FIG. 216. CHARLES DARWIN (1809-82)]

Another of the great books of all time appeared in 1859, when Charles Darwin (1809-1882) published the results of thirty years of careful biological research in his _Origin of Species_. This swept away the old theory of special and individual creation which had been cherished since early antiquity; and substituted in its place the reign of law in the field of biological life. This substitution of the principle of orderly evolution for the old theory of special creation marked another forward step in human thinking, [14] and gave an entirely new direction to the old study of natural history. [15] In the hands of such workers as Wallace (1823-1913), Asa Gray (1810-88), Huxley (1825-94), and Spencer (1820-1903) it now proved a fruitful field.

In 1856 the German Virchow (1821-1902) made his far-reaching contribution of cellular pathology to medical science; between 1859 and 1865 the French scientist Pasteur (1822-95) established the germ theory of fermentation, putrefaction, and disease; about the same time the English surgeon Lister (1827-1914) began to use antiseptics in surgery; and, in 1879, the bacillus of typhoid fever was found. Out of this work the modern sciences of pathology, aseptic surgery, bacteriology, and immunity were created, and the cause and mode of transmission of the great diseases [16] which once decimated armies and cities–plague, cholera, malaria, typhoid, typhus, yellow fever, dysentery–as well as the scourges of tuberculosis, diphtheria, and lockjaw, have been determined. The importance of these discoveries for the future welfare and happiness of mankind can scarcely be overestimated. Sanitary science arose as an application of these discoveries, and since about 1875 a sanitary and hygienic revolution has taken place.

[Illustration: FIG. 217 LOUIS PASTEUR (1822-95)]

The above represent but a few of the more important of the many great scientific advances of the nineteenth century. What the thinkers of the eighteenth century had sowed broadcast through a general interest in science, their successors in the nineteenth reaped as an abundant harvest. The three great master keys of science–the higher mathematics, the principle of the conservation of energy, and the principle of orderly evolution of life according to law–so long unknown to man, had at last been discovered, and, with these in their possession, men have since opened up many of the long-hidden secrets of cause and growth and form and function, both in the heavens and on the earth, and have revealed to a wondering world the prodigious and eternal forces of an orderly universe. The fruitfulness of the Baconian method (p. 390) in the hands of his successors has far surpassed his most sanguine expectations.

THE APPLICATIONS OF SCIENCE AND THE RESULT. All this work, as has been frequently pointed out (R. 338), had of necessity to precede the applications of science to the arts and to the advancement of the comforts and happiness of mankind. The new studies soon caught the attention of younger scholars; special schools for their study began to be established by the middle of the nineteenth century; [17] enthusiastic students of science began forcefully to challenge the centuries-long supremacy of classical studies; funds for scientific research began to be provided; the printing-press disseminated the new ideas; and thousands of applications of science to trade and industry and human welfare began to attract public attention and create a new demand for schools and for a new extension of learning. During the past century the applications of this new learning to matters that intimately touch the life of man have been so numerous and so far-reaching in their effects that they have produced a revolution in life conditions unlike anything the world ever experienced before. In all the days from the time of the Crusades to the end of the Napoleonic Wars the changes in living effected were less, both in scope and importance, than have taken place in the century since Napoleon was sent to Saint Helena.

THIS TRANSFORMATION WE CALL THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION. This, as we pointed out earlier (p. 492), began in England in the late eighteenth century. France did not experience its beginnings until after the Napoleonic Wars, though after about 1820 the transformations there were rapid and far- reaching. In the United States it began about 1810-15, and between 1820 and 1860 the industrial methods of the people of the northeastern quarter of the United States were revolutionized. Between 1860 and 1900 they were revolutionized again. In the German States the transformation began about 1840, though it did not reach its great development until after the establishment of the Empire, in 1871. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, with the development of factories, the building of railroads, and the extension of steamship lines, even the most remote countries have been affected by the new forces. Nations long primitive and secluded have been modernized and industrialized; century-old trades and skills have been destroyed by machinery; the old home and village industries have been replaced by the factory system; cities for manufacturing and trade have everywhere experienced a rapid development; and even on the farm the agricultural methods of bygone days have been replaced by the discoveries of science and the products of invention. Almost nothing is done to-day as it was a century ago, and only in remote places do people live as they used to live. The nature and extent of the change which has been wrought, and some estimate as to its effect upon educational procedure, may perhaps be better comprehended if we first contrast living conditions before and after this industrial transformation.

[Illustration: FIG. 218. MAN POWER BEFORE THE DAYS OF STEAM Foot power a century ago. (From a cut by Anderson, America’s first important engraver)]

LIVING CONDITIONS A CENTURY AGO. A century ago people everywhere lived comparatively simple lives. The steam engine, while beginning to be put to use (p. 493), had not as yet been extensively applied and made the willing and obedient slave of man. The lightning had not as yet been harnessed, and the now omnipresent electric motor was then still unknown. Only in England had manufacturing reached any large proportions, and even there the methods were somewhat primitive. Thousands of processes which we now perform simply and effectively by the use of steam or electric power, a century ago were done slowly and painfully by human labor. The chief sources of power were then man and horse power. The home was a center in which most of the arts and trades were practiced, and in the long winter evenings the old crafts and skills were turned to commercial account. What every family used and wore was largely made in the home, the village, or the neighborhood.

Travel was slow and expensive and something only the well-to-do could afford. To go fifty miles a day by stage-coach, or one hundred by sailing packet on the water, was extraordinarily rapid. “One could not travel faster by sea or by land,” as Huxley remarked, “than at any previous time in the world’s history, and King George could send a message from London to York no faster than King John might have done.” The steam train was not developed until about 1825, and through railway lines not for a quarter- century longer. It took four days by coach from London to York (188 miles); six weeks by sailing vessel from Southampton to Boston; and six months from England to India. People moved about but little. A journey of fifty miles was an event–for many something not experienced in a lifetime. To travel to a foreign land made a man a marked individual. Benjamin Franklin tells us that he was frequently pointed out on the streets of Philadelphia, then the largest city in the United States, as a man who had been to Europe. George Ticknor has left us an interesting record (R. 339) of his difficulties, in finding anything in print in the libraries of the time, about 1815, or any one who could tell him about the work of the German universities, which he, as a result of reading Madame de Stael’s book on Germany, was desirous of attending. [18]

Everywhere it was a time of hard work and simple living. Every youngster had to become useful at an early age. The work of life, in town or on the farm, required hard and continual labor from all. Farm machinery had not been perfected, and hand labor performed all the operations of ploughing and sowing, reaping and harvesting. With the introduction of the factory system, men, women, and children were used to operate machinery, children being apprenticed to the mills at about eight years of age and working ten to twelve hours a day. This soon worked the life out of human beings, and in consequence sickness, wretchedness, juvenile delinquency, ignorance, drunkenness, pauperism, and crime increased greatly as cities grew and the factory system drew thousands from the farms to the towns. When Queen Victoria came to the throne (1837) one person in twelve in England was a pauper, and the lot of the poor was wretched in the extreme. In cities they lived in cellars and basements and hovels. There was practically no sanitation or drainage. Streets and alleys were filthy. Graveyards were commonly located in the heart of a town. A pure water-supply through water-mains was unknown. Pumps and water-carriers supplied nearly all the needs. There was in consequence much sickness, and such diseases as typhoid and malaria ran rampant.

[Illustration: FIG. 219. THRESHING WHEAT A CENTURY AGO (After a woodcut by Jacque, in _L’Illustration_)]

CHANGE IN LIVING CONDITIONS TO-DAY. In a century all has been changed. Steam and electricity and sanitary science have transformed the world; the railway, steamship, telegraph, cable, and printing-press have made the world one. The output of the factory system has transformed living and labor conditions, even to the remote corners of the world; sanitary science and sanitary legislation have changed the primitive conditions of the home and made of it a clean and comfortable modern abode; men and women have been freed from an almost incalculable amount of drudgery and toil, and the human effort and time saved may now be devoted to other types of work or to enjoyment and learning. Thousands who once were needed for menial toil on farm or in shop and home are now freed for employment in satisfying new wants and new pleasures that mankind has come to know, [19] or may devote their time and energies to forms of service that advance the welfare of mankind or minister to the needs of the human spirit.

[Illustration: FIG. 220. A CITY WATER-SUPPLY ABOUT 1830 (After a lithograph by Bellange)]

Labor-saving devices and the applications of scientific work have touched all phases of life and labor of men and women, and under modern methods of transportation go everywhere. The American self-binding reaper is found in the grain-fields of Russia and the Argentine; one may buy cans of kerosene and tinned meats and vegetables almost anywhere in the world today; sewing machines and phonographs add to the comfort and pleasure of the African native and the dweller on the Yukon; “milady” in Siam uses cosmetics manufactured for the devotees of fashion in Paris; the Sultan of Sulu wears an elegant American wrist-watch; the Dahomeny tribesman has a safety razor, and a mirror of French plate; the Persian dandy wears shoes and haberdashery made in the United States; old Chinamen up the Yellow River Valley read their Confucius by the light of an Edison Mazda; the steam train wends its way up from Jaffa to Jerusalem; the gasoline power boat chugs its course up the Nile the Pharaohs sailed; and modern surgical methods and instruments are used in the hospitals of Manila and Singapore, Cairo and Cape Town. A rupee spent for thread at Calcutta starts the spindles going in Manchester; a new calico dress for a Mandalay belle helps the cotton-print mills of Leeds; a new carving set for a Fiji Islander means more labor for some cutlery works in Sheffield; a half- dollar for a new undershirt in Panama means increased work for a cotton mill in New England; a new blanket called for against the winter’s cold of Siberia moves the looms of some Rhode Island town; a dime spent for a box of matches in Alaska means added labor and profit for a match factory in California; a new bath tub in Paraguay spells increased output for a factory at Milan or Turin; and the Christmas wishes of the children in Brazil give work to the toy factories of Nueremberg.

Trains and huge steamers move today along the great trade routes of the modern world, exchanging both the people and their products. The holds of the ships are filled with coal and grain and manufactured implements and commodities of every description, while their steerage space is crowded with modern Marco Polos and Magellans going forth to see the world. The Hindoo walks the streets of Cape Town, London, Sydney, New York, San Francisco, and Valparaiso; the Russian Jew is found in all the Old and New World cities; the Englishman and the American travel everywhere; the Japanese are fringing the Pacific with their laboring classes; toiling Italians and Greeks are found all over the world; peasants from the Balkans gather the prune and orange crops of California; the moujic from the Russian Caucasus tills the wheat-fields of the Dakotas; while the Irish, Scandinavians, and Teutons form the political, farming, and commercial classes in many far-distant lands. In the recent World War Serbs from Montana and Colorado fought side by side with Serbs from Belgrade and Nisch; Greeks from New York and San Francisco helped their brothers from Athens drive the Bulgars back up the Vardar Valley; Italians from New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro helped their kinsmen from the valley of the Po hold back the Hun from the Venetian plain; Chinese from the valleys of the Tong-long and the Yang-tse-Kiang backed up the Allied armies by tilling the fields of France; and Algerian and Senegalese natives helped the French hold back the Teutonic hordes from the ravishment of Paris. So completely has the old isolation been broken down! So completely is the world in flux! So small has the world become!

[Illustration: FIG. 221. THE GREAT TRADE ROUTES OF THE MODERN WORLD Broken lines, on land, indicate gaps soon to be closed. Compare this with the maps on pages 161 and 258, and note the progress in discovery and intercommunication. Ships and trains are constantly passing over these routes, bearing both freight and peoples.]

It was almost a century from the time instruction in Greek was revived in Florence (1396) until Linacre first lectured on Greek at Oxford (c. 1492); six months after the X-ray was perfected in Germany it was in use in the hospitals of San Francisco. In the Middle Ages thousands might have died of starvation in Persia or Egypt, a famous city in Asia Minor might have been destroyed by an earthquake and many people killed, or war might have raged for years in the Orient without a citizen of western Europe knowing of it all his life. Today any important event anywhere within the range of the telegraph or the cable would be reported in tomorrow morning’s paper, and carefully described and illustrated in the magazines at an early date. Man is no longer a citizen of a town or a state, but of a nation and of the world. How intelligently he can use this larger citizenship depends today largely upon the character and the extent of the education he has received.

[Illustration: FIG. 222. AN EXAMPLE OF THE SHIFTING OF OCCUPATIONS. Sawing boards by hand, before the introduction of steam power.]

EFFECT OF THESE CHANGES ON THE LABORING-CLASSES. At first the effect of the introduction of factory-made goods and labor-saving devices was to upset the old established institutions. Trades practiced by the guilds since the Middle Ages were destroyed, because factories could turn out goods faster and cheaper than guild workmen could make them. The age-old apprenticeship system began to break down. Everywhere people were thrown out of employment, and a vast shifting of occupations took place. There was much discontent, and laborers began to unite, where allowed to do so, [20] with a view to improving their economic and political condition by concerted action. The political revolutions of 1848 throughout Europe were in part a manifestation of this discontent, and the right to organize was everywhere demanded and in time generally obtained. Among the planks in their platform were equality of all before the law; the limitation of child and woman labor; better working conditions and wages; the provision of schools for their children at public expense; and the extension of the right of suffrage.

Despite certain unfortunate results following the change from age-old working conditions, the century of transition has seen the laboring man making gains unknown before in history, and the peasant has seen the abolition of serfdom [21] and feudal dues. Homes have gained tremendously. The drudgery and wasteful toil have been greatly mitigated. To-day there is a standard of comfort and sanitation, even for those in the humblest circumstances, beyond all previous conceptions. The poorest workman to-day can enjoy in his home lighting undreamed of in the days of tallow candles; warmth beyond the power of the old smoky soft-coal grate; food of a variety and quality his ancestors never knew; kitchen conveniences and an ease in kitchen work wholly unknown until recently; and sanitary conveniences and conditions beyond the reach of the wealthiest half a century ago. The caste system in industry has been broken down, and men and their children may now choose their occupations freely, [22] and move about at will. Wages have greatly increased, both actually and relatively to the greatly improved standard of living. The work of women and children is easier, and all work for shorter hours. Child labor is fast being eliminated in all progressive nations. In consequence of all these changes for the better, people to-day have a leisure for reading and thinking and personal enjoyment entirely unknown before the middle of the nineteenth century, and governments everywhere have found it both desirable and necessary to provide means for the utilization of this leisure and the gratification of the new desires. Along with these changes has gone the development of the greatest single agent for spreading liberalizing ideas –the modern newspaper–“the most inveterate enemy of absolutism and reaction.” Despite censorships, suppressions, and confiscations, the press has by now established its freedom in all enlightened lands, and the cylinder press, the telegraph, and the cable have become “indispensable adjuncts to the development of that power which every absolutist has come to dread, and with which every prime minister must daily reckon.”

III. EFFECT OF THESE CHANGES ON EDUCATION

GENERAL RESULT OF THESE CHANGES. The general result of the vast and far- reaching changes which we have just described is that the intellectual and political horizon of the working classes has been tremendously broadened; the home has been completely altered; children now have much leisure and do little labor; and the common man at last is rapidly coming into his own. Still more, the common man seems destined to be the dominant force in government in the future. To this end he and his children must be educated, his wife and children cared for, his home protected, and governments must do for him the things which satisfy his needs and advance his welfare. The days of the rule of a small intellectual class and of government in the interests of such a class have largely passed, and the political equality which the Athenian Greeks first in the western world gave to the “citizens” of little Athens, the Industrial Revolution has forced modern and enlightened governments to give to all their people. In consequence, real democracy in government, education, justice, and social welfare is now in process of being attained generally, for the first time in the history of the world.

The effect of all these changes in the mode of living of peoples is written large on the national life. The political and industrial revolutions which have marked the ushering-in of the modern age have been far-reaching in their consequences. The old home life and home industries of an earlier period are passing, or have passed, never to return. Peoples in all advanced nations are rapidly swinging into the stream of a new and vastly more complex world civilization, which brings them into contact and competition with the best brains of all mankind. At the same time a great and ever-increasing specialization of human effort is taking place on all sides, and with new and ever more difficult social, political, educational, industrial, commercial, and human-life problems constantly presenting themselves for solution. The world has become both larger and smaller than it used to be, and even its remote parts are now being linked up, to a degree that a century ago would not have been deemed possible, with the future welfare of the nations which so long bore the brunt of the struggle for the preservation and advancement of civilization.

THESE CHANGES AND THE SCHOOL. It is these vast and far-reaching political, industrial, and social changes which have been the great actuating forces behind the evolution and expansion of the state school systems which we have so far described. The American and French political revolutions, with their new philosophy of political equality and state control of education, clearly inaugurated the movement for taking over the school from the Church and the making of it an important instrument of the State. The extension of the suffrage to new classes gave a clear political motive for the school, and to train young people to read and write and know the constitutional bases of liberty became a political necessity. The industrial revolution which followed, bringing in its train such extensive changes in labor and in the conditions surrounding home and child life, has since completely altered the face of the earlier educational problem. What was simple once has since become complex, and the complexity has increased with time. Once the ability to read and write and cipher distinguished the educated man from the uneducated; to-day the man or woman who knows only these simple arts is an uneducated person, hardly fit to cope with the struggle for existence in a modern world, and certainly not fitted to participate in the complex political and industrial life of which, in all advanced nations, he or she [23] to-day forms a part.

It is the attempt to remould the school and to make of it a more potent instrument of the State for promoting national consciousness (R. 340) and political, social, and industrial welfare that has been behind the many changes and expansions and extensions of education which have marked the past half-century in all the leading world nations, and which underlie the most pressing problems in educational readjustment to-day. These changes and expansions and problems we shall consider more in detail in the chapters which follow. Suffice it here to say that from mere teaching institutions, engaged in imparting a little religious instruction and some knowledge of the tools of learning, the school, in all the leading nations, has to-day been transformed into an institution for advancing national welfare. The leading purpose now is to train for political and social efficiency in the more democratic types of governments being instituted among peoples, and to impart to the young those industrial and social experiences once taught in the home, the trades, and on the farm, but which the coming of the factory system and city life have deprived them otherwise of knowing.

NEW PROBLEMS TO BE MET BY EDUCATION. As participation in the political life of nations has been extended to larger and larger groups of the people, and as the problems of government have become more and more complex, the schools have found it necessary to add instruction in geography, history, government, and national ideals and culture to the earlier instruction. In the less democratic nations which have evolved national school systems, this new instruction has often been utilized to give strength to the type of government and social conditions which the ruling class desired to have perpetuated. This has been the evident purpose in Japan (R. 334), though the government of Imperial Germany formed perhaps the best illustration of such perversion. This was seen and pointed out long ago by Horace Mann (R. 281). There the idea of nationality through education (R. 342) was carried to such an extreme as made the government oppressive to subject peoples and a menace to neighboring States. [24] On the other hand, the French have used their schools for national ends (R. 341) in a manner that has been highly commendable.

As the social life of nations has become broader and more complex, a longer period of guidance has become necessary to prepare the future citizens of the State for intelligent participation in it. As a result, child life everywhere has and is still experiencing a new lengthening of the period of dependence and training, and all national interests now indicate that the period devoted to preparing for life’s work will need to be further lengthened. All recent thinking and legislation, as well as the interests of organized labor and the public welfare, have in recent decades set strongly against child labor. Economically unprofitable under modern industrial conditions, and morally indefensible, it has at last come to be accepted as a principle, by progressive nations, that it is better for children and for society that they remain under some form of instruction until they are at least sixteen years of age. To this end the common primary school has been continued upward, part-time continuation schools of various types have been organized for those who must go to labor earlier, and people’s high schools or middle schools have been added (see Figure 210, p. 713) to give the equivalent of a high-school education to the children of the classes not patronizing the exclusive and limited tuition secondary school.

As large numbers of immigrants from distant lands have entered some of the leading nations, notably England and the United States, and particularly immigrants from less advanced nations where general education is not as yet common, and where far different political, social, judicial, and hygienic conditions prevail, a new duty has been thrust upon the school of giving to such incoming peoples, and their children, some conception of the meaning and method and purpose of the national life of the people they have come among. The national schools have accordingly been compelled to give attention to the needs of these new elements in the population, and to direct their attention less exclusively to satisfying the needs of the well-to-do classes of society. Educational systems have in consequence tended more and more to become democratic in character, and to serve in part as instruments for the assimilation of the stranger within the nation’s gates and for the perpetuation and improvement of the national life.

EDUCATION A CONSTRUCTIVE NATIONAL TOOL. One result of the many political, social, and industrial changes of a century has been to evolve education into the great constructive tool of modern political society. For ages a church and private affair, and of no great importance for more than a few, it has to-day become the prime essential to good government and national progress, and is so recognized by the leading nations of the world. As people are freed from autocratic rule and take upon themselves the functions of government, and as they break loose from their age-old political, social, and industrial moorings and swing out into the current of the stream of modern world-civilization, the need for the education of the masses to enable them to steer safely their ship of state, and take their places among the stable governments of a modern world, becomes painfully evident. In the hands of an uneducated people a democratic form of government is a dangerous instrument, while the proper development of natural resources and the utilization of trade opportunities by backward peoples, without being exploited, is almost impossible. In Russia, Mexico, and the Central American “republics” we see the results of a democracy in the hands of an uneducated people. There, too often, the revolver instead of the ballot box is used to settle public issues, and instead of orderly government under law we find injustice and anarchy. A general system of education that will teach the fundamental principles of constitutional liberty, and apply science to production in agriculture and manufacturing, is almost the only solution for such conditions. By contrast with the surrounding “republics” one finds in Guatemala [25] a country that has used education intelligently as a tool to advance the interests of its people.

[Illustration: FIG. 223. THE PHILIPPINE SCHOOL SYSTEM A teacher-training course is given as one of the vocational courses in the Intermediate School, and the Normal School at Manila represents one of the secondary school courses. The University, besides the combined five-year college course, has eight professional courses of from three to five years in length.]

When the United States freed Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines from Spanish rule, a general system of public education, modeled after the American educational ladder, was created as a safeguard to the liberty just brought to these islands, and to education the United States added courts of justice and bureaus of sanitation as important auxiliary agencies. As a result the peoples of these islands have made a degree of progress in self-government and industry in three decades not made in three centuries under Spanish rule. The good results of the work done in these islands in establishing schools, building roads and bridges, introducing police courts, establishing good sanitary conditions, building hospitals and training nurses, applying science to agriculture, developing tropical medicine, and training the people in the difficult art of self- government, will for long be a monument to the political foresight and intelligent conceptions of government held by the American people. In a similar way the French have opened schools in Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, Senegal, Madagascar, and French Indo-China, as have the English in Egypt, India, Hong Kong, [26] the West Indies, and elsewhere. With the freeing of Palestine from the rule of the Turk, the English at once began the establishment of schools and a national university there, and doubtless they will do the same in time in Persia and Mesopotamia.

Germany, too, before the World War, but with less benevolent purposes than the Americans, the French, or the English, was also busily engaged in extending her influence through education. Her universities were thrown open to students from the whole world, and excellent instruction did they offer. The “Society for the Extension of Germanism in Foreign Countries” rendered an important service. Professors were “exchanged”; the introduction of instruction in the German language into the schools of other nations was promoted; and German schools were founded and encouraged abroad. Especially were _Realschulen_ promoted to teach the wonders of German science, pure and applied. In southern Brazil and the Argentine, and in Roumania, Bulgaria, and Turkey, particular efforts were made to extend German influence and pave the way for German commercial and perhaps political expansion. Primary schools, girls’ schools, and _Real_-schools in numbers were founded and aided abroad, and their progress reported to the colonial minister at home. All through the Near East the German was busily building, through trade and education, a new empire for himself. Had he been content to follow the slower paths of peaceful commercial and intellectual conquest, with his wonderful organization he would have been irresistible. With one gambler’s throw he dashed his future to the ground, and unmasked himself before the world!

EXPANSION OF THE EDUCATIONAL IDEA. In all lands to-day where there is an intelligent government, the education of the people through a system of state-controlled schools is regarded as of the first importance in moulding and shaping the destinies of the nation and promoting the country’s welfare. Beginning with education to impart the ability to read and write and cipher, and as an aid to the political side of government, the education of the masses has been so expanded in scope during the century that today it includes aims, classes, types of schools, and forms of service scarcely dreamed of at the time the State began to take over the school from the Church, with a view to extending elementary educational advantages and promoting literacy and citizenship. What some of the more important of these expansions have been we shall state in a following chapter, but before doing so let us return to another phase of the problem–that of the progress of educational theory–and see what have been the main lines of this progress in the theory as to the educational purpose since the time when Pestalozzi formulated a theory for the secular school.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. What does the emphasis on the People’s High Schools in Denmark indicate as to the political status of the common people there?

2. Explain the educational prominence of Finland, compared with its neighbor Russia.

3. Show the close relation between the character of the school system developed in Japan and the character of its government. In China.

4. Show why the state-function conception of education is destined to be the ruling plan everywhere.

5. Show the close connection between the Industrial Revolution and a somewhat general diffusion of the fundamental principles revealed by the study of science.

6. Show how the Industrial Revolution has created entirely new problems in education, and what some of these are.

7. Show the connection between the Industrial Revolution and political enfranchisement.

8. Enumerate some of the educational problems we now face that we should not have had to deal with had the Industrial Revolution not taken place.

9. Why has the result of these changes been to extend the period of dependence and tutelage of children?

10. Outline an educational solution of the problem of Mexico. Of Russia. Of Persia.

11. Show how Germany found it profitable to establish _Realschulen_ in such distant countries as Turkey, Mesopotamia, and the Argentine.

12. Describe the expansion of the educational idea since the days when Pestalozzi formulated the theory for the secular school.

13. What is the social significance of the development of parallel secondary schools and courses, in all lands?

14. Contrast the American and the European secondary school in purpose. Why should the American be a free school, while those in Europe are tuition schools?

15. Show why the essentially democratic school system maintained in the United States would not be suited to an autocratic form of government.

16. Show that the weight of a priesthood and the force of religious instruction in the schools would be strong supports for monarchical forms of government.

17. Homogeneous monarchical nations look after the training of their teachers much better than does such a cosmopolitan nation as the United States. Why?

SELECTED READINGS

In the accompanying _Book of Readings_ the following illustrative selections are reproduced:

333. Switzerland: Constitutional Provisions as to Education and Religious Freedom.
334. Japan: The Basic Documents of Japanese Education. (a) Preamble to the Education Code of 1872. (b) Imperial Rescript on Moral Education. (c) Instructions as to Lessons on Morals. 335. Ping Wen Kuo: Transformation of China by Education. 336. Mann: Education and National Prosperity. 337. Huxley: The Recent Progress of Science. 338. Anon.: Scientific Knowledge must precede Invention. 339. Ticknor: Illustrating Early Lack of Communication. 340. Monroe: The Struggle for National Realization. 341. Buisson, F.: The French Teacher and the National Spirit. 342. Fr. de Hovre: The German Emphasis on National Ends. 343. Stuntz: Landing of the Pilgrims at Manila.

QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS

1. Compare the Swiss and American Federal organizations, and state just what the Swiss Constitution (333) provides as to education.

2. Suppose you knew nothing about the Japanese, what type of government would you take theirs to be from reading the Imperial Rescript (334b)?

3. In comparing the Chinese transformation and the Renaissance (335), does Mr. Ping propose comparable events?

4. Show that Mr. Mann’s argument (336) is still sound.

5. Does Huxley overdraw (337) our dependence on science?

6. From 338, show why the Middle Ages were so poor in inventions and discoveries.

7. Are there universities anywhere to-day of which we know as little as Ticknor was able to find out (339) a century ago?

8. Show that Monroe’s statements are true that the struggle for national realization (340) has dominated modern history from the fifteenth century on.

9. Compare the conceptions as to the function of education in a State as revealed in the selections as to French (341) and German (342) educational purpose.

10. Show the entirely new character of the event (343) described by Stuntz.

SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES

* Buisson, F. and Farrington, F. E. _French Educational Ideals of To- day_.
Butler, N. M. “Status of Education at the Close of the Century”; in _Proceedings National Education Association_, 1900, pp. 188-96. Davidson, Thos. “Education as World Building”; in _Educational Review_, vol. xx, pp. 325-45. (November, 1900.) Doolittle, Wm. H. _Inventions of the Century_. Foster, M. “A Century’s Progress in Science”; in _Educational Review_, vol. xviii, pp. 313-31. (November, 1899.) * Friedel, V. H. _The German School as a War Nursery_. Gibbons, H. de B. _Economic and Industrial Progress of the Century_.
Hughes, J. L., and Klemm, L. R. _Progress of Education in the Nineteenth Century_.
* Huxley, Thos. “The Progress of Science”; in his _Methods and Results_.
* Kuo, Ping Wen. _The Chinese System of Public Education_. Lewis, R. E. _The Educational Conquest of the Far East_. Macknight, Thos. _Political Progress of the Century_. * Ross, E. A. “The World Wide Advance of Democracy”; in his _Changing America_.
Routledge, R. _A Popular History of Science_. Sandiford, Peter, Editor. _Comparative Education_. * Sedgwick, W. T., and Tyler, H. W. _A Short History of Science_. * Thwing, C. F. _Education in the Far East_. Webster, W. C. _General History of Commerce_. White, A. D. _The-Warfare of Science and Theology_.

CHAPTER XXVIII

NEW CONCEPTIONS OF THE EDUCATIONAL PROCESS

I. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ORGANIZATION OF ELEMENTARY INSTRUCTION

THE BEGINNINGS OF NORMAL-SCHOOL TRAINING. The training of would-be teachers for the work of instruction is an entirely modern proceeding. The first class definitely organized for imparting training to teachers, concerning which we have any record, was a small local training group of teachers of reading and the Catechism, conducted by Father Demia, at Lyons, France, in 1672. The first normal school to be established anywhere was that founded at Rheims, in northern France, in 1685, by Abbe de la Salle (p. 347). He had founded the Order of “The Brothers of the Christian Schools” the preceding year, to provide free religious instruction for children of the working classes in France (R. 182), and he conceived the new idea of creating a special school to train his prospective teachers for the teaching work of his Order. Shortly afterward he established two similar institutions in Paris. Each institution he called a “Seminary for Schoolmasters.” In addition to imparting a general education of the type of the time, and a thorough grounding in religion, his student teachers were trained to teach in practice schools, under the direction of experienced teachers. This was an entirely new idea.

The beginnings elsewhere, as we have previously pointed out were made in German lands, Francke’s _Seminarium Praeceptorum_, established at Halle (p. 419), in 1697, coming next in point of time. In 1738 Johann Julius Hecker (1707-68), one of Francke’s teachers (p. 562), established the first regular Seminary for Teachers in Prussia, and in 1748 he established a private _Lehrerseminar_ in Berlin. In these two institutions he first showed the German people the possibilities of special training for teachers in the secondary school. In 1753 the Berlin institution was adopted as a Royal Teachers’ Seminary (p. 563) by Frederick the Great. After this, and in part due to the enthusiastic support of the Berlin institution by the King, the teacher-training idea for secondary teachers began to find favor among the Germans. We accordingly find something like a dozen Teachers’ Seminaries had been founded in German lands before the close of the eighteenth century. [1] A normal school was established in Denmark, by royal decree, as early as 1789, and five additional schools when the law organizing public instruction in Denmark was enacted, in 1814. In France the beginnings of state action came with the action of the National Convention, which decreed the establishment of the “Superior Normal School for France,” in 1794 (p. 517). This institution, though, was short lived, and the real beginnings of the French higher normal school awaited the reorganizing work of Napoleon, in 1808 (p. 595; R. 283).

The schools just mentioned represent the first institutions in the history of the world organized for the purpose of training teachers to teach. The teachers they trained, though, were intended primarily for the secondary schools, and the training was largely academic in character. Only in Silesia was any effort made, before the nineteenth century, to give training in special institutions to teachers intended for the vernacular schools. There Frederick the Great, in his “Regulations for the Catholic Schools of Silesia” (R. 275, a sec 2) designated six cathedral and monastery schools as model schools, where teachers could “have the opportunity for learning all that is needed by a good teacher.” In another place he defined this as “skill in singing and playing the organ sufficient to perform the services of the Church,” and “the art of instructing the young in the German language” (R. 275, a sec 1). So long as the instruction in the vernacular school consisted chiefly of reading and the Catechism, and of hearing pupils recite what they had memorized, there was of course but little need for any special training for the teachers. It was not until after Pestalozzi had done his work and made his contribution that there was anything worth mentioning to train teachers for.

PESTALOZZI’S CONTRIBUTION. The memorable work done by Pestalozzi in Switzerland, during his quarter-century (1800-25) of effort at Burgdorf and Yverdon, changed the whole face of the preparation of teachers problem. His work was so fundamental that it completely redirected the education of children. Taking the seed-thought of Rousseau that sense- impression was “the only true foundation of human knowledge” (R. 267), he enlarged this to the conception of the mental development of human beings as being organic, and proceeding according to law. His extension of this idea of Rousseau’s led him to declare that education was an individual development, a drawing-out and not a pouring-in; that the basis of all education exists in the nature of man; and that the method of education is to be sought and constructed. [2] These were his great contributions. These ideas fitted in well with the rising tide of individualism which marked the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries, and upon these contributions the modern secular elementary school has been built.

These ideas led Pestalozzi to emphasize sense perception and expression; to formulate the rule that in teaching we must proceed from the concrete to the abstract; and to construct a “faculty psychology” which conceived of education as “a harmonious development” of the different “faculties” of the mind. He also tried, unsuccessfully to be sure, to so organize the teaching process that eventually it could be so “mechanized” that there would be a regular A, B, C, for each type of instruction, which, once learned, would give perfection to a teacher. In his Report of 1800 (R. 267), which forms a very clear statement of his aims, he had said:

I know what I am undertaking; but neither the difficulties in the way, nor my own limitations in skill and insight, shall hinder me from giving my mite for a purpose which Europe needs so much… The most essential point from which I start is this:–Sense-impression of Nature is the only true foundation of human knowledge. All that follows is the result of this sense-impression, and the process of abstraction from it….

Then the problem I have to solve is this:–How to bring the elements of every art into harmony with the very nature of mind, by following the psychological mechanical laws by which mind rises from physical sense-impressions to clear ideas.

Largely out of these ideas and the new direction he gave to instruction the modern normal school for training teachers for the elementary schools arose.

ORAL AND OBJECTIVE TEACHING DEVELOPED. Up to the time of Pestalozzi, and for years after he had done his work, in many lands and places the instruction of children continued to be of the memorization of textbook matter and of the recitation type. The children learned what was down in the book, and recited the answers to the teacher. Many of the early textbooks were constructed on the plan of the older Catechism–that is, on a question and answer plan (R. 351 a). There was nothing for children to do but to memorize such textbook material, or for the teacher but to see that the pupils knew the answers to the questions. It was school-keeping, not teaching, that teachers were engaged in.

The form of instruction worked out by Pestalozzi, based on sense- perception, reasoning, and individual judgment, called for a complete change in classroom procedure. What Pestalozzi tried most of all to do was to get children to use their senses and their minds, to look carefully, to count, to observe forms, to get, by means of their five important senses, clear impressions and ideas as to objects and life in the world about them, and then to think over what they had seen and be able to answer his questions, because they had observed carefully and reasoned clearly. Pestalozzi thus clearly subordinated the printed book to the use of the child’s senses, and the repetition of mere words to clear ideas about things. Pestalozzi thus became one of the first real teachers.

This was an entirely new process, and for the first time in history a real “technique of instruction” was now called for. Dependence on the words of the text could no longer be relied upon. The oral instruction of a class group, using real objects, called for teaching skill. The class must be kept naturally interested and under control; the essential elements to be taught must be kept clearly in the mind of the teacher; the teacher must raise the right kind of questions, in the right order, to carry the class thinking along to the right conclusions; and, since so much of this type of instruction was not down in books, it called for a much more extended knowledge of the subject on the part of the teacher than the old type of school-keeping had done. The teacher must now both know and be able to organize and direct. Class lessons must be thought out in advance, and teacher-preparation in itself meant a great change in teaching procedure. Emancipated from dependence on the words of a text, and able to stand before a class full of a subject and able to question freely, teachers became conscious of a new strength and a professional skill unknown in the days of textbook reciting. Out of such teaching came oral language lessons, drill in speech usage, elementary science instruction, observational geography, mental arithmetic, music, and drawing, to add to the old instruction in the Catechism, reading, writing, and ciphering, and all these new subjects, taught according to Pestalozzian ideas as to purpose, called for an individual technique of instruction.

[Illustration: FIG. 224. THE FIRST MODERN NORMAL SCHOOL The old castle at Yverdon, where Pestalozzi’s Institute was conducted and his greatest success achieved.]

THE NORMAL SCHOOL FINDS ITS PLACE. These new ideas of Pestalozzi proved so important that during the first five or six decades of the nineteenth century the elementary school was made over. The new conception of the child as a slowly developing personality, demanding subject-matter and method suited to his stage of development, and the new conception of teaching as that of directing mental development instead of hearing recitations and “keeping school,” now replaced the earlier knowledge- conception of school work. Where before the ability to organize and discipline a school had constituted the chief art of instruction, now the ability to teach scientifically took its place as the prime professional requisite. A “science and art” of teaching now arose; methodology soon became a great subject; the new subject of pedagogy began to take form and secure recognition; and psychology became the guiding science of the school.

As these changes took place, the normal school began to come into favor in the leading countries of Europe and in the United States, and in time has established itself everywhere as an important educational institution. Pestalozzi had himself conducted the first really modern teacher-training school, and his work was soon copied in a number of the Swiss cantons. Other cantons, on the contrary, for a time would have nothing to do with the new idea.

1. _The German States._ The first nation, though, to take up the teacher- training idea and establish it as an important part of its state school system was Prussia. Beginning in 1809 with the work of Zeller (p. 569), by 1840 there were thirty-eight Teachers’ Seminaries, as the normal schools in German lands have been called, in Prussia alone. The idea was also quickly taken up by the other German States, and from the first decade of the nineteenth century on no nation has done more with the normal school, or used it, ends desired considered, to better advantage than have the Germans. One of the features of the Prussian schools which most impressed Professor Bache, when he visited the schools of the German States in 1838, was the excellence of the Seminaries for Teachers (R. 344), and these he described (R. 345) in some detail in his Report. Horace Mann, similarly, on his visit to Europe, in 1843, was impressed with the thoroughness of the training given prospective teachers in the Teachers’ Seminaries of the German States (R. 278). University pedagogical seminars were also established early (c. 1810) [3] in the universities, for the training of secondary teachers, and this training was continued with increasing thoroughness up to 1914. Every teacher in the German States, elementary or secondary, before that date, was a carefully-trained teacher. This was a feature of the German state school systems of the pre-War period of which no other nation could boast.

2. _France._ After the German States, France probably comes next as the nation in which the normal school has been most used for training teachers. The Superior Normal School had been recreated in 1808 (R. 283), and after the downfall of Napoleon the creation of normal schools for elementary-school teachers was begun. Twelve had been established by 1830, and between 1830 and 1833 thirty additional schools for training these teachers were begun (R. 285). These rendered a service for France (R. 346) quite similar to that rendered by the Teachers’ Seminaries in German lands. During the period of reaction, from 1848 to 1870, the normal school did not prosper in France, but since 1870 a normal school to train elementary teachers has been established for men and one for women in each of the eighty-seven departments into which France, for administrative purposes, has been divided. Satisfactory provision has also been made for the training of teachers for the secondary schools.

3. _The United States._ The United States has also been prominent, especially since about 1870, in the development of normal schools for the training of elementary teachers. The Lancastrian schools had trained monitors for their work, but the first teacher-training school in the United States to give training to individual teachers was opened privately, [4] in 1823, and the second in a similar manner, [5] in 1827. These were almost entirely academic institutions, being in the nature of tuition high schools, with a little practice teaching and some lectures on the “Art of Teaching” added in the last year of the course. In 1826 Governor Clinton recommended to the legislature of New York the establishment by the State of “a seminary for the education of teachers in the monitorial system of instruction.” Nothing coming of this, in 1827 he recommended the creation of “a central school in each county for the education of teachers” (R. 349). That year (1827) the New York legislature appropriated money to aid the academies “to promote the education of teachers”–the first state aid in the United States for teacher-training.

The publication of an English edition of Cousin’s _Report_ (p. 597; R. 284) in New York, in 1835; Calvin E. Stowe’s _Report on Elementary Education in Europe_, [6] in 1837; and Alexander D. Bache’s _Report on Education in Europe_ (Rs. 344, 345), in 1838, with their strong commendations of the German teacher-training system, awakened new interest in the United States, in the matter of teacher-training. Finally, in 1839, the legislature of Massachusetts duplicated a gift of $10,000, and placed the money in the hands of the newly created State Board of Education (p. 689) to be used “in qualifying teachers for the common schools of Massachusetts” (R. 350 a). After careful consideration it was decided to create special state institutions, after the German and French plans, in which to give the desired training, and the French term of Normal School was adopted and has since become general in the United States.

[Illustration: TEACHER-TRAINING IN THE UNITED STATES BY 1860. A few private training-schools also existed, though less than half a dozen in all.]

On July 3, 1839, the first state normal school in the United States opened in the town hall at Lexington, Massachusetts, with one teacher and three students. Later that same year a second state normal school was opened at Barre, and early the next year a third at Bridgewater, both in Massachusetts. For these the State Board of Education adopted a statement as to entrance requirements and a course of instruction (R. 350 b) which shows well the academic character of these early teaching institutions. Their success was largely due to the enthusiastic support given the new idea by Horace Mann. In an address at the dedication of the first building erected in America for normal-school purposes, in 1846, he expressed his deep belief as to the fundamental importance of such institutions (R. 350 c). By 1860 eleven state normal schools had been established in eight of the States of the American Union, and six private schools were also rendering similar services. Closely related was the Teachers’ Institute, first definitely organized by Henry Barnard in Connecticut, in 1839, to offer four- to six-weeks summer courses for teachers in service, and these had been organized in fifteen of the American States by 1860. Since 1870 the establishment of state normal schools has been rapid in the United States, two hundred having been established by 1910, and many since. The United States, though, is as yet far from having a trained body of teachers for its elementary schools. For the high schools, it is only since about 1890 that the professional training of teachers for such service has really been begun.

4. _England._ In England the beginnings of teacher-training came with the introduction of monitorial instruction, both the Bell and the Lancaster Societies (p. 625) finding it necessary to train pupils for positions as monitors, and to designate certain schools as model and training schools. In 1833, it will be remembered (p. 638), Parliament made its first grant of money in aid of education. Up to 1840 this was distributed through the two National Societies, and in 1839 a portion of this aid was definitely set aside to enable these Societies to establish model schools (R. 347). From this beginning, the model training-schools for the different religious Societies were developed. In these model schools prospective teachers were educated, being trained in religious instruction and in the art of teaching. In 1836, with the founding of the “Home and Colonial Infant Society,” a Pestalozzian Training College was founded by it.

In a further effort to secure trained teachers the government, in 1846, adopted a plan then in use in Holland, and instituted what became known as the “pupil-teacher system” (R. 348). This was an improvement on the waning monitorial training system previously in use. Under this, a favorite old English method, used somewhat for the same purpose a century earlier (R. 243), was adapted to meet the new need.’ Under it promising pupils were apprenticed to a head teacher for five years (usually from thirteen to eighteen), he agreeing to give them instruction in both secondary-school subjects and in the art of teaching in return for their help in the schoolroom. Beginning in 1846, there were, by 1848, 200 pupil teachers; by 1861, 13,871; and by 1870, 14,612. This system formed the great dependence of England before the days of national education. In 1874 the pupil- teacher-center system was begun, and between 1878 and 1896 the age for entering as a pupil-teacher was raised from thirteen to sixteen, and the years of apprenticeship reduced from five to two. In most cases now the academic preparation continues to seventeen or eighteen, and is followed by one year of practice teaching in an elementary school, under supervision. After that the teacher may, or may not, enter what is there known as a Training-College. [7] So far the training of teachers has not made such headway in England and Wales as has been the case in the German States, France, the United States, or Scotland, but important progress may be expected in the near future as an outcome of new educational impulses arising as a result of the World War.

SPREAD OF THE NORMAL-SCHOOL IDEA. The movement for the creation of normal schools to train teachers for the elementary schools has in time spread to many nations. As nation after nation has awakened to the desirability of establishing a system of modern-type state schools, a normal school to train leaders has often been among the first of the institutions created. The normal school, in consequence, is found to-day in all the continental European States; in all the English self-governing dominions; in nearly all the South American States; and in China, [8] Japan, Siam, the Philippines, Cuba, Algiers, India, and other less important nations. In all these there is an attempt, often reaching as yet to but a small percentage of the teachers, to extend to them some of that training in the theory and art of instruction which has for long been so important a feature of the education of the elementary teacher in the German States, France, and the United States. Since about 1890 other nations have also begun to provide, as the German States and France have done for so long, some form of professional training for the teachers intended for their secondary schools [9] as well.

PSYCHOLOGY BECOMES THE MASTER SCIENCE. Everywhere the establishment of normal schools has meant the acceptance of the newer conceptions as to child development and the nature of the educational process. These are that the child is a slowly developing personality, needing careful study, and demanding subject-matter and method suited to his different stages of development. The new conception of teaching as that of directing and guiding the education of a child, instead of hearing recitations and “keeping school,” in time replaced the earlier knowledge-conception of school work. Psychology accordingly became the guiding science of the school, and the imparting to prospective teachers proper ideas as to psychological procedure, and the proper methodology of instruction in each of the different elementary-school subjects, became the great work of the normal school. Teachers thus trained carried into the schools a new conception as to the nature of childhood; a new and a minute methodology of instruction; and a new enthusiasm for teaching;–all of which were important additions to school work.

A new methodology was soon worked out for all the subjects of instruction, both old and new. The centuries-old alphabet method of teaching reading was superseded by the word and sound methods; the new oral language instruction was raised to a position of first importance in developing pupil-thinking; spelling, word-analysis, and sentence-analysis were given much emphasis in the work of the school; the Pestalozzian mental arithmetic came as an important addition to the old ciphering of sums; the old writing from copies was changed into a drill subject, requiring careful teaching for its mastery; the “back to nature” ideas of Rousseau and Pestalozzi proved specially fruitful in the new study of geography, which called for observation out of doors, the study of type forms, and the substitution of the physical and human aspects of geography for the older political and statistical; object lessons on natural objects, and later science and nature study, were used to introduce children to a knowledge of nature and to train them in thinking and observation; while the new subjects of music and drawing came in, each with an elaborate technique of instruction.

By 1875 the normal school in all lands was finding plenty to do, and teaching, by the new methods and according to the new psychological procedure, seemed to many one of the most wonderful and most important occupations in the world. How great a change in the scope, as well as in the nature of elementary-school instruction had been effected in a century, the above diagram of American elementary-school development will reveal. History and literature, it will be noticed, had also come in as additional new subjects, but these were relatively unimportant in either the elementary school or the normal school until after the coming of Herbartian ideas, to which we shall refer a little further on.

[Illustration: FIG. 226. EVOLUTION OF THE ELEMENTARY-SCHOOL CURRICULUM AND OF METHODS OF TEACHING]

Accompanying the organization of professional instruction for teachers, another important change in the nature of the elementary school was effected.

THE GRADING OF SCHOOLROOM INSTRUCTION. For some time after elementary schools began it was common to teach all the children of the different ages together in one room, or at most in two rooms. In the latter case the subjects of instruction were divided between the teachers, rather than the children. [10] Many of the pictures of early elementary schools show such mixed-type schools. In these the children were advanced individually and by subjects as their progress warranted, [11] until they had progressed as far as the instruction went or the teacher could teach (R. 352). From this point on the division of the elementary school into classes and a graded organization has proceeded by certain rather well-defined steps.

The first step (Rs. 353, 354) was the division of the school into two schools, one more advanced than the other, such as lower and higher, or primary and grammar. Another division was introduced when the Infant School was added, beneath. The next step was the division of each school into classes. This began by the employment of assistant teachers, in England and America known as “ushers,” to help the “master,” and the provision of small recitation rooms, off the main large schoolroom, to which the usher could take his class to hear recitations. The third and final step came with the erection of a new type of school building, with smaller and individual classrooms, or the subdivision of the larger schoolrooms. It was then possible to assign a teacher to each classroom, sort and grade the pupils by ages and advancement, outline the instruction by years, and the modern graded elementary school was at hand.

The transition to the graded elementary school came easily and naturally. For half a century the course of instruction in the evolving elementary state school had been in process of expansion. Pestalozzi paved the way for its creation by changing the purpose and direction, and greatly enlarging (p. 543) the field of instruction of the vernacular school. After him other new subjects of study were added (see diagram, Figure 226), new and better and longer textbooks were prepared (R. 351), and the school term was gradually lengthened. The way in time became clear, earliest in the German lands and in a few American cities, but by about 1850 in most leading nations, for that simple reorganization of school work which would divide the school into a number of classes, or forms, or grades, and give one to each teacher to handle. When this point had been reached, which came about 1850 to 1860 in most nations, but earlier in a few, the modern type of town or city graded elementary school was at hand. Teaching had by this time become an organized and a psychological process; graded courses of study began to appear; professional school superintendents began to be given the direction and supervision of instruction; and the modern science of school organization and administration began to take shape. From this point on the further development of the graded elementary public school has come through the addition of new materials of instruction, and by changing the direction of the school to adapt it better to meeting the new needs of society brought about by the scientific, industrial, social, and political revolutions which we, in previous chapters, have described. A few of the more important of these additions and changes in direction we shall now briefly describe.

[Illustration: FIG. 227. AN “USHER” AND HIS CLASS. The usher, or assistant teacher, is here shown with a class in one of the small recitation-rooms, off the large schoolroom.]

II. NEW IDEAS FROM HERBARTIAN SOURCES

THE WORK OF HERBART. Taking up the problem as Pestalozzi left it, a German by the name of Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841) carried it forward by organizing a truer psychology for the whole educational process, by erecting a new social aim for instruction, by formulating new steps in method, and by showing the place and the importance of properly organized instruction in history and literature in the education of the child. Though the two men were entirely different in type, and worked along entirely different lines, the connection between Herbart and Pestalozzi was, nevertheless, close. [12]

The two men, however, approached the educational problem from entirely different angles. Pestalozzi gave nearly all his long life to teaching and human service, while Herbart taught only as a traveling private tutor for three years, and later a class of twenty children in his university practice school. Pestalozzi was a social reformer, a visionary, and an impractical enthusiast, but was possessed of a remarkable intuitive insight into child nature. Herbart, on the other hand, was a well-trained scholarly thinker, who spent the most of his life in the peaceful occupation of a professor of philosophy in a German university. [13] It was while at Koenigsberg, between 1810 and 1832, and as an appendix to his work as professor of philosophy, that he organized a small practice school, conducted a Pedagogical Seminar, and worked out his educational theory and method. His work was a careful, scholarly attempt at the organization of education as a science, carried out amid the peace and quiet which a university atmosphere almost alone affords. He addressed himself chiefly to three things: (1) the aim, (2) the content, and (3) the method of instruction.

THE AIM AND THE CONTENT OF EDUCATION. Locke had set up as the aim of education the ideal of a physically sound gentleman. Rousseau had declared his aim to be to prepare his boy for life by developing naturally his inborn capacities. Pestalozzi had sought to regenerate society by means of education, and to prepare children for society by a “harmonious training” of their “faculties.” Herbart rejected alike the conventional-social education of Locke, the natural and unsocial education of Rousseau, and the “faculty-psychology” conception of education of Pestalozzi. Instead he conceived of the mind as a unity, instead of being divided into “faculties,” and the aim of education as broadly social rather than personal. The purpose of education, he said, was to prepare men to live properly in organized society, and hence the chief aim in education was not conventional fitness, natural development, mere knowledge, nor personal mental power, but personal character and social morality. This being the case, the educator should analyze the interests and occupations and social responsibilities of men as they are grouped in organized society, and, from such analyses, deduce the means and the method of instruction. Man’s interests, he said, come from two main sources–his contact with the things in his environment (real things, sense- impressions), and from his relations with human beings (social intercourse). His social responsibilities and duties are determined by the nature of the social organization of which he forms a part.

Pestalozzi had provided fairly well for the first group of contacts, through his instruction in objects, home geography, numbers, and geometric form. For the second group of contacts Pestalozzi had developed only oral language, and to this Herbart now added the two important studies of literature and history, and history with the emphasis on the social rather than the political side. Two new elementary-school subjects were thus developed, each important in revealing to man his place in the social whole. History in particular Herbart conceived to be a study of the first importance for revealing proper human relationships, and leading men to social and national “good-will.”

The chief purpose of education Herbart held to be to develop personal character and to prepare for social usefulness (R. 355). These virtues, he held, proceeded from enough of the right kind of knowledge, properly interpreted to the pupil so that clear ideas as to relationships might be formed. To impart this knowledge interest must be awakened, and to arouse interest in the many kinds of knowledge needed, a “many-sided” development must take place. From full knowledge, and with proper instruction by the teacher, clear ideas or concepts might be formed, and clear ideas ought to lead to right action, and right action to personal character–the aim of all instruction. Herbart was the first writer on education to place the great emphasis on proper instruction, and to exalt teaching and proper teaching-procedure instead of mere knowledge or intellectual discipline. He thus conceived of the educational process as a science in itself, having a definite content and method, and worthy of special study by those who desire to teach.

HERBARTIAN METHOD. With these ideas as to the aim and content of instruction, Herbart worked out a theory of the instructional process and a method of instruction (R. 356). Interest he held to be of first importance as a prerequisite to good instruction. If given spontaneously, well and good; but, if necessary, forced interest must be resorted to. Skill in instruction is in part to be determined by the ability of the teacher to secure interest without resorting to force on the one hand or sugar-coating of the subject on the other. Taking Pestalozzi’s idea that the purpose of the teacher was to give pupils new experiences through contacts with real things, without assuming that the pupils already had such, Herbart elaborated the process by which new knowledge is assimilated in terms of what one already knows, and from his elaboration of this principle the doctrine of apperception–that is, the apperceiving or comprehending of new knowledge in terms of the old–has been fixed as an important principle in educational psychology. Good instruction, then, involves first putting the child into a proper frame of mind to apperceive the new knowledge, and hence this becomes a corner-stone of all good teaching method.

Herbart did not always rely on such methods, holding that the “committing to memory” of certain necessary facts often was necessary, but he held that the mere memorizing of isolated facts, which had characterized school instruction for ages, had little value for either educational or moral ends. The teaching of mere facts often was very necessary, but such instruction called for a methodical organization of the facts by the teacher, so as to make their learning contribute to some definite purpose. This called for a purpose in instruction; the organization of the facts necessary to be taught so as to select the most useful ones; the connection of these so as to establish the principle which was the purpose of the instruction; and training in systematic thinking by applying the principle to new problems of the type being studied. The carrying-out of such ideas meant the careful organization of the teaching process and teaching method, to secure certain predetermined ends in child development, instead of mere miscellaneous memorizing and school-keeping.

THE HERBARTIAN MOVEMENT IN GERMANY. Herbart died in 1841, without having awakened any general interest in his ideas, and they remained virtually unnoticed until 1865. In that year a professor at Leipzig, Tuiskon Ziller (1817-1883), published a book setting forth Herbart’s idea of instruction as a moral force. This attracted much attention, and led to the formation (1868) of a scientific society for the study of Herbart’s ideas. Ziller and his followers now elaborated Herbart’s ideas, advanced the theory of culture-epochs in child development, the theory of concentration in studies, and elaborated the four steps in the process of instruction, as described by Herbart, into the five formal steps of the modern Herbartian school.

In 1874 a pedagogical seminary and practice school was organized at the University of Jena, and in 1885 this came under the direction of Professor William Rein, a pupil of Ziller’s, who developed the practice school according to the ideas of Ziller. A detailed course of study for this school, filling two large volumes, was worked out, and the practice lessons given were thoroughly planned beforehand and the methods employed were subjected to a searching analysis after the lesson had been given.

HERBARTIAN IDEAS IN THE UNITED STATES. For a time, under the inspiration of Ziller and Rein, Jena became an educational center to which students went from many lands. From the work at Jena Herbartian ideas have spread which have modified elementary educational procedure generally. In particular did the work at Jena make a deep impression in the United States. Between 1885 and 1890 a number of Americans studied at Jena and, returning, brought back to the United States this Ziller-Rein-Jena brand of Herbartian ideas and practices. [14] From the first the new ideas met with enthusiastic approval.

[Illustration: PLATE 18. TWO LEADERS IN THE REORGANIZATION OF EDUCATIONAL THEORY

JOHANN FRIEDRICH HERBART (1776-1841)
Organizer of the Psychology of Instruction

FRIEDRICH WILHELM TROEBEL (1782-1852) Founder of the Kindergarten]

New methods of instruction in history and literature, and a new psychology, were now added to the normal-school professional instruction. Though this psychology has since been outgrown (R. 357), it has been very useful in shaping pedagogical thought. New courses of study for the training-schools were now worked out in which the elementary-school subjects were divided into drill subjects, content subjects, and motor- activity subjects. [15]

Apperception, interest, correlation, social purpose, moral education, citizenship training, and recitation methods became new terms to conjure with. From the normal schools these ideas spread rapidly to the better city school systems of the time, and soon found their way into courses of study everywhere. Practice schools and the model lessons in dozens of normal schools were remodeled after the pattern of those at Jena, and for a decade Herbartian ideas and the new child study vied with one another for the place of first importance in educational thinking. The Herbartian wave of the nineties resembled the Pestalozzian enthusiasm of the sixties. Each for a time furnished the new ideas in education, each introduced elements of importance into the elementary-school instruction, each deeply influenced the training of teachers in normal schools by giving a new turn to the instruction there, and each gradually settled down into its proper place in educational practice and history.

THE HERBARTIAN CONTRIBUTION. To the Herbartians we are indebted in particular for important new conceptions as to the teaching of history and literature, which have modified all our subsequent procedure; for the introduction of history teaching in some form into all the elementary- school grades; for the emphasis on a new social point of view in the teaching of history and geography; for the new emphasis on the moral aim in instruction; for a new and a truer educational psychology; and for a better organization of the technique of classroom instruction. In particular Herbart gave emphasis to that part of educational development which comes from without–environment acting upon the child–as contrasted with the emphasis Pestalozzi had placed on mental development from within and according to organic law. With the introduction of normal child activities, which came from another source about this same time, the elementary-school curriculum as we now have it was practically complete, and the elementary school of 1850 was completely made over to form the elementary school of the beginning of the twentieth century.

III. THE KINDERGARTEN, PLAY, AND MANUAL ACTIVITIES

To another German, Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852), we are indebted, directly or indirectly, for three other additions to elementary education –the kindergarten, the play idea, and handwork activities.

ORIGIN OF THE KINDERGARTEN. Of German parentage, the son of a rural clergyman, early estranged from his parents, retiring and introspective by nature, having led a most unhappy childhood, and apprenticed to a forester without his wishes being consulted, at twenty-three Froebel decided to become a schoolteacher and visited Pestalozzi in Switzerland. Two years later he became the tutor of three boys, and then spent the years 1808-10 as a student and teacher in Pestalozzi’s Institute at Yverdon. During his years there Froebel was deeply impressed with the great value of music and play in the education of children, and of all that he carried away from Pestalozzi’s institution these ideas were most persistent. After serving in a variety of occupations–student, soldier against Napoleon, and curator in a museum of mineralogy–he finally opened a little private school, in 1816, which he conducted for a decade along Pestalozzian lines. In this the play idea, music, and the self-activity of the pupils were uppermost. The school was a failure, financially, but while conducting it Froebel thought out and published (1826) his most important pedagogical work–_The Education of Man_.

Gradually Froebel became convinced that the most needed reform in education concerned the early years of childhood. His own youth had been most unhappy, and to this phase of education he now addressed himself. After a period as a teacher in Switzerland he returned to Germany and opened a school for little children in which plays, games, songs, and occupations involving self-activity were the dominating characteristics, and in 1840 he hit upon the name _Kindergarten_ for it. In 1843 his _Mutter- und Kose-Lieder_, a book of fifty songs and games, was published. This has been translated into almost all languages.

SPREAD OF THE KINDERGARTEN IDEA. After a series of unsuccessful efforts to bring his new idea to the attention of educators, Froebel, himself rather a feminine type, became discouraged and resolved to address himself henceforth to women, as they seemed much more capable of understanding him, and to the training of teachers in the new ideas. Froebel was fortunate in securing as one of his most ardent disciples, just before his death, the Baroness Bertha von Marenholtz Bulow-Wendhausen (1810-93), who did more than any other person to make his work known. Meeting, in 1849, the man mentioned to her as “an old fool,” she understood him, and spent the remainder of her life in bringing to the attention of the world the work of this unworldly man who did not know how to make it known for himself. In 1851 the Prussian Government, fearing some revolutionary designs in the new idea, and acting in a manner thoroughly characteristic of the political reaction which by that time had taken hold of all German official life, forbade kindergartens in Prussia. The Baroness then went to London and lectured there on Froebel’s ideas, organizing kindergartens in the English “ragged schools.” Here, by contrast, she met with a cordial reception. She later expounded Froebelian ideas in Paris, Italy, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, and (after 1860, when the prohibition was removed) in Germany. In 1870 she founded a kindergarten training-college in Dresden. Many of her writings have been translated into English, and published in the United States.

Considering the importance of this work, and the time which has since elapsed, the kindergarten idea has made relatively small progress on the continent of Europe. Its spirit does not harmonize with autocratic government. In Germany and the old Austro-Hungary it had made but little progress up to 1914. Its greatest progress in Europe, perhaps, has been in democratic Switzerland. [16] In England and France, the two great leaders in democratic government, the Infant-School development, which came earlier, has prevented any marked growth of the kindergarten. In England, though, the Infant School has recently been entirely transformed by the introduction into it of the kindergarten spirit. [17] In France, infant education has taken a somewhat different direction. [18]

In the United States the kindergarten idea has met with a most cordial reception. In no country in the world has the spirit of the kindergarten been so caught and applied to school work, and probably nowhere has the original kindergarten idea been so expanded and improved. [19] The first kindergarten in the United States was a German kindergarten, established at Watertown, Wisconsin, in 1855, by Mrs. Carl Schurz, a pupil of Froebel. During the next fifteen years some ten other kindergartens were organized in German-speaking communities. The first English-speaking kindergarten was opened privately in Boston, in 1860, by Miss Elizabeth Peabody. In 1868 a private training-college for kindergartners was opened in Boston, largely through Miss Peabody’s influence, by Madame Matilde Kriege and her daughter, who had recently arrived from Germany. In 1872 Miss Marie Boelte opened a similar teacher-training school in New York City, and in 1873 her pupil, Miss Susan Blow, accepted the invitation of Superintendent William T. Harris, of St. Louis, to go there and open the first public-school kindergarten in the United States. [20]

To-day the kindergarten is found in some form in nearly all countries in the world, having been carried to all continents by missionaries, educational enthusiasts, and interested governments. [21] Japan early adopted the idea, and China is now beginning to do so.

THE KINDERGARTEN IDEA. The dominant idea in the kindergarten is natural but directed self-activity, focused upon educational, social, and moral ends. Froebel believed in the continuity of a child’s life from infancy onward, and that self-activity, determined by the child’s interests and desires and intelligently directed, was essential to the unfolding of the child’s inborn capacities. He saw, more clearly than any one before him had done, the unutilized wealth of the child’s world; that the child’s chief characteristic is self-activity; the desirability of the child finding himself through play; and that the work of the school during these early years was to supplement the family by drawing out the child and awakening the ideal side of his nature. To these ends doing, self activity, and expression became fundamental to the kindergarten, and movement, gesture, directed play, song, color, the story, and human activities a part of kindergarten technique. Nature study and school gardening were given a prominent place, and motor-activity much called into play. Advancing far beyond Pestalozzi’s principle of sense- impressions, Froebel insisted on motor-activity and learning by doing (R. 358).

Froebel, as well as Herbart, also saw the social importance of education, and that man must realize himself not independently amid nature, as Rousseau had said, but as a social animal in cooeperation with his fellowmen. Hence he made his schoolroom a miniature of society, a place where courtesy and helpfulness and social cooeperation were prominent features. This social and at times reverent atmosphere of the kindergarten has always been a marked characteristic of its work. To bring out social ideas many dramatic games, such as shoemaker, carpenter, smith, and farmer, were devised and set to music. The “story” by the teacher was made prominent, and this was retold in language, acted, sung, and often worked out constructively in clay, blocks, or paper. Other games to develop skill were worked out, and use was made of sand, clay, paper, cardboard, and color. The “gifts” and “occupations” which Froebel devised were intended to develop constructive and aesthetic power, and to provide for connection and development they were arranged into an organized series of playthings. Individual development as its aim, motor-expression as its method, and social cooeperation as its means were the characteristic ideas of this new school for little children (R. 358).

THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE KINDERGARTEN. Wholly aside from the specific training given children during the year, year and a half, or two years they spend in this type of school, the addition of the kindergarten to elementary-school work has been a force of very large significance and usefulness. The idea that the child is primarily an active and not a learning animal has been given new emphasis, and that education comes chiefly by doing has been given new force. The idea that a child’s chief business is play has been a new conception of large educational value. The elimination of book education and harsh discipline in the kindergarten has been an idea that has slowly but gradually been extended upward into the lower grades of the elementary school.

To-day, largely as a result of the spreading of the kindergarten spirit, the world is coming to recognize play and games at something like their real social, moral, and educational values, wholly aside from their benefits as concern physical welfare, and in many places directed play is being scheduled as a regular subject in school programs. Music, too, has attained new emphasis since the coming of the kindergarten, and methods of teaching music more in harmony with kindergarten ideas have been introduced into the schools.

INSTRUCTION IN THE MANUAL ACTIVITIES. Froebel not only introduced constructive work–paper-folding, weaving, needlework, and work with sand and clay and color–into the kindergarten, but he also proposed to extend and develop such work for the upper years of schooling in a school for hand training which he outlined, but did not establish. His proposed plan included the elements of the so-called manual-training idea, developed later, and he justified such instruction on the same educational grounds that we advance to-day. It was not to teach a boy a trade, as Rousseau had advocated, or to train children in sense-perception, as Pestalozzi had employed all his manual activities, but as a form of educational expression, and for the purpose of developing creative power within the child. The idea was advocated by a number of thinkers, about 1850 to 1860, but the movement took its rise in Finland, Sweden, and Russia.

The first country to organize such work as a part of its school instruction was Finland, where, as early as 1858, Uno Cygnaeus (1810-1888) outlined a course for manual training involving bench and metal work, wood-carving, and basket-weaving. In 1866 Finland made some form of manual work compulsory for boys in all its rural schools, and in its training- colleges for male teachers. In 1872 the government of Sweden decided to introduce sloyd work into its schools, partly to counteract the bad physical and moral effects of city congestion, and partly to revivify the declining home industries of the people. A sloyd school was established at Naas, in 1872, to train teachers, and in 1875 a second school, known as a “Sloyd Seminarium,” was begun. The summer courses of these two schools were soon training teachers from many nations. In 1877 sloyd work was added to the Folk School instruction of Sweden. At first the old native sloyd occupations were followed, such as carpentering, turning, wood- carving, brush-making, book-binding, and work in copper and iron, but later the industrial element gave way to a well-organized course in educational tool work for boys from twelve to fifteen years of age, after the Finnish plan.

SPREAD OF THE MANUAL-TRAINING IDEA. France was the first of the larger European nations to adopt this new addition to elementary-school instruction, a training-school being organized at Paris in 1873, and, in 1882, the instruction in manual activities was ordered introduced into all the primary schools of France. It has required time, though, to provide work rooms and to realize this idea, and it is still lacking in complete accomplishment. In England the work was first introduced in London, about 1887. The government at once accepted the idea, encouraged its spread, and began to aid in the training of teachers. By 1900 the work was found in all the larger cities, and included cooking and sewing for girls, as well as manual work for boys. The training for girls goes back still farther, and was an outgrowth of the earlier “schools of industry” established to train girls for domestic service (R. 241). By 1846 instruction in needlework had been begun in earnest in England. In German lands needlework was also an early school subject, while some domestic training for girls had been provided in most of the cities, before 1914. Manual training for boys, though, despite much propaganda work, had made but little headway up to that time. As in the case of the kindergarten, the initiative and self-expression aspects of the manual-training movement made no appeal to those responsible for the work of the people’s schools, and, in consequence, the manual activities have in German lands been reserved largely for the continuation and vocational schools for older pupils.

In the United States the manual-training and household-arts ideas have found a very ready welcome. Curious as it may seem, the first introduction to the United States of this new form of instruction came through the exhibit made by the Russian government at the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, showing the work in wood and iron made by the pupils at the Imperial Technical Institute at Moscow. This, however, was not the Swedish sloyd, but a type of work especially adapted to secondary-school instruction. In consequence the movement for instruction in the manual activities in the United States, unlike in other nations, began as a highly organized technical type of high-school instruction, [22] while the elementary- school sloyd and the household arts for girls came in later. This type of technical high school has since developed rapidly in this country, has rendered an important educational service, and is a peculiarly American creation. In Europe the manual-training idea has been confined to the elementary school, and no institution exists there which parallels these costly and well-equipped American technical secondary schools.

The introduction of manual work into the elementary schools came a little later, and a little more slowly. As early as 1880 the Workingmen’s School, founded by the Ethical Culture Society of New York, had provided a kindergarten and had extended the kindergarten constructive-work idea upward, in the form of simple woodworking, into its elementary school. In the public schools, experimental classes in elementary-school woodworking were tried in one school in Boston, as early as 1882, the expense being borne privately. In 1888 the city took over these classes. In 1886 a teacher was brought to Boston from Sweden to introduce Swedish sloyd, and a teacher-training school which has been very influential was established there, in 1889. In 1876 Massachusetts permitted cities to provide instruction in sewing, and Springfield introduced such instruction in 1884, and elementary-school instruction in knifework in 1886.

From these beginnings the movement spread, [23] though at first rather slowly. By 1900 approximately forty cities, nearly all of them in the North Atlantic group of States, had introduced work in manual training and