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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #53910 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/53910)
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The School and Society, by John Dewey
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-Title: The School and Society
- Being three lectures
-
-Author: John Dewey
-
-Release Date: January 7, 2017 [EBook #53910]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SCHOOL AND SOCIETY ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed
-Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
-produced from images generously made available by The
-Internet Archive)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
- THE SCHOOL AND SOCIETY
-
-
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
-
-
-
- THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
- CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
-
-
- Agents
-
- THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
- LONDON AND EDINBURGH
-
- THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA
- TOKYO, OSAKA, KYOTO
-
- KARL W. HIERSEMANN
- LEIPZIG
-
- THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY
- NEW YORK
-
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
-
-
-
- _The_
- _SCHOOL_
- _and_
- _SOCIETY_
- _BEING THREE LECTURES_
-
-
- _by_
-
- JOHN DEWEY
-
- _SUPPLEMENTED BY_
- A STATEMENT OF THE UNIVERSITY ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
-
- THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
- CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
-
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
-
-
-
- COPYRIGHT 1900 BY
- JOHN DEWEY
-
- All Rights Reserved
-
- FIRST EDITION -–1,000 copies. Printed November, 1899.
- SECOND IMPRESSION -–1,500 copies. Printed February, 1900.
- THIRD IMPRESSION -–5,000 copies. Printed July, 1900.
- FOURTH IMPRESSION -–1,000 copies. Printed June, 1904.
- FIFTH IMPRESSION -–2,500 copies. Printed February, 1905.
- SIXTH IMPRESSION -–2,500 copies. Printed August, 1907.
- SEVENTH IMPRESSION -–1,000 copies. Printed September, 1909.
- EIGHTH IMPRESSION -–1,000 copies. Printed August, 1910.
- NINTH IMPRESSION -–1,000 copies. Printed August, 1911.
- TENTH IMPRESSION -–1,000 copies. Printed March, 1912.
- ELEVENTH IMPRESSION -–2,000 copies. Printed August, 1913.
-
-
- Composed and Printed By
- The University of Chicago Press
- Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.
-
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
-
-
-
- TO
-
- MRS. EMMONS BLAINE
-
- TO WHOSE INTEREST IN EDUCATIONAL
- REFORM
- THE APPEARANCE OF THIS BOOK
- IS DUE
-
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
-
-
-
- CONTENTS
-
-
- PAGE
- I. THE SCHOOL AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 19
-
- II. THE SCHOOL AND THE LIFE OF THE CHILD 47
-
- III. WASTE IN EDUCATION 77
-
- IV. THREE YEARS OF THE UNIVERSITY ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 113
-
-
-
-
- LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
-
-
- FACING PAGE
-
- DRAWING OF A CAVE AND TREES 56
-
- DRAWING OF A FOREST 58
-
- DRAWING OF HANDS SPINNING 60
-
- DRAWING OF A GIRL SPINNING 62
-
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
-
-
-
- PUBLISHER’S NOTE
-
-
-The three lectures presented in the following pages were delivered
-before an audience of parents and others interested in the University
-Elementary School, in the month of April of the year 1899. Mr. Dewey
-revised them in part from a stenographic report, and unimportant changes
-and the slight adaptations necessary for the press have been made in his
-absence. The lectures retain therefore the unstudied character as well
-as the power of the spoken word. As they imply more or less familiarity
-with the work of the Elementary School, Mr. Dewey’s supplementary
-statement of this has been added.
-
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
-
-
-
- AUTHOR’S NOTE
-
-
-A second edition affords a grateful opportunity for recalling that this
-little book is a sign of the coöperating thoughts and sympathies of many
-persons. Its indebtedness to Mrs. Emmons Blaine is partly indicated in
-the dedication. From my friends, Mr. and Mrs. George Herbert Mead, came
-that interest, unflagging attention to detail, and artistic taste which,
-in my absence, remade colloquial remarks until they were fit to print,
-and then saw the results through the press with the present attractive
-result—a mode of authorship made easy, which I recommend to others
-fortunate enough to possess such friends.
-
-It would be an extended paragraph which should list all the friends
-whose timely and persisting generosity has made possible the school
-which inspired and defined the ideas of these pages. These friends, I am
-sure, would be the first to recognize the peculiar appropriateness of
-especial mention of the names of Mrs. Charles R. Crane and Mrs. William
-R. Linn.
-
-And the school itself in its educational work is a joint undertaking.
-Many have engaged in shaping it. The clear and experienced intelligence
-of my wife is wrought everywhere into its texture. The wisdom, tact and
-devotion of its instructors have brought about a transformation of its
-original amorphous plans into articulate form and substance with life
-and movement of their own. Whatever the issue of the ideas presented in
-this book, the satisfaction coming from the coöperation of the diverse
-thoughts and deeds of many persons in undertaking to enlarge the life of
-the child will abide.
-
- January 5, 1900
-
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
-
-
-
- I
- THE SCHOOL AND SOCIAL PROGRESS
-
-
-We are apt to look at the school from an individualistic standpoint, as
-something between teacher and pupil, or between teacher and parent. That
-which interests us most is naturally the progress made by the individual
-child of our acquaintance, his normal physical development, his advance
-in ability to read, write, and figure, his growth in the knowledge of
-geography and history, improvement in manners, habits of promptness,
-order, and industry—it is from such standards as these that we judge the
-work of the school. And rightly so. Yet the range of the outlook needs
-to be enlarged. What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child,
-that must the community want for all of its children. Any other ideal
-for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our
-democracy. All that society has accomplished for itself is put, through
-the agency of the school, at the disposal of its future members. All its
-better thoughts of itself it hopes to realize through the new
-possibilities thus opened to its future self. Here individualism and
-socialism are at one. Only by being true to the full growth of all the
-individuals who make it up, can society by any chance be true to itself.
-And in the self-direction thus given, nothing counts as much as the
-school, for, as Horace Mann said, “Where anything is growing, one former
-is worth a thousand re-formers,”
-
-Whenever we have in mind the discussion of a new movement in education,
-it is especially necessary to take the broader, or social view.
-Otherwise, changes in the school institution and tradition will be
-looked at as the arbitrary inventions of particular teachers; at the
-worst transitory fads, and at the best merely improvements in certain
-details—and this is the plane upon which it is too customary to consider
-school changes. It is as rational to conceive of the locomotive or the
-telegraph as personal devices. The modification going on in the method
-and curriculum of education is as much a product of the changed social
-situation, and as much an effort to meet the needs of the new society
-that is forming, as are changes in modes of industry and commerce.
-
-It is to this, then, that I especially ask your attention: the effort to
-conceive what roughly may be termed the “New Education” in the light of
-larger changes in society. Can we connect this “New Education” with the
-general march of events? If we can, it will lose its isolated character,
-and will cease to be an affair which proceeds only from the
-over-ingenious minds of pedagogues dealing with particular pupils. It
-will appear as part and parcel of the whole social evolution, and, in
-its more general features at least, as inevitable. Let us then ask after
-the main aspects of the social movement; and afterwards turn to the
-school to find what witness it gives of effort to put itself in line.
-And since it is quite impossible to cover the whole ground, I shall for
-the most part confine myself to one typical thing in the modern school
-movement—that which passes under the name of manual training, hoping if
-the relation of that to changed social conditions appears, we shall be
-ready to concede the point as well regarding other educational
-innovations.
-
-I make no apology for not dwelling at length upon the social changes in
-question. Those I shall mention are writ so large that he who runs may
-read. The change that comes first to mind, the one that overshadows and
-even controls all others, is the industrial one—the application of
-science resulting in the great inventions that have utilized the forces
-of nature on a vast and inexpensive scale: the growth of a world-wide
-market as the object of production, of vast manufacturing centers to
-supply this market, of cheap and rapid means of communication and
-distribution between all its parts. Even as to its feebler beginnings,
-this change is not much more than a century old; in many of its most
-important aspects it falls within the short span of those now living.
-One can hardly believe there has been a revolution in all history so
-rapid, so extensive, so complete. Through it the face of the earth is
-making over, even as to its physical forms; political boundaries are
-wiped out and moved about, as if they were indeed only lines on a paper
-map; population is hurriedly gathered into cities from the ends of the
-earth; habits of living are altered with startling abruptness and
-thoroughness; the search for the truths of nature is infinitely
-stimulated and facilitated and their application to life made not only
-practicable, but commercially necessary. Even our moral and religious
-ideas and interests, the most conservative because the deepest-lying
-things in our nature, are profoundly affected. That this revolution
-should not affect education in other than formal and superficial fashion
-is inconceivable.
-
-Back of the factory system lies the household and neighborhood system.
-Those of us who are here today need go back only one, two, or at most
-three generations, to find a time when the household was practically the
-center in which were carried on, or about which were clustered, all the
-typical forms of industrial occupation. The clothing worn was for the
-most part not only made in the house, but the members of the household
-were usually familiar with the shearing of the sheep, the carding and
-spinning of the wool, and the plying of the loom. Instead of pressing a
-button and flooding the house with electric light, the whole process of
-getting illumination was followed in its toilsome length, from the
-killing of the animal and the trying of fat, to the making of wicks and
-dipping of candles. The supply of flour, of lumber, of foods, of
-building materials, of household furniture, even of metal ware, of
-nails, hinges, hammers, etc., was in the immediate neighborhood, in
-shops which were constantly open to inspection and often centers of
-neighborhood congregation. The entire industrial process stood revealed,
-from the production on the farm of the raw materials, till the finished
-article was actually put to use. Not only this, but practically every
-member of the household had his own share in the work. The children, as
-they gained in strength and capacity, were gradually initiated into the
-mysteries of the several processes. It was a matter of immediate and
-personal concern, even to the point of actual participation.
-
-We cannot overlook the factors of discipline and of character-building
-involved in this: training in habits of order and of industry, and in
-the idea of responsibility, of obligation to do something, to produce
-something, in the world. There was always something which really needed
-to be done, and a real necessity that each member of the household
-should do his own part faithfully and in coöperation with others.
-Personalities which became effective in action were bred and tested in
-the medium of action. Again, we cannot overlook the importance for
-educational purposes of the close and intimate acquaintance got with
-nature at first hand, with real things and materials, with the actual
-processes of their manipulation, and the knowledge of their social
-necessities and uses. In all this there was continual training of
-observation, of ingenuity, constructive imagination, of logical thought,
-and of the sense of reality acquired through first-hand contact with
-actualities. The educative forces of the domestic spinning and weaving,
-of the saw-mill, the gristmill, the cooper shop, and the blacksmith
-forge, were continuously operative.
-
-No number of object-lessons, got up _as_ object-lessons for the sake of
-giving information, can afford even the shadow of a substitute for
-acquaintance with the plants and animals of the farm and garden,
-acquired through actual living among them and caring for them. No
-training of sense-organs in school, introduced for the sake of training,
-can begin to compete with the alertness and fullness of sense-life that
-comes through daily intimacy and interest in familiar occupations.
-Verbal memory can be trained in committing tasks, a certain discipline
-of the reasoning powers can be acquired through lessons in science and
-mathematics; but, after all, this is somewhat remote and shadowy
-compared with the training of attention and of judgment that is acquired
-in having to do things with a real motive behind and a real outcome
-ahead. At present, concentration of industry and division of labor have
-practically eliminated household and neighborhood occupations—at least
-for educational purposes. But it is useless to bemoan the departure of
-the good old days of children’s modesty, reverence, and implicit
-obedience, if we expect merely by bemoaning and by exhortation to bring
-them back. It is radical conditions which have changed, and only an
-equally radical change in education suffices. We must recognize our
-compensations—the increase in toleration, in breadth of social judgment,
-the larger acquaintance with human nature, the sharpened alertness in
-reading signs of character and interpreting social situations, greater
-accuracy of adaptation to differing personalities, contact with greater
-commercial activities. These considerations mean much to the city-bred
-child of today. Yet there is a real problem: how shall we retain these
-advantages, and yet introduce into the school something representing the
-other side of life—occupations which exact personal responsibilities and
-which train the child with relation to the physical realities of life?
-
-When we turn to the school, we find that one of the most striking
-tendencies at present is toward the introduction of so-called manual
-training, shop-work, and the household arts—sewing and cooking.
-
-This has not been done “on purpose,” with a full consciousness that the
-school must now supply that factor of training formerly taken care of in
-the home, but rather by instinct, by experimenting and finding that such
-work takes a vital hold of pupils and gives them something which was not
-to be got in any other way. Consciousness of its real import is still so
-weak that the work is often done in a half-hearted, confused, and
-unrelated way. The reasons assigned to justify it are painfully
-inadequate or sometimes even positively wrong.
-
-If we were to cross-examine even those who are most favorably disposed
-to the introduction of this work into our school system, we should, I
-imagine, generally find the main reasons to be that such work engages
-the full spontaneous interest and attention of the children. It keeps
-them alert and active, instead of passive and receptive; it makes them
-more useful, more capable, and hence more inclined to be helpful at
-home; it prepares them to some extent for the practical duties of later
-life—the girls to be more efficient house managers, if not actually
-cooks and sempstresses; the boys (were our educational system only
-adequately rounded out into trade schools) for their future vocations. I
-do not underestimate the worth of these reasons. Of those indicated by
-the changed attitude of the children I shall indeed have something to
-say in my next talk, when speaking directly of the relationship of the
-school to the child. But the point of view is, upon the whole,
-unnecessarily narrow. We must conceive of work in wood and metal, of
-weaving, sewing, and cooking, as methods of life not as distinct
-studies.
-
-We must conceive of them in their social significance, as types of the
-processes by which society keeps itself going, as agencies for bringing
-home to the child some of the primal necessities of community life, and
-as ways in which these needs have been met by the growing insight and
-ingenuity of man; in short, as instrumentalities through which the
-school itself shall be made a genuine form of active community life,
-instead of a place set apart in which to learn lessons.
-
-A society is a number of people held together because they are working
-along common lines, in a common spirit, and with reference to common
-aims. The common needs and aims demand a growing interchange of thought
-and growing unity of sympathetic feeling. The radical reason that the
-present school cannot organize itself as a natural social unit is
-because just this element of common and productive activity is absent.
-Upon the playground, in game and sport, social organization takes place
-spontaneously and inevitably. There is something to do, some activity to
-be carried on, requiring natural divisions of labor, selection of
-leaders and followers, mutual coöperation and emulation. In the
-schoolroom the motive and the cement of social organization are alike
-wanting. Upon the ethical side, the tragic weakness of the present
-school is that it endeavors to prepare future members of the social
-order in a medium in which the conditions of the social spirit are
-eminently wanting.
-
-The difference that appears when occupations are made the articulating
-centers of school life is not easy to describe in words; it is a
-difference in motive, of spirit and atmosphere. As one enters a busy
-kitchen in which a group of children are actively engaged in the
-preparation of food, the psychological difference, the change from more
-or less passive and inert recipiency and restraint to one of buoyant
-outgoing energy, is so obvious as fairly to strike one in the face.
-Indeed, to those whose image of the school is rigidly set the change is
-sure to give a shock. But the change in the social attitude is equally
-marked. The mere absorption of facts and truths is so exclusively
-individual an affair that it tends very naturally to pass into
-selfishness. There is no obvious social motive for the acquirement of
-mere learning, there is no clear social gain in success thereat. Indeed,
-almost the only measure for success is a competitive one, in the bad
-sense of that term—a comparison of results in the recitation or in the
-examination to see which child has succeeded in getting ahead of others
-in storing up, in accumulating the maximum of information. So thoroughly
-is this the prevalent atmosphere that for one child to help another in
-his task has become a school crime. Where the school work consists in
-simply learning lessons, mutual assistance, instead of being the most
-natural form of coöperation and association, becomes a clandestine
-effort to relieve one’s neighbor of his proper duties. Where active work
-is going on all this is changed. Helping others, instead of being a form
-of charity which impoverishes the recipient, is simply an aid in setting
-free the powers and furthering the impulse of the one helped. A spirit
-of free communication, of interchange of ideas, suggestions, results,
-both successes and failures of previous experiences, becomes the
-dominating note of the recitation. So far as emulation enters in, it is
-in the comparison of individuals, not with regard to the quantity of
-information personally absorbed, but with reference to the quality of
-work done—the genuine community standard of value. In an informal but
-all the more pervasive way, the school life organizes itself on a social
-basis.
-
-Within this organization is found the principle of school discipline or
-order. Of course, order is simply a thing which is relative to an end.
-If you have the end in view of forty or fifty children learning certain
-set lessons, to be recited to a teacher, your discipline must be devoted
-to securing that result. But if the end in view is the development of a
-spirit of social coöperation and community life, discipline must grow
-out of and be relative to this. There is little order of one sort where
-things are in process of construction; there is a certain disorder in
-any busy workshop; there is not silence; persons are not engaged in
-maintaining certain fixed physical postures; their arms are not folded;
-they are not holding their books thus and so. They are doing a variety
-of things, and there is the confusion, the bustle, that results from
-activity. But out of occupation, out of doing things that are to produce
-results, and out of doing these in a social and coöperative way, there
-is born a discipline of its own kind and type. Our whole conception of
-school discipline changes when we get this point of view. In critical
-moments we all realize that the only discipline that stands by us, the
-only training that becomes intuition, is that got through life itself.
-That we learn from experience, and from books or the sayings of others
-_only_ as they are related to experience, are not mere phrases. But the
-school has been so set apart, so isolated from the ordinary conditions
-and motives of life, that the place where children are sent for
-discipline is the one place in the world where it is most difficult to
-get experience—the mother of all discipline worth the name. It is only
-where a narrow and fixed image of traditional school discipline
-dominates, that one is in any danger of overlooking that deeper and
-infinitely wider discipline that comes from having a part to do in
-constructive work, in contributing to a result which, social in spirit,
-is none the less obvious and tangible in form—and hence in a form with
-reference to which responsibility may be exacted and accurate judgment
-passed.
-
-The great thing to keep in mind, then, regarding the introduction into
-the school of various forms of active occupation, is that through them
-the entire spirit of the school is renewed. It has a chance to affiliate
-itself with life, to become the child’s habitat, where he learns through
-directed living; instead of being only a place to learn lessons having
-an abstract and remote reference to some possible living to be done in
-the future. It gets a chance to be a miniature community, an embryonic
-society. This is the fundamental fact, and from this arise continuous
-and orderly sources of instruction. Under the industrial _régime_
-described, the child, after all, shared in the work, not for the sake of
-the sharing, but for the sake of the product. The educational results
-secured were real, yet incidental and dependent. But in the school the
-typical occupations followed are freed from all economic stress. The aim
-is not the economic value of the products, but the development of social
-power and insight. It is this liberation from narrow utilities, this
-openness to the possibilities of the human spirit that makes these
-practical activities in the school allies of art and centers of science
-and history.
-
-The unity of all the sciences is found in geography. The significance of
-geography is that it presents the earth as the enduring home of the
-occupations of man. The world without its relationship to human activity
-is less than a world. Human industry and achievement, apart from their
-roots in the earth, are not even a sentiment, hardly a name. The earth
-is the final source of all man’s food. It is his continual shelter and
-protection, the raw material of all his activities, and the home to
-whose humanizing and idealizing all his achievement returns. It is the
-great field, the great mine, the great source of the energies of heat,
-light, and electricity; the great scene of ocean, stream, mountain, and
-plain, of which all our agriculture and mining and lumbering, all our
-manufacturing and distributing agencies, are but the partial elements
-and factors. It is through occupations determined by this environment
-that mankind has made its historical and political progress. It is
-through these occupations that the intellectual and emotional
-interpretation of nature has been developed. It is through what we do in
-and with the world that we read its meaning and measure its value.
-
-In educational terms, this means that these occupations in the school
-shall not be mere practical devices or modes of routine employment, the
-gaining of better technical skill as cooks, sempstresses, or carpenters,
-but active centers of scientific insight into natural materials and
-processes, points of departure whence children shall be led out into a
-realization of the historic development of man. The actual significance
-of this can be told better through one illustration taken from actual
-school work than by general discourse.
-
-There is nothing which strikes more oddly upon the average intelligent
-visitor than to see boys as well as girls of ten, twelve, and thirteen
-years of age engaged in sewing and weaving. If we look at this from the
-standpoint of preparation of the boys for sewing on buttons and making
-patches, we get a narrow and utilitarian conception—a basis that hardly
-justifies giving prominence to this sort of work in the school. But if
-we look at it from another side, we find that this work gives the point
-of departure from which the child can trace and follow the progress of
-mankind in history, getting an insight also into the materials used and
-the mechanical principles involved. In connection with these
-occupations, the historic development of man is recapitulated. For
-example, the children are first given the raw material—the flax, the
-cotton plant, the wool as it comes from the back of the sheep (if we
-could take them to the place where the sheep are sheared, so much the
-better). Then a study is made of these materials from the standpoint of
-their adaptation to the uses to which they may be put. For instance, a
-comparison of the cotton fiber with wool fiber is made. I did not know
-until the children told me, that the reason for the late development of
-the cotton industry as compared with the woolen is, that the cotton
-fiber is so very difficult to free by hand from the seeds. The children
-in one group worked thirty minutes freeing cotton fibers from the boll
-and seeds, and succeeded in getting out less than one ounce. They could
-easily believe that one person could only gin one pound a day by hand,
-and could understand why their ancestors wore woolen instead of cotton
-clothing. Among other things discovered as affecting their relative
-utilities, was the shortness of the cotton fiber as compared with that
-of wool, the former being one-tenth of an inch in length, while that of
-the latter is an inch in length; also that the fibers of cotton are
-smooth and do not cling together, while the wool has a certain roughness
-which makes the fibers stick, thus assisting the spinning. The children
-worked this out for themselves with the actual material, aided by
-questions and suggestions from the teacher.
-
-They then followed the processes necessary for working the fibers up
-into cloth. They re-invented the first frame for carding the wool—a
-couple of boards with sharp pins in them for scratching it out. They
-re-devised the simplest process for spinning the wool—a pierced stone or
-some other weight through which the wool is passed, and which as it is
-twirled draws out the fiber; next the top, which was spun on the floor,
-while the children kept the wool in their hands until it was gradually
-drawn out and wound upon it. Then the children are introduced to the
-invention next in historic order, working it out experimentally, thus
-seeing its necessity, and tracing its effects, not only upon that
-particular industry, but upon modes of social life—in this way passing
-in review the entire process up to the present complete loom, and all
-that goes with the application of science in the use of our present
-available powers. I need not speak of the science involved in this—the
-study of the fibers, of geographical features, the conditions under
-which raw materials are grown, the great centers of manufacture and
-distribution, the physics involved in the machinery of production; nor,
-again, of the historical side—the influence which these inventions have
-had upon humanity. You can concentrate the history of all mankind into
-the evolution of the flax, cotton, and wool fibers into clothing. I do
-not mean that this is the only, or the best, center. But it is true that
-certain very real and important avenues to the consideration of the
-history of the race are thus opened—that the mind is introduced to much
-more fundamental and controlling influences than usually appear in the
-political and chronological records that pass for history.
-
-Now, what is true of this one instance of fibers used in fabrics (and,
-of course, I have only spoken of one or two elementary phases of that)
-is true in its measure of every material used in every occupation, and
-of the processes employed. The occupation supplies the child with a
-genuine motive; it gives him experience at first hand; it brings him
-into contact with realities. It does all this, but in addition it is
-liberalized throughout by translation into its historic values and
-scientific equivalencies. With the growth of the child’s mind in power
-and knowledge it ceases to be a pleasant occupation merely, and becomes
-more and more a medium, an instrument, an organ—and is thereby
-transformed.
-
-This, in turn, has its bearing upon the teaching of science. Under
-present conditions, all activity, to be successful, has to be directed
-somewhere and somehow by the scientific expert—it is a case of applied
-science. This connection should determine its place in education. It is
-not only that the occupations, the so-called manual or industrial work
-in the school, give the opportunity for the introduction of science
-which illuminates them, which makes them material, freighted with
-meaning, instead of being mere devices of hand and eye; but that the
-scientific insight thus gained becomes an indispensable instrument of
-free and active participation in modern social life. Plato somewhere
-speaks of the slave as one who in his actions does not express his own
-ideas, but those of some other man. It is our social problem now, even
-more urgent than in the time of Plato, that method, purpose,
-understanding, shall exist in the consciousness of the one who does the
-work, that his activity shall have meaning to himself.
-
-When occupations in the school are conceived in this broad and generous
-way, I can only stand lost in wonder at the objections so often heard,
-that such occupations are out of place in the school because they are
-materialistic, utilitarian, or even menial in their tendency. It
-sometimes seems to me that those who make these objections must live in
-quite another world. The world in which most of us live is a world in
-which everyone has a calling and occupation, something to do. Some are
-managers and others are subordinates. But the great thing for one as for
-the other is that each shall have had the education which enables him to
-see within his daily work all there is in it of large and human
-significance. How many of the employed are today mere appendages to the
-machines which they operate! This may be due in part to the machine
-itself, or to the _régime_ which lays so much stress upon the products
-of the machine; but it is certainly due in large part to the fact that
-the worker has had no opportunity to develop his imagination and his
-sympathetic insight as to the social and scientific values found in his
-work. At present, the impulses which lie at the basis of the industrial
-system are either practically neglected or positively distorted during
-the school period. Until the instincts of construction and production
-are systematically laid hold of in the years of childhood and youth,
-until they are trained in social directions, enriched by historical
-interpretation, controlled and illuminated by scientific methods, we
-certainly are in no position even to locate the source of our economic
-evils, much less to deal with them effectively.
-
-If we go back a few centuries, we find a practical monopoly of learning.
-The term _possession_ of learning was, indeed, a happy one. Learning was
-a class matter. This was a necessary result of social conditions. There
-were not in existence any means by which the multitude could possibly
-have access to intellectual resources. These were stored up and hidden
-away in manuscripts. Of these there were at best only a few, and it
-required long and toilsome preparation to be able to do anything with
-them. A high-priesthood of learning, which guarded the treasury of truth
-and which doled it out to the masses under severe restrictions, was the
-inevitable expression of these conditions. But, as a direct result of
-the industrial revolution of which we have been speaking, this has been
-changed. Printing was invented; it was made commercial. Books,
-magazines, papers were multiplied and cheapened. As a result of the
-locomotive and telegraph, frequent, rapid, and cheap intercommunication
-by mails and electricity was called into being. Travel has been rendered
-easy; freedom of movement, with its accompanying exchange of ideas,
-indefinitely facilitated. The result has been an intellectual
-revolution. Learning has been put into circulation. While there still
-is, and probably always will be, a particular class having the special
-business of inquiry in hand, a distinctively learned class is henceforth
-out of the question. It is an anachronism. Knowledge is no longer an
-immobile solid; it has been liquefied. It is actively moving in all the
-currents of society itself.
-
-It is easy to see that this revolution, as regards the materials of
-knowledge, carries with it a marked change in the attitude of the
-individual. Stimuli of an intellectual sort pour in upon us in all kinds
-of ways. The merely intellectual life, the life of scholarship and of
-learning, thus gets a very altered value. Academic and scholastic,
-instead of being titles of honor, are becoming terms of reproach.
-
-But all this means a necessary change in the attitude of the school, one
-of which we are as yet far from realizing the full force. Our school
-methods, and to a very considerable extent our curriculum, are inherited
-from the period when learning and command of certain symbols, affording
-as they did the only access to learning, were all-important. The ideals
-of this period are still largely in control, even where the outward
-methods and studies have been changed. We sometimes hear the
-introduction of manual training, art and science into the elementary,
-and even the secondary schools, deprecated on the ground that they tend
-toward the production of specialists—that they detract from our present
-scheme of generous, liberal culture. The point of this objection would
-be ludicrous if it were not often so effective as to make it tragic. It
-is our present education which is highly specialized, one-sided and
-narrow. It is an education dominated almost entirely by the mediæval
-conception of learning. It is something which appeals for the most part
-simply to the intellectual aspect of our natures, our desire to learn,
-to accumulate information, and to get control of the symbols of
-learning; not to our impulses and tendencies to make, to do, to create,
-to produce, whether in the form of utility or of art. The very fact that
-manual training, art and science are objected to as technical, as
-tending toward mere specialism, is of itself as good testimony as could
-be offered to the specialized aim which controls current education.
-Unless education had been virtually identified with the exclusively
-intellectual pursuits, with learning as such, all these materials and
-methods would be welcome, would be greeted with the utmost hospitality.
-
-While training for the profession of learning is regarded as the type of
-culture, as a liberal education, that of a mechanic, a musician, a
-lawyer, a doctor, a farmer, a merchant, or a railroad manager is
-regarded as purely technical and professional. The result is that which
-we see about us everywhere—the division into “cultured” people and
-“workers,” the separation of theory and practice. Hardly one per cent.
-of the entire school population ever attains to what we call higher
-education; only five per cent. to the grade of our high school; while
-much more than half leave on or before the completion of the fifth year
-of the elementary grade. The simple facts of the case are that in the
-great majority of human beings the distinctively intellectual interest
-is not dominant. They have the so-called practical impulse and
-disposition. In many of those in whom by nature intellectual interest is
-strong, social conditions prevent its adequate realization. Consequently
-by far the larger number of pupils leave school as soon as they have
-acquired the rudiments of learning, as soon as they have enough of the
-symbols of reading, writing, and calculating to be of practical use to
-them in getting a living. While our educational leaders are talking of
-culture, the development of personality, etc., as the end and aim of
-education, the great majority of those who pass under the tuition of the
-school regard it only as a narrowly practical tool with which to get
-bread and butter enough to eke out a restricted life. If we were to
-conceive our educational end and aim in a less exclusive way, if we were
-to introduce into educational processes the activities which appeal to
-those whose dominant interest is to do and to make, we should find the
-hold of the school upon its members to be more vital, more prolonged,
-containing more of culture.
-
-But why should I make this labored presentation? The obvious fact is
-that our social life has undergone a thorough and radical change. If our
-education is to have any meaning for life, it must pass through an
-equally complete transformation. This transformation is not something to
-appear suddenly, to be executed in a day by conscious purpose. It is
-already in progress. Those modifications of our school system which
-often appear (even to those most actively concerned with them, to say
-nothing of their spectators) to be mere changes of detail, mere
-improvement within the school mechanism, are in reality signs and
-evidences of evolution. The introduction of active occupations, of
-nature study, of elementary science, of art, of history; the relegation
-of the merely symbolic and formal to a secondary position; the change in
-the moral school atmosphere, in the relation of pupils and teachers—of
-discipline; the introduction of more active, expressive, and
-self-directing factors—all these are not mere accidents, they are
-necessities of the larger social evolution. It remains but to organize
-all these factors, to appreciate them in their fullness of meaning, and
-to put the ideas and ideals involved into complete, uncompromising
-possession of our school system. To do this means to make each one of
-our schools an embryonic community life, active with types of
-occupations that reflect the life of the larger society, and permeated
-throughout with the spirit of art, history, and science. When the school
-introduces and trains each child of society into membership within such
-a little community, saturating him with the spirit of service, and
-providing him with the instruments of effective self-direction, we shall
-have the deepest and best guarantee of a larger society which is worthy,
-lovely, and harmonious.
-
-
-
-
- II
- THE SCHOOL AND THE LIFE OF THE CHILD
-
-
-Last week I tried to put before you the relationship between the school
-and the larger life of the community, and the necessity for certain
-changes in the methods and materials of school work, that it might be
-better adapted to present social needs.
-
-Today I wish to look at the matter from the other side, and consider the
-relationship of the school to the life and development of the children
-in the school. As it is difficult to connect general principles with
-such thoroughly concrete things as little children, I have taken the
-liberty of introducing a good deal of illustrative matter from the work
-of the University Elementary School, that in some measure you may
-appreciate the way in which the ideas presented work themselves out in
-actual practice.
-
-Some few years ago I was looking about the school supply stores in the
-city, trying to find desks and chairs which seemed thoroughly suitable
-from all points of view—artistic, hygienic, and educational—to the needs
-of the children. We had a good deal of difficulty in finding what we
-needed, and finally one dealer, more intelligent than the rest, made
-this remark: “I am afraid we have not what you want. You want something
-at which the children may work; these are all for listening.” That tells
-the story of the traditional education. Just as the biologist can take a
-bone or two and reconstruct the whole animal, so, if we put before the
-mind’s eye the ordinary schoolroom, with its rows of ugly desks placed
-in geometrical order, crowded together so that there shall be as little
-moving room as possible, desks almost all of the same size, with just
-space enough to hold books, pencils and paper, and add a table, some
-chairs, the bare walls, and possibly a few pictures, we can reconstruct
-the only educational activity that can possibly go on in such a place.
-It is all made “for listening”—for simply studying lessons out of a book
-is only another kind of listening; it marks the dependency of one mind
-upon another. The attitude of listening means, comparatively speaking,
-passivity, absorption; that there are certain ready-made materials which
-are there, which have been prepared by the school superintendent, the
-board, the teacher, and of which the child is to take in as much as
-possible in the least possible time.
-
-There is very little place in the traditional schoolroom for the child
-to work. The workshop, the laboratory, the materials, the tools with
-which the child may construct, create, and actively inquire, and even
-the requisite space, have been for the most part lacking. The things
-that have to do with these processes have not even a definitely
-recognized place in education. They are what the educational authorities
-who write editorials in the daily papers generally term “fads” and
-“frills.” A lady told me yesterday that she had been visiting different
-schools trying to find one where activity on the part of the children
-preceded the giving of information on the part of the teacher, or where
-the children had some motive for demanding the information. She visited,
-she said, twenty-four different schools before she found her first
-instance. I may add that that was not in this city.
-
-Another thing that is suggested by these schoolrooms, with their set
-desks, is that everything is arranged for handling as large numbers of
-children as possible; for dealing with children _en masse_, as an
-aggregate of units; involving, again, that they be treated passively.
-The moment children act they individualize themselves; they cease to be
-a mass, and become the intensely distinctive beings that we are
-acquainted with out of school, in the home, the family, on the
-playground, and in the neighborhood.
-
-On the same basis is explicable the uniformity of method and curriculum.
-If everything is on a “listening” basis, you can have uniformity of
-material and method. The ear, and the book which reflects the ear,
-constitute the medium which is alike for all. There is next to no
-opportunity for adjustment to varying capacities and demands. There is a
-certain amount—a fixed quantity—of ready-made results and
-accomplishments to be acquired by all children alike in a given time. It
-is in response to this demand that the curriculum has been developed
-from the elementary school up through the college. There is just so much
-desirable knowledge, and there are just so many needed technical
-accomplishments in the world. Then comes the mathematical problem of
-dividing this by the six, twelve, or sixteen years of school life. Now
-give the children every year just the proportionate fraction of the
-total, and by the time they have finished they will have mastered the
-whole. By covering so much ground during this hour or day or week or
-year, everything comes out with perfect evenness at the end—provided the
-children have not forgotten what they have previously learned. The
-outcome of all this is Matthew Arnold’s report of the statement, proudly
-made to him by an educational authority in France, that so many
-thousands of children were studying at a given hour, say eleven o’clock,
-just such a lesson in geography; and in one of our own western cities
-this proud boast used to be repeated to successive visitors by its
-superintendent.
-
-I may have exaggerated somewhat in order to make plain the typical
-points of the old education: its passivity of attitude, its mechanical
-massing of children, its uniformity of curriculum and method. It may be
-summed up by stating that the center of gravity is outside the child. It
-is in the teacher, the text-book, anywhere and everywhere you please
-except in the immediate instincts and activities of the child himself.
-On that basis there is not much to be said about the _life_ of the
-child. A good deal might be said about the studying of the child, but
-the school is not the place where the child _lives_. Now the change
-which is coming into our education is the shifting of the center of
-gravity. It is a change, a revolution, not unlike that introduced by
-Copernicus when the astronomical center shifted from the earth to the
-sun. In this case the child becomes the sun about which the appliances
-of education revolve; he is the center about which they are organized.
-
-If we take an example from an ideal home, where the parent is
-intelligent enough to recognize what is best for the child, and is able
-to supply what is needed, we find the child learning through the social
-converse and constitution of the family. There are certain points of
-interest and value to him in the conversation carried on: statements are
-made, inquiries arise, topics are discussed, and the child continually
-learns. He states his experiences, his misconceptions are corrected.
-Again the child participates in the household occupations, and thereby
-gets habits of industry, order, and regard for the rights and ideas of
-others, and the fundamental habit of subordinating his activities to the
-general interest of the household. Participation in these household
-tasks becomes an opportunity for gaining knowledge. The ideal home would
-naturally have a workshop where the child could work out his
-constructive instincts. It would have a miniature laboratory in which
-his inquiries could be directed. The life of the child would extend out
-of doors to the garden, surrounding fields, and forests. He would have
-his excursions, his walks and talks, in which the larger world out of
-doors would open to him.
-
-Now, if we organize and generalize all of this, we have the ideal
-school. There is no mystery about it, no wonderful discovery of pedagogy
-or educational theory. It is simply a question of doing systematically
-and in a large, intelligent, and competent way what for various reasons
-can be done in most households only in a comparatively meager and
-haphazard manner. In the first place, the ideal home has to be enlarged.
-The child must be brought into contact with more grown people and with
-more children in order that there may be the freest and richest social
-life. Moreover, the occupations and relationships of the home
-environment are not specially selected for the growth of the child; the
-main object is something else, and what the child can get out of them is
-incidental. Hence the need of a school. In this school the life of the
-child becomes the all-controlling aim. All the media necessary to
-further the growth of the child center there. Learning?—certainly, but
-living primarily, and learning through and in relation to this living.
-When we take the life of the child centered and organized in this way,
-we do not find that he is first of all a listening being; quite the
-contrary.
-
-The statement so frequently made that education means “drawing out” is
-excellent, if we mean simply to contrast it with the process of pouring
-in. But, after all, it is difficult to connect the idea of drawing out
-with the ordinary doings of the child of three, four, seven, or eight
-years of age. He is already running over, spilling over, with activities
-of all kinds. He is not a purely latent being whom the adult has to
-approach with great caution and skill in order gradually to draw out
-some hidden germ of activity. The child is already intensely active, and
-the question of education is the question of taking hold of his
-activities, of giving them direction. Through direction, through
-organized use, they tend toward valuable results, instead of scattering
-or being left to merely impulsive expression.
-
-If we keep this before us, the difficulty I find uppermost in the minds
-of many people regarding what is termed the new education is not so much
-solved as dissolved; it disappears. A question often asked is: if you
-begin with the child’s ideas, impulses and interests, all so crude, so
-random and scattering, so little refined or spiritualized, how is he
-going to get the necessary discipline, culture and information? If there
-were no way open to us except to excite and indulge these impulses of
-the child, the question might well be asked. We should either have to
-ignore and repress the activities, or else to humor them. But if we have
-organization of equipment and of materials, there is another path open
-to us. We can direct the child’s activities, giving them exercise along
-certain lines, and can thus lead up to the goal which logically stands
-at the end of the paths followed.
-
-“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” Since they are not, since
-really to satisfy an impulse or interest means to work it out, and
-working it out involves running up against obstacles, becoming
-acquainted with materials, exercising ingenuity, patience, persistence,
-alertness, it of necessity involves discipline—ordering of power—and
-supplies knowledge. Take the example of the little child who wants to
-make a box. If he stops short with the imagination or wish, he certainly
-will not get discipline. But when he attempts to realize his impulse, it
-is a question of making his idea definite, making it into a plan, of
-taking the right kind of wood, measuring the parts needed, giving them
-the necessary proportions, etc. There is involved the preparation of
-materials, the sawing, planing, the sand-papering, making all the edges
-and corners to fit. Knowledge of tools and processes is inevitable. If
-the child realizes his instinct and makes the box, there is plenty of
-opportunity to gain discipline and perseverance, to exercise effort in
-overcoming obstacles, and to attain as well a great deal of information.
-
-So undoubtedly the little child who thinks he would like to cook has
-little idea of what it means or costs, or what it requires. It is simply
-a desire to “mess around,” perhaps to imitate the activities of older
-people. And it is doubtless possible to let ourselves down to that level
-and simply humor that interest. But here, too, if the impulse is
-exercised, utilized, it runs up against the actual world of hard
-conditions, to which it must accommodate itself; and there again come in
-the factors of discipline and knowledge. One of the children became
-impatient recently, at having to work things out by a long method of
-experimentation, and said: “Why do we bother with this? Let’s follow a
-recipe in a cook-book.” The teacher asked the children where the recipe
-came from, and the conversation showed that if they simply followed this
-they would not understand the reasons for what they were doing. They
-were then quite willing to go on with the experimental work. To follow
-that work will, indeed, give an illustration of just the point in
-question. Their occupation happened that day to be the cooking of eggs,
-as making a transition from the cooking of vegetables to that of meats.
-In order to get a basis of comparison they first summarized the
-constituent food elements in the vegetables and made a preliminary
-comparison with those found in meat. Thus they found that the woody
-fiber or cellulose in vegetables corresponded to the connective tissue
-in meat, giving the element of form and structure. They found that
-starch and starchy products were characteristic of the vegetables, that
-mineral salts were found in both alike, and that there was fat in both—a
-small quantity in vegetable food and a large amount in animal. They were
-prepared then to take up the study of albumen as the characteristic
-feature of animal food, corresponding to starch in the vegetables, and
-were ready to consider the conditions requisite for the proper treatment
-of albumen—the eggs serving as the material of experiment.
-
-[Illustration: CHILD’S DRAWING OF A CAVE AND TREES]
-
-They experimented first by taking water at various temperatures, finding
-out when it was scalding, simmering, and boiling hot, and ascertained
-the effect of the various degrees of temperature on the white of the
-egg. That worked out, they were prepared, not simply to cook eggs, but
-to understand the principle involved in the cooking of eggs. I do not
-wish to lose sight of the universal in the particular incident. For the
-child simply to desire to cook an egg, and accordingly drop it in water
-for three minutes, and take it out when he is told, is not educative.
-But for the child to realize his own impulse by recognizing the facts,
-materials and conditions involved, and then to regulate his impulse
-through that recognition, is educative. This is the difference, upon
-which I wish to insist, between exciting or indulging an interest and
-realizing it through its direction.
-
-Another instinct of the child is the use of pencil and paper. All
-children like to express themselves through the medium of form and
-color. If you simply indulge this interest by letting the child go on
-indefinitely, there is no growth that is more than accidental. But let
-the child first express his impulse, and then through criticism,
-question, and suggestion bring him to consciousness of what he has done,
-and what he needs to do, and the result is quite different. Here, for
-example, is the work of a seven-year-old child. It is not average work,
-it is the best work done among the little children, but it illustrates
-the particular principle of which I have been speaking. They had been
-talking about the primitive conditions of social life when people lived
-in caves. The child’s idea of that found expression in this way: the
-cave is neatly set up on the hill side in an impossible way. You see the
-conventional tree of childhood; a vertical line with horizontal branches
-on each side. If the child had been allowed to go on repeating this sort
-of thing day by day, he would be indulging his instinct rather than
-exercising it. But the child was now asked to look closely at trees, to
-compare those seen with the one drawn, to examine more closely and
-consciously into the conditions of his work. Then he drew trees from
-observation.
-
-Finally he drew again from combined observation, memory, and
-imagination. He made again a free illustration, expressing his own
-imaginative thought, but controlled by detailed study of actual trees.
-The result was a scene representing a bit of forest; so far as it goes,
-it seems to me to have as much poetic feeling as the work of an adult,
-while at the same time its trees are, in their proportions possible
-ones, not mere symbols.
-
-[Illustration: CHILD’S DRAWING OF A FOREST]
-
-If we roughly classify the impulses which are available in the school,
-we may group them under four heads. There is the social instinct of the
-children as shown in conversation, personal intercourse, and
-communication. We all know how self-centered the little child is at the
-age of four or five. If any new subject is brought up, if he says
-anything at all, it is: “I have seen that;” or, “My papa or mamma told
-me about that.” His horizon is not large; an experience must come
-immediately home to him, if he is to be sufficiently interested to
-relate it to others and seek theirs in return. And yet the egoistic and
-limited interest of little children is in this manner capable of
-infinite expansion. The language instinct is the simplest form of the
-social expression of the child. Hence it is a great, perhaps the
-greatest of all educational resources.
-
-Then there is the instinct of making—the constructive impulse. The
-child’s impulse to do finds expression first in play, in movement,
-gesture, and make-believe, becomes more definite, and seeks outlet in
-shaping materials into tangible forms and permanent embodiment. The
-child has not much instinct for abstract inquiry. The instinct of
-investigation seems to grow out of the combination of the constructive
-impulse with the conversational. There is no distinction between
-experimental science for little children and the work done in the
-carpenter shop. Such work as they can do in physics or chemistry is not
-for the purpose of making technical generalizations or even arriving at
-abstract truths. Children simply like to do things, and watch to see
-what will happen. But this can be taken advantage of, can be directed
-into ways where it gives results of value, as well as be allowed to go
-on at random.
-
-And so the expressive impulse of the children, the art instinct, grows
-also out of the communicating and constructive instincts. It is their
-refinement and full manifestation. Make the construction adequate, make
-it full, free, and flexible, give it a social motive, something to tell,
-and you have a work of art. Take one illustration of this in connection
-with the textile work—sewing and weaving. The children made a primitive
-loom in the shop; here the constructive instinct was appealed to. Then
-they wished to do something with this loom, to make something. It was
-the type of the Indian loom, and they were shown blankets woven by the
-Indians. Each child made a design kindred in idea to those of the Navajo
-blankets, and the one which seemed best adapted to the work in hand was
-selected. The technical resources were limited, but the coloring and
-form were worked out by the children. The example shown was made by the
-twelve-year-old children. Examination shows that it took patience,
-thoroughness, and perseverance to do the work. It involved not merely
-discipline and information of both a historical sort and the elements of
-technical design, but also something of the spirit of art in adequately
-conveying an idea.
-
-[Illustration: CHILD’S DRAWING OF HANDS SPINNING]
-
-One more instance of the connection of the art side with the
-constructive side. The children had been studying primitive spinning and
-carding, when one of them, twelve years of age, made a picture of one of
-the older children spinning. Here is another piece of work which is not
-quite average; it is better than the average. It is an illustration of
-two hands and the drawing out of the wool to get it ready for spinning.
-This was done by a child eleven years of age. But, upon the whole, with
-the younger children especially, the art impulse is connected mainly
-with the social instinct—the desire to tell, to represent.
-
-[Illustration: CHILD’S DRAWING OF A GIRL SPINNING]
-
-Now, keeping in mind these fourfold interests—the interest in
-conversation or communication; in inquiry, or finding out things; in
-making things, or construction; and in artistic expression—we may say
-they are the natural resources, the uninvested capital, upon the
-exercise of which depends the active growth of the child. I wish to give
-one or two illustrations, the first from the work of children seven
-years of age. It illustrates in a way the dominant desire of the
-children to talk, particularly about folks and of things in relation to
-folks. If you observe little children, you will find they are interested
-in the world of things mainly in its connection with people, as a
-background and medium of human concerns. Many anthropologists have told
-us there are certain identities in the child interests with those of
-primitive life. There is a sort or natural recurrence of the child mind
-to the typical activities of primitive peoples; witness the hut which
-the boy likes to build in the yard, playing hunt, with bows, arrows,
-spears, and so on. Again the question comes: What are we to do with this
-interest—are we to ignore it, or just excite and draw it out? Or shall
-we get hold of it and direct it to something ahead, something better?
-Some of the work that has been planned for our seven-year-old children
-has the latter end in view—to utilize this interest so that it shall
-become a means of seeing the progress of the human race. The children
-begin by imagining present conditions taken away until they are in
-contact with nature at first hand. That takes them back to a hunting
-people, to a people living in caves or trees and getting a precarious
-subsistence by hunting and fishing. They imagine as far as possible the
-various natural physical conditions adapted to that sort of life; say, a
-hilly, woody slope, near mountains and a river where fish would be
-abundant. Then they go on in imagination through the hunting to the
-semi-agricultural stage, and through the nomadic to the settled
-agricultural stage. The point I wish to make is that there is abundant
-opportunity thus given for actual study, for inquiry which results in
-gaining information. So, while the instinct primarily appeals to the
-social side, the interest of the child in people and their doings is
-carried on into the larger world of reality. For example, the children
-had some idea of primitive weapons, of the stone arrowhead, etc. That
-provided occasion for the testing of materials as regards their
-friability, their shape, texture, etc., resulting in a lesson in
-mineralogy, as they examined the different stones to find which was best
-suited to the purpose. The discussion of the iron age supplied a demand
-for the construction of a smelting oven made out of clay, and of
-considerable size. As the children did not get their drafts right at
-first, the mouth of the furnace not being in proper relation to the
-vent, as to size and position, instruction in the principles of
-combustion, the nature of drafts and of fuel, was required. Yet the
-instruction was not given ready-made; it was first needed, and then
-arrived at experimentally. Then the children took some material, such as
-copper, and went through a series of experiments, fusing it, working it
-into objects; and the same experiments were made with lead and other
-metals. This work has been also a continuous course in geography, since
-the children have had to imagine and work out the various physical
-conditions necessary to the different forms of social life implied. What
-would be the physical conditions appropriate to pastoral life? to the
-beginning of agriculture? to fishing? What would be the natural method
-of exchange between these peoples? Having worked out such points in
-conversation, they have afterward represented them in maps and
-sand-molding. Thus they have gained ideas of the various forms of the
-configuration of the earth, and at the same time have seen them in their
-relation to human activity, so that they are not simply external facts,
-but are fused and welded with social conceptions regarding the life and
-progress of humanity. The result, to my mind, justifies completely the
-conviction that children, in a year of such work (of five hours a week
-altogether), get indefinitely more acquaintance with facts of science,
-geography, and anthropology than they get where information is the
-professed end and object, where they are simply set to learning facts in
-fixed lessons. As to discipline, they get more training of attention,
-more power of interpretation, of drawing inferences, of acute
-observation and continuous reflection, than if they were put to working
-out arbitrary problems simply for the sake of discipline.
-
-I should like at this point to refer to the recitation. We all know what
-it has been—a placer where the child shows off to the teacher and the
-other children the amount of information he has succeeded in
-assimilating from the text-book. From this other standpoint, the
-recitation becomes preëminently a social meeting place; it is to the
-school what the spontaneous conversation is at home, excepting that it
-is more organized, following definite lines. The recitation becomes the
-social clearing-house, where experiences and ideas are exchanged and
-subjected to criticism, where misconceptions are corrected, and new
-lines of thought and inquiry are set up.
-
-This change of the recitation from an examination of knowledge already
-acquired to the free play of the children’s communicative instinct,
-affects and modifies all the language work of the school. Under the old
-_régime_ it was unquestionably a most serious problem to give the
-children a full and free use of language. The reason was obvious. The
-natural motive for language was seldom offered. In the pedagogical
-text-books language is defined as the medium of expressing thought. It
-becomes that, more or less, to adults with trained minds, but it hardly
-needs to be said that language is primarily a social thing, a means by
-which we give our experiences to others and get theirs again in return.
-When it is taken from its natural basis, it is no wonder that it becomes
-a complex and difficult problem to teach language. Think of the
-absurdity of having to teach language as a thing by itself. If there is
-anything the child will do before he goes to school, it is to talk of
-the things that interest him. But when there are no vital interests
-appealed to in the school, when language is used simply for the
-repetition of lessons, it is not surprising that one of the chief
-difficulties of school work has come to be instruction in the
-mother-tongue. Since the language taught is unnatural, not growing out
-of the real desire to communicate vital impressions and convictions, the
-freedom of children in its use gradually disappears, until finally the
-high-school teacher has to invent all kinds of devices to assist in
-getting any spontaneous and full use of speech. Moreover, when the
-language instinct is appealed to in a social way, there is a continual
-contact with reality. The result is that the child always has something
-in his mind to talk about, he has something to say; he has a thought to
-express, and a thought is not a thought unless it is one’s own. On the
-traditional method, the child must say something that he has merely
-learned. There is all the difference in the world between having
-something to say and having to say something. The child who has a
-variety of materials and facts wants to talk about them, and his
-language becomes more refined and full, because it is controlled and
-informed by realities. Reading and writing, as well as the oral use of
-language, may be taught on this basis. It can be done in a _related_
-way, as the outgrowth of the child’s social desire to recount his
-experiences and get in return the experiences of others, directed always
-through contact with the facts and forces which determine the truth
-communicated.
-
-I shall not have time to speak of the work of the older children, where
-the original crude instincts of construction and communication have been
-developed into something like scientifically directed inquiry, but I
-will give an illustration of the use of language following upon this
-experimental work. The work was on the basis of a simple experiment of
-the commonest sort, gradually leading the children out into geological
-and geographical study. The sentences that I am going to read seem to me
-poetic as well as “scientific.” “A long time ago when the earth was new,
-when it was lava, there was no water on the earth, and there was steam
-all round the earth up in the air, as there were many gases in the air.
-One of them was carbon dioxide. The steam became clouds, because the
-earth began to cool off, and after a while it began to rain, and the
-water came down and dissolved the carbon dioxide from the air.” There is
-a good deal more science in that than probably would be apparent at the
-outset. It represents some three months of work on the part of the
-child. The children kept daily and weekly records, but this is part of
-the summing up of the quarter’s work. I call this language poetic,
-because the child has a clear image and has a personal feeling for the
-realities imaged. I extract sentences from two other records to
-illustrate further the vivid use of language when there is a vivid
-experience back of it. “When the earth was cold enough to condense, the
-water, with the help of carbon dioxide, _pulls_ the calcium out of the
-rocks into a large body of water where the little animals could get it.”
-The other reads as follows: “When the earth cooled, calcium was in the
-rocks. Then the carbon dioxide and water united and formed a solution,
-and, as it ran, it _tore_ out the calcium and carried it on to the sea,
-where there were little animals who took it out of solution.” The use of
-such words as “pulled” and “tore” in connection with the process of
-chemical combination evidences a personal realization which compels its
-own appropriate expression.
-
-If I had not taken so much time in my other illustrations, I should like
-to show how, beginning with very simple material things, the children
-were led on to larger fields of investigation, and to the intellectual
-discipline that is the accompaniment of such research. I will simply
-mention the experiment in which the work began. It consisted in making
-precipitated chalk, used for polishing metals. The children, with simple
-apparatus—a tumbler, lime water, and a glass tube—precipitated the
-calcium carbonate out of the water; and from this beginning went on to a
-study of the processes by which rocks of various sorts, igneous,
-sedimentary, etc., had been formed on the surface of the earth and the
-places they occupy; then to points in the geography of the United
-States, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico; to the effects of these various bodies
-of rock, in their various configurations, upon the human occupations; so
-that this geological record finally rounded itself out into the life of
-man at the present time. The children saw and felt the connection
-between these geologic processes taking place ages and ages ago, and the
-physical conditions determining the industrial occupations of today.
-
-Of all the possibilities involved in the subject, “The School and the
-Life of the Child,” I have selected but one, because I have found that
-that one gives people more difficulty, is more of a stumbling-block,
-than any other. One may be ready to admit that it would be most
-desirable for the school to be a place in which the child should really
-live, and get a life-experience in which he should delight and find
-meaning for its own sake. But then we hear this inquiry: how, upon this
-basis, shall the child get the needed information; how shall he undergo
-the required discipline? Yes, it has come to this, that with many, if
-not most, people the normal processes of life appear to be incompatible
-with getting information and discipline. So I have tried to indicate, in
-a highly general and inadequate way (for only the school itself, in its
-daily operation, could give a detailed and worthy representation), how
-the problem works itself out—how it is possible to lay hold upon the
-rudimentary instincts of human nature, and, by supplying a proper
-medium, so control their expression as not only to facilitate and enrich
-the growth of the individual child, but also to supply the results, and
-far more, of technical information and discipline that have been the
-ideals of education in the past.
-
-But although I have selected this especial way of approach (as a
-concession to the question almost universally raised), I am not willing
-to leave the matter in this more or less negative and explanatory
-condition. Life is the great thing after all; the life of the child at
-its time and in its measure, no less than the life of the adult. Strange
-would it be, indeed, if intelligent and serious attention to what the
-child _now_ needs and is capable of in the way of a rich, valuable, and
-expanded life should somehow conflict with the needs and possibilities
-of later, adult life. “Let us live with our children,” certainly means,
-first of all, that our children shall live—not that they shall be
-hampered and stunted by being forced into all kinds of conditions, the
-most remote consideration of which is relevancy to the present life of
-the child. If we seek the kingdom of heaven, educationally, all other
-things shall be added unto us—which, being interpreted, is that if we
-identify ourselves with the real instincts and needs of childhood, and
-ask only after its fullest assertion and growth, the discipline and
-information and culture of adult life shall all come in their due
-season.
-
-Speaking of culture reminds me that in a way I have been speaking only
-of the outside of the child’s activity—only of the outward expression of
-his impulses toward saying, making, finding out, and creating. The real
-child, it hardly need be said, lives in the world of imaginative values,
-and ideas which find only imperfect outward embodiment. We hear much
-nowadays about the cultivation of the child’s “imagination.” Then we
-undo much of our own talk and work by a belief that the imagination is
-some special part of the child, that finds its satisfaction in some one
-particular direction—generally speaking, that of the unreal and
-make-believe, of the myth and made-up story. Why are we so hard of heart
-and so slow to believe? The imagination is the medium in which the child
-lives. To him there is everywhere and in everything that occupies his
-mind and activity at all, a surplusage of value and significance. The
-question of the relation of the school to the child’s life is at bottom
-simply this: shall we ignore this native setting and tendency, dealing
-not with the living child at all, but with the dead image we have
-erected, or shall we give it play and satisfaction? If we once believe
-in life and in the life of the child, then will all the occupations and
-uses spoken of, then will all history and science, become instruments of
-appeal and materials of culture to his imagination, and through that to
-the richness and the orderliness of his life. Where we now see only the
-outward doing and the outward product, there, behind all visible
-results, is the re-adjustment of mental attitude, the enlarged and
-sympathetic vision, the sense of growing power, and the willing ability
-to identify both insight and capacity with the interests of the world
-and man. Unless culture be a superficial polish, a veneering of mahogany
-over common wood, it surely is this—the growth of the imagination in
-flexibility, in scope, and in sympathy, till the life which the
-individual lives is informed with the life of nature and of society.
-When nature and society can live in the schoolroom, when the forms and
-tools of learning are subordinated to the substance of experience, then
-shall there be an opportunity for this identification, and culture shall
-be the democratic password.
-
-
-
-
- III
- WASTE IN EDUCATION
-
-
-The subject announced for today was “Waste in Education.” I should like
-first to state briefly its relation to the two preceding lectures. The
-first dealt with the school in its social aspects, and the necessary
-re-adjustments that have to be made to render it effective in present
-social conditions. The second dealt with the school in relation to the
-growth of individual children. Now the third deals with the school as
-itself an institution, both in relation to society and to its own
-members—the children. It deals with the question of organization,
-because all waste is the result of the lack of it, the motive lying
-behind organization being promotion of economy and efficiency. This
-question is not one of the waste of money or the waste of things. These
-matters count; but the primary waste is that of human life, the life of
-the children while they are at school, and afterward because of
-inadequate and perverted preparation.
-
-So, when we speak of organization, we are not to think simply of the
-externals; of that which goes by the name “school system”—the school
-board, the superintendent, and the building, the engaging and promotion
-of teachers, etc. These things enter in, but the fundamental
-organization is that of the school itself as a community of individuals,
-in its relations to other forms of social life. All waste is due to
-isolation. Organization is nothing but getting things into connection
-with one another, so that they work easily, flexibly, and fully.
-Therefore in speaking of this question of waste in education, I desire
-to call your attention to the isolation of the various parts of the
-school system, to the lack of unity in the aims of education, to the
-lack of coherence in its studies and methods.
-
-I have made a chart (I) which, while I speak of the isolations of the
-school system itself, may perhaps appeal to the eye and save a little
-time in verbal explanations. A paradoxical friend of mine says there is
-nothing so obscure as an illustration, and it is quite possible that my
-attempt to illustrate my point will simply prove the truth of his
-statement.
-
-The blocks represent the various elements in the school system, and are
-intended to indicate roughly the length of time given to each division,
-and also the overlapping, both in time and subjects studied, of the
-individual parts of the system. With each block is given the historical
-conditions in which it arose and its ruling ideal.
-
-[Illustration: Chart I]
-
- Professional Schools
- +---+---+---+---+---+---+
- |///|///|///|///|///| |
- |///|///|///|///|///| |
- +---+---+---+---+---+---+
- Mediæval The 19^{th} Century
- _Culture_ _Utility_
-
- High School
- Kindergarten Primary- or Academy
- +---+--+--+ +--+--+---+---+---+ +---+---+---+---+
- | | |//| |//| | | |///| |///| | |///|
- | | |//| |//| | | |///| |///| | |///|
- +---+--+--+ +--+--+---+---+---+ +---+---+---+---+
- 18^{th} Century 16^{th} Century Renaissance
- _Moral_ _Utility_ _Culture_
- _Discipline_
-
- University- College
- Graduate-------Schools
- +---+---+---+---+---+---+
- |///|///| | | | |
- |///|///| | | | |
- +---+---+---+---+---+---+
- Mediæval
- _Culture_
- _Discipline_
-
- Connecting Grammar or
- Class Intermediate School Normal
- +----+ +---+---+---+---+-- +---+---+---+---+
- |////| |///| | |///| |///| |///|///|
- |////| |///| | |///| |///| |///|///|
- +----+ +---+---+---+---+-- +---+---+---+---+
- 19^{th} Century Renaissance 19th Century
- _Culture_ _Utility_
- _Discipline_ _Culture_
-
- Technical Schools
- +---+---+---+---+---+
- | | | | | |
- | | | | | |
- +---+---+---+---+---+
- 19^{th} Century
- _Utility_
-
-The school system, upon the whole, has grown from the top down. During
-the middle ages it was essentially a cluster of professional
-schools—especially law and theology. Our present university comes down
-to us from the middle ages. I will not say that at present it is a
-mediæval institution, but it had its roots in the middle ages, and it
-has not outlived all mediæval traditions regarding learning.
-
-The kindergarten, rising with the present century, was a union of the
-nursery and of the philosophy of Schelling; a wedding of the plays and
-games which the mother carried on with her children, to Schelling’s
-highly romantic and symbolic philosophy. The elements that came from the
-actual study of child life—the continuation of the nursery—have remained
-a life-bringing force in all education; the Schellingesque factors made
-an obstruction between it and the rest of the school system, brought
-about isolations.
-
-The line drawn over the top indicates that there is a certain
-interaction between the kindergarten and the primary school; for, so far
-as the primary school remained in spirit foreign to the natural
-interests of child life, it was isolated from the kindergarten, so that
-it is a problem, at present, to introduce kindergarten methods into the
-primary school; the problem of the so-called connecting class. The
-difficulty is that the two are not one from the start. To get a
-connection the teacher has had to climb over the wall instead of
-entering in at the gate.
-
-On the side of aims, the ideal of the kindergarten was the moral
-development of the children, rather than instruction or discipline; an
-ideal sometimes emphasized to the point of sentimentality. The primary
-school grew practically out of the popular movement of the sixteenth
-century, when along with the invention of printing and the growth of
-commerce, it became a business necessity to know how to read, write, and
-figure. The aim was distinctly a practical one; it was utility; getting
-command of these tools, the symbols of learning, not for the sake of
-learning, but because they gave access to careers in life otherwise
-closed.
-
-The division next to the primary school is the grammar school. The term
-is not much used in the West, but is common in the eastern states. It
-goes back to the time of the revival of learning—a little earlier
-perhaps than the conditions out of which the primary school originated,
-and, even when contemporaneous, having a different ideal. It had to do
-with the study of language in the higher sense; because, at the time of
-the Renaissance, Latin and Greek connected people with the culture of
-the past, with the Roman and Greek world. The classic languages were the
-only means of escape from the limitations of the middle ages. Thus there
-sprang up the prototype of the grammar school, more liberal than the
-university (so largely professional in character), for the purpose of
-putting into the hands of the people the key to the old learning, that
-men might see a world with a larger horizon. The object was primarily
-culture, secondarily discipline. It represented much more than the
-present grammar school. It was the liberal element in the college,
-which, extending downward, grew into the academy and the high school.
-Thus the secondary school is still in part just a lower college (having
-an even higher curriculum than the college of a few centuries ago) or a
-preparatory department to a college, and in part a rounding up of the
-utilities of the elementary school.
-
-There appear then two products of the nineteenth century, the technical
-and normal schools. The schools of technology, engineering, etc., are,
-of course, mainly the development of nineteenth-century business
-conditions, as the primary school was the development of business
-conditions of the sixteenth century. The normal school arose because of
-the necessity for training teachers, with the idea partly of
-professional drill, and partly that of culture.
-
-Without going into more detail, we have some eight different parts of
-the school system as represented on the chart, all of which arose
-historically at different times, having different ideals in view, and
-consequently different methods. I do not wish to suggest that all of the
-isolation, all of the separation, that has existed in the past between
-the different parts of the school system still persists. One must,
-however, recognize that they have never yet been welded into one
-complete whole. The great problem in education on the administrative
-side is how to unite these different parts.
-
-Consider the training schools for teachers—the normal schools. These
-occupy at present a somewhat anomalous position, intermediate between
-the high school and the college, requiring the high-school preparation,
-and covering a certain amount of college work. They are isolated from
-the higher subject-matter of scholarship, since, upon the whole, their
-object has been to train persons _how_ to teach, rather than _what_ to
-teach; while, if we go to the college, we find the other half of this
-isolation—learning _what_ to teach, with almost a contempt for methods
-of teaching. The college is shut off from contact with children and
-youth. Its members, to a great extent, away from home and forgetting
-their own childhood, become eventually teachers with a large amount of
-subject-matter at command, and little knowledge of how this is related
-to the minds of those to whom it is to be taught. In this division
-between what to teach and how to teach, each side suffers from the
-separation.
-
-It is interesting to follow out the inter-relation between primary,
-grammar, and high schools. The elementary school has crowded up and
-taken many subjects previously studied in the old New England grammar
-school. The high school has pushed its subjects down. Latin and algebra
-have been put in the upper grades, so that the seventh and eighth grades
-are, after all, about all that is left of the old grammar school. They
-are a sort of amorphous composite, being partly a place where children
-go on learning what they already have learned (to read, write, and
-figure), and partly a place of preparation for the high school. The name
-in some parts of New England for these upper grades was “Intermediate
-School.” The term was a happy one; the work was simply intermediate
-between something that had been and something that was going to be,
-having no special meaning on its own account.
-
-Just as the parts are separated, so do the ideals differ—moral
-development, practical utility, general culture, discipline, and
-professional training. These aims are each especially represented in
-some distinct part of the system of education; and with the growing
-interaction of the parts, each is supposed to afford a certain amount of
-culture, discipline, and utility. But the lack of fundamental unity is
-witnessed in the fact that one study is still considered good for
-discipline, and another for culture; some parts of arithmetic, for
-example, for discipline and others for use, literature for culture,
-grammar for discipline, geography partly for utility, partly for
-culture; and so on. The unity of education is dissipated, and the
-studies become centrifugal; so much of this study to secure this end, so
-much of that to secure another, until the whole becomes a sheer
-compromise and patchwork between contending aims and disparate studies.
-The great problem in education on the administrative side is to secure
-the unity of the whole, in the place of a sequence of more or less
-unrelated and overlapping parts and thus to reduce the waste arising
-from friction, reduplication and transitions that are not properly
-bridged.
-
-[Illustration: Chart II]
-
- Business
- | 3. ^
- | |
- v |
- +------------------+
- | |
- | |
- Technical | |
- Research ---> | |
- | |
- | | --->
- 4. University | School | 1. Home
- | A | <---
- | |
- Professional <--- | |
- Schools Teachers | |
- | |
- | |
- +------------------+
- ^ |
- | |
- | v
- { Garden
- 2. { Park
- { Country
-
-In this second symbolic diagram (II) I wish to suggest that really the
-only way to unite the parts of the system is to unite each to life. We
-can get only an artificial unity so long as we confine our gaze to the
-school system itself. We must look at it as part of the larger whole of
-social life. This block (A) in the center represents the school system
-as a whole. (1) At one side we have the home, and the two arrows
-represent the free interplay of influences, materials, and ideas between
-the home life and that of the school. (2) Below we have the relation to
-the natural environment, the great field of geography in the widest
-sense. The school building has about it a natural environment. It ought
-to be in a garden, and the children from the garden would be led on to
-surrounding fields, and then into the wider country, with all its facts
-and forces. (3) Above is represented business life, and the necessity
-for free play between the school and the needs and forces of industry.
-(4) On the other side is the university proper, with its various phases,
-its laboratories, its resources in the way of libraries, museums, and
-professional schools.
-
-From the standpoint of the child, the great waste in the school comes
-from his inability to utilize the experiences he gets outside the school
-in any complete and free way within the school itself; while, on the
-other hand, he is unable to apply in daily life what he is learning at
-school. That is the isolation of the school—its isolation from life.
-When the child gets into the schoolroom he has to put out of his mind a
-large part of the ideas, interests, and activities that predominate in
-his home and neighborhood. So the school, being unable to utilize this
-everyday experience, sets painfully to work, on another tack and by a
-variety of means, to arouse in the child an interest in school studies.
-While I was visiting in the city of Moline a few years ago, the
-superintendent told me that they found many children every year, who
-were surprised to learn that the Mississippi river in the text-book had
-anything to do with the stream of water flowing past their homes. The
-geography being simply a matter of the schoolroom, it is more or less of
-an awakening to many children to find that the whole thing is nothing
-but a more formal and definite statement of the facts which they see,
-feel, and touch every day. When we think that we all live on the earth,
-that we live in an atmosphere, that our lives are touched at every point
-by the influences of the soil, flora, and fauna, by considerations of
-light and heat, and then think of what the school study of geography has
-been, we have a typical idea of the gap existing between the everyday
-experiences of the child, and the isolated material supplied in such
-large measure in the school. This is but an instance, and one upon which
-most of us may reflect long before we take the present artificiality of
-the school as other than a matter of course or necessity.
-
-Though there should be organic connection between the school and
-business life, it is not meant that the school is to prepare the child
-for any particular business, but that there should be a natural
-connection of the everyday life of the child with the business
-environment about him, and that it is the affair of the school to
-clarify and liberalize this connection, to bring it to consciousness,
-not by introducing special studies, like commercial geography and
-arithmetic, but by keeping alive the ordinary bonds of relation. The
-subject of compound-business-partnership is probably not in many of the
-arithmetics nowadays, though it was there not a generation ago, for the
-makers of text-books said that if they left out anything they could not
-sell their books. This compound-business-partnership originated as far
-back as the sixteenth century. The joint-stock company had not been
-invented, and as large commerce with the Indies and Americas grew up, it
-was necessary to have an accumulation of capital with which to handle
-it. One man said, “I will put in this amount of money for six months,”
-and another, “So much for two years,” and so on. Thus by joining
-together they got money enough to float their commercial enterprises.
-Naturally, then, “compound partnership” was taught in the schools. The
-joint-stock company was invented; compound partnership disappeared, but
-the problems relating to it stayed in the arithmetics for two hundred
-years. They were kept after they had ceased to have practical utility,
-for the sake of mental discipline—they were “such hard problems, you
-know.” A great deal of what is now in the arithmetics under the head of
-percentage is of the same nature. Children of twelve and thirteen years
-of age go through gain and loss calculations, and various forms of bank
-discount so complicated that the bankers long ago dispensed with them.
-And when it is pointed out that business is not done this way, we hear
-again of “mental discipline.” And yet there are plenty of real
-connections between the experience of children and business conditions
-which need to be utilized and illuminated. The child should study his
-commercial arithmetic and geography, not as isolated things by
-themselves, but in their reference to his social environment. The youth
-needs to become acquainted with the bank as a factor in modern life,
-with what it does, and how it does it; and then relevant arithmetical
-processes would have some meaning—quite in contradistinction to the
-time-absorbing and mind-killing examples in percentage, partial
-payments, etc., found in all our arithmetics.
-
-The connection with the university, as indicated in this chart, I need
-not dwell upon. I simply wish to indicate that there ought to be a free
-interaction between all the parts of the school system. There is much of
-utter triviality of subject-matter in elementary and secondary
-education. When we investigate it, we find that it is full of facts
-taught that are not facts, which have to be unlearned later on. Now,
-this happens because the “lower” parts of our system are not in vital
-connection with the “higher.” The university or college, in its idea, is
-a place of research, where investigation is going on, a place of
-libraries and museums, where the best resources of the past are
-gathered, maintained and organized. It is, however, as true in the
-school as in the university that the spirit of inquiry can be got only
-through and with the attitude of inquiry. The pupil must learn what has
-meaning, what enlarges his horizon, instead of mere trivialities. He
-must become acquainted with truths, instead of things that were regarded
-as such fifty years ago, or that are taken as interesting by the
-misunderstanding of a partially educated teacher. It is difficult to see
-how these ends can be reached except as the most advanced part of the
-educational system is in complete interaction with the most rudimentary.
-
-The next chart (III) is an enlargement of the second. The school
-building has swelled out, so to speak, the surrounding environment
-remaining the same, the home, the garden and country, the relation to
-business life and the university. The object is to show what the school
-must become to get out of its isolation and secure the organic
-connection with social life of which we have been speaking. It is not
-our architect’s plan for the school building that we hope to have; but
-it is a diagrammatic representation of the idea which we want embodied
-in the school building. On the lower side you see the dining-room and
-the kitchen, at the top the wood and metal shops, and the textile room
-for sewing and weaving. The center represents the manner in which all
-come together in the library; that is to say, in a collection of the
-intellectual resources of all kinds that throw light upon the practical
-work, that give it meaning and liberal value. If the four corners
-represent practice, the interior represents the theory of the practical
-activities. In other words, the object of these forms of practice in the
-school is not found chiefly in themselves, or in the technical skill of
-cooks, seamstresses, carpenters and masons, but in their connection, on
-the social side, with the life without; while on the individual side
-they respond to the child’s need of action, of expression, of desire to
-do something, to be constructive and creative, instead of simply passive
-and conforming. Their great significance is that they keep the balance
-between the social and individual sides—the chart symbolizing
-particularly the connection with the social. Here on one side is the
-home. How naturally the lines of connection play back and forth between
-the home and the kitchen and the textile room of the school! The child
-can carry over what he learns in the home and utilize it in the school;
-and the things learned in the school he applies at home. These are the
-two great things in breaking down isolation, in getting connection—to
-have the child come to school with all the experience he has got outside
-the school, and to leave it with something to be immediately used in his
-everyday life. The child comes to the traditional school with a healthy
-body and a more or less unwilling mind, though, in fact, he does not
-bring both his body and mind with him; he has to leave his mind behind,
-because there is no way to use it in the school. If he had a purely
-abstract mind, he could bring it to school with him, but his is a
-concrete one, interested in concrete things, and unless these things get
-over into school life, he cannot take his mind with him. What we want is
-to have the child come to school with a whole mind and a whole body, and
-leave school with a fuller mind and an even healthier body. And speaking
-of the body suggests that, while there is no gymnasium in these
-diagrams, the active life carried on in its four corners brings with it
-constant physical exercise, while our gymnasium proper will deal with
-the particular weaknesses of children and their correction, and will
-attempt more consciously to build up the thoroughly sound body as the
-abode of the sound mind.
-
-[Illustration: Chart III]
-
- Business
- | |
- | |
- +------------+<= =>+------------+
- | | | |
- Technical Schools | | | Textile |
- Laboratory | Shop | | Industries |
- Research | | | |
- | +------+ |-----|
- | | |
- +-------+ +-------+<== |
- | | | =>
- | Library | Home
- | B | | =>
- +-------+ +-------+<== |
- University | | |
- Library | +------+ |-----|
- Museum | Dining | | |
- | Room | | Kitchen |
- | | | |
- | | ==>| |
- +------------+ | +------------+
- | |
- | |
- Garden<==
- Park
- Country
-
-That the dining-room and kitchen connect with the country and its
-processes and products it is hardly necessary to say. Cooking may be so
-taught that it has no connection with country life, and with the
-sciences that find their unity in geography. Perhaps it generally has
-been taught without these connections being really made. But all the
-materials that come into the kitchen have their origin in the country;
-they come from the soil, are nurtured through the influences of light
-and water, and represent a great variety of local environments. Through
-this connection, extending from the garden into the larger world, the
-child has his most natural introduction to the study of the sciences.
-Where did these things grow? What was necessary to their growth? What
-their relation to the soil? What the effect of different climatic
-conditions? and so on. We all know what the old-fashioned botany was:
-partly collecting flowers that were pretty, pressing and mounting them;
-partly pulling these flowers to pieces and giving technical names to the
-different parts, finding all the different leaves, naming all their
-different shapes and forms. It was a study of plants without any
-reference to the soil, to the country, or to growth. In contrast, a real
-study of plants takes them in their natural environment and in their
-uses as well, not simply as food, but in all their adaptations to the
-social life of man. Cooking becomes as well a most natural introduction
-to the study of chemistry, giving the child here also something which he
-can at once bring to bear upon his daily experience. I once heard a very
-intelligent woman say that she could not understand how science could be
-taught to little children, because she did not see how they could
-understand atoms and molecules. In other words, since she did not see
-how highly abstract facts could be presented to the child independently
-of daily experience, she could not understand how science could be
-taught at all. Before we smile at this remark, we need to ask ourselves
-if she is alone in her assumption, or whether it simply formulates
-almost all of our school practice.
-
-The same relations with the outside world are found in the carpentry and
-the textile shops. They connect with the country, as the source of their
-materials, with physics, as the science of applying energy, with
-commerce and distribution, with art in the development of architecture
-and decoration. They have also an intimate connection with the
-university on the side of its technological and engineering schools;
-with the laboratory, and its scientific methods and results.
-
-To go back to the square which is marked the library (Chart III, A): if
-you imagine rooms half in the four corners and half in the library, you
-will get the idea of the recitation room. That is the place where the
-children bring the experiences, the problems, the questions, the
-particular facts which they have found, and discuss them so that new
-light may be thrown upon them, particularly new light from the
-experience of others, the accumulated wisdom of the world—symbolized in
-the library. Here is the organic relation of theory and practice; the
-child not simply doing things, but getting also the _idea_ of what he
-does; getting from the start some intellectual conception that enters
-into his practice and enriches it; while every idea finds, directly or
-indirectly, some application in experience, and has some effect upon
-life. This, I need hardly say, fixes the position of the “book” or
-reading in education. Harmful as a substitute for experience, it is
-all-important in interpreting and expanding experience.
-
-The other chart (IV) illustrates precisely the same idea. It gives the
-symbolic upper story of this ideal school. In the upper corners are the
-laboratories; in the lower corners are the studios for art work, both
-the graphic and auditory arts. The questions, the chemical and physical
-problems, arising in the kitchen and shop, are taken to the laboratories
-to be worked out. For instance, this past week one of the older groups
-
-[Illustration: Chart IV]
-
- +------------+ +------------+
- | | | |
- | Physical | | Biological |
- Laboratories |and Chemical| | Laboratory |
- Research |Laboratories| | |
- | +------+ |
- | |
- +-------+ +-------+
- University | |
- | Museum |
- | |
- Library +-------+ +-------+
- Museum | |
- | +------+ |
- | | | |
- | Art | | Music |
- | | | |
- | | | |
- +------------+ +------------+
-
-of children doing practical work in weaving which involved the use of
-the spinning wheel, worked out the diagrams of the direction of forces
-concerned in treadle and wheel, and the ratio of velocities between
-wheel and spindle. In the same manner, the plants with which the child
-has to do in cooking, afford the basis for a concrete interest in
-botany, and may be taken and studied by themselves. In a certain school
-in Boston science work for months was centered in the growth of the
-cotton plant, and yet something new was brought in every day. We hope to
-do similar work with all the types of plants that furnish materials for
-sewing and weaving. These examples will suggest, I hope, the relation
-which the laboratories bear to the rest of the school.
-
-The drawing and music, or the graphic and auditory arts, represent the
-culmination, the idealization, the highest point of refinement of all
-the work carried on. I think everybody who has not a purely literary
-view of the subject recognizes that genuine art grows out of the work of
-the artisan. The art of the Renaissance was great, because it grew out
-of the manual arts of life. It did not spring up in a separate
-atmosphere, however ideal, but carried on to their spiritual meaning
-processes found in homely and everyday forms of life. The school should
-observe this relationship. The merely artisan side is narrow, but the
-mere art, taken by itself, and grafted on from without, tends to become
-forced, empty, sentimental. I do not mean, of course, that all art work
-must be correlated in detail to the other work of the school, but simply
-that a spirit of union gives vitality to the art, and depth and richness
-to the other work. All art involves physical organs, the eye and hand,
-the ear and voice; and yet it is something more than the mere technical
-skill required by the organs of expression. It involves an idea, a
-thought, a spiritual rendering of things; and yet it is other than any
-number of ideas by themselves. It is a living union of thought and the
-instrument of expression. This union is symbolized by saying that in the
-ideal school the art work might be considered to be that of the shops,
-passed through the alembic of library and museum into action again.
-
-Take the textile room as an illustration of such a synthesis. I am
-talking about a future school, the one we hope, some time, to have. The
-basal fact in that room is that it is a workshop, doing actual things in
-sewing, spinning, and weaving. The children come into immediate
-connection with the materials, with various fabrics of silk, cotton,
-linen and wool. Information at once appears in connection with these
-materials; their origin, history, their adaptation to particular uses,
-and the machines of various kinds by which the raw materials are
-utilized. Discipline arises in dealing with the problems involved, both
-theoretical and practical. Whence does the culture arise? Partly from
-seeing all these things reflected through the medium of their scientific
-and historic conditions and associations, whereby the child learns to
-appreciate them as technical achievements, as thoughts precipitated in
-action; and partly because of the introduction of the art idea into the
-room itself. In the ideal school there would be something of this sort:
-first, a complete industrial museum, giving samples of materials in
-various stages of manufacture, and the implements, from the simplest to
-the most complex, used in dealing with them; then a collection of
-photographs and pictures illustrating the landscapes and the scenes from
-which the materials come, their native homes, and their places of
-manufacture. Such a collection would be a vivid and continual lesson in
-the synthesis of art, science, and industry. There would be, also,
-samples of the more perfect forms of textile work, as Italian, French,
-Japanese, and Oriental. There would be objects illustrating motives of
-design and decoration which have entered into production. Literature
-would contribute its part in its idealized representation of the
-world-industries, as the Penelope in the Odyssey—a classic in literature
-only because the character is an adequate embodiment of a certain
-industrial phase of social life. So, from Homer down to the present
-time, there is a continuous procession of related facts which have been
-translated into terms of art. Music lends its share, from the Scotch
-song at the wheel to the spinning song of Marguerite, or of Wagner’s
-Senta. The shop becomes a pictured museum, appealing to the eye. It
-would have not only materials, beautiful woods and designs, but would
-give a synopsis of the historical evolution of architecture in its
-drawings and pictures.
-
-Thus I have attempted to indicate how the school may be connected with
-life so that the experience gained by the child in a familiar,
-commonplace way is carried over and made use of there, and what the
-child learns in the school is carried back and applied in everyday life,
-making the school an organic whole, instead of a composite of isolated
-parts. The isolation of studies as well as of parts of the school system
-disappears. Experience has its geographical aspect, its artistic and its
-literary, its scientific and its historical sides. All studies arise
-from aspects of the one earth and the one life lived upon it. We do not
-have a series of stratified earths, one of which is mathematical,
-another physical, another historical, and so on. We should not live very
-long in any one taken by itself. We live in a world where all sides are
-bound together. All studies grow out of relations in the one great
-common world. When the child lives in varied but concrete and active
-relationship to this common world, his studies are naturally unified. It
-will no longer be a problem to correlate studies. The teacher will not
-have to resort to all sorts of devices to weave a little arithmetic into
-the history lesson, and the like. Relate the school to life, and all
-studies are of necessity correlated.
-
-Moreover, if the school is related as a whole to life as a whole, its
-various aims and ideals—culture, discipline, information, utility—cease
-to be variants, for one of which we must select one study and for
-another another. The growth of the child in the direction of social
-capacity and service, his larger and more vital union with life, becomes
-the unifying aim; and discipline, culture and information fall into
-place as phases of this growth.
-
-I wish to say one word more about the relationship of our particular
-school to the University. The problem is to unify, to organize
-education, to bring all its various factors together, through putting it
-as a whole into organic union with everyday life. That which lies back
-of the pedagogical school of the University is the necessity of working
-out something to serve as a model for such unification, extending from
-work beginning with the four-year-old child up through the graduate work
-of the University. Already we have much help from the University in
-scientific work planned, sometimes even in detail, by heads of the
-departments. The graduate student comes to us with his researches and
-methods, suggesting ideas and problems. The library and museum are at
-hand. We want to bring all things educational together; to break down
-the barriers that divide the education of the little child from the
-instruction of the maturing youth; to identify the lower and the higher
-education, so that it shall be demonstrated to the eye that there is no
-lower and higher, but simply education.
-
-Speaking more especially with reference to the pedagogical side of the
-work: I suppose the oldest university chair of pedagogy in our country
-is about twenty years old—that of the University of Michigan, founded in
-the latter seventies. But there are only one or two that have tried to
-make a connection between theory and practice. They teach for the most
-part by theory, by lectures, by reference to books, rather than through
-the actual work of teaching itself. At Columbia, through the Teachers’
-College, there is an extensive and close connection between the
-University and the training of teachers. Something has been done in one
-or two other places along the same line. We want an even more intimate
-union here, so that the University shall put all its resources at the
-disposition of the elementary school, contributing to the evolution of
-valuable subject-matter and right method, while the school in turn will
-be a laboratory in which the student of education sees theories and
-ideas demonstrated, tested, criticised, enforced, and the evolution of
-new truths. We want the school in its relation to the University to be a
-working model of a unified education.
-
-A word as to the relation of the school to educational interests
-generally. I heard once that the adoption of a certain method in use in
-our school was objected to by a teacher on this ground: “You know that
-it is an experimental school. They do not work under the same conditions
-that we are subject to.” Now, the purpose of performing an experiment is
-that other people need not experiment; at least need not experiment so
-much, may have something definite and positive to go by. An experiment
-demands particularly favorable conditions in order that results may be
-reached both freely and securely. It has to work unhampered, with all
-the needed resources at command. Laboratories lie back of all the great
-business enterprises of today, back of every great factory, every
-railway and steamship system. Yet the laboratory is not a business
-enterprise; it does not aim to secure for itself the conditions of
-business life, nor does the commercial undertaking repeat the
-laboratory. There is a difference between working out and testing a new
-truth, or a new method, and applying it on a wide scale, making it
-available for the mass of men, making it commercial. But the first thing
-is to discover the truth, to afford all necessary facilities, for this
-is the most practical thing in the world in the long run. We do not
-expect to have other schools literally imitate what we do. A working
-model is not something to be copied; it is to afford a demonstration of
-the feasibility of the principle, and of the methods which make it
-feasible. So (to come back to our own point) we want here to work out
-the problem of the unity, the organization of the school system in
-itself, and to do this by relating it so intimately to life as to
-demonstrate the possibility and necessity of such organization for all
-education.
-
-
-
-
- IV
- THREE YEARS OF THE UNIVERSITY ELEMENTARY SCHOOL[1]
-
-
-The school was started the first week in January, three years ago. I
-shall try this afternoon to give a brief statement of the ideas and
-problems that were in mind when the experiment was started, and a sketch
-of the development of the work since that time. We began in a small
-house in Fifty-seventh street, with fifteen children. We found ourselves
-the next year with twenty-five children in Kimbark avenue, and then
-moved in January to Rosalie court, the larger quarters enabling us to
-take forty children. The next year the numbers increased to sixty, the
-school remaining at Rosalie court. This year we have had ninety-five on
-the roll at one time, and are located at 5412 Ellis avenue, where we
-hope to stay till we have a building and grounds of our own.
-
-Footnote 1:
-
- Stenographic report of a talk by John Dewey at a meeting of the
- Parents’ Association of the University Elementary School, February,
- 1899; somewhat revised.
-
-The children during the first year of the school were between the ages
-of six and nine. Now their ages range between four and thirteen—the
-members of the oldest group being in their thirteenth year. This is the
-first year that we have children under six, and this has been made
-possible through the liberality of friends in Honolulu, H. I., who are
-building up there a memorial kindergarten along the same lines.
-
-The expenses of the school during the first year, of two terms only,
-were between $1,300 and $1,400. The expenses this year will be about
-$12,000. Of this amount $5,500 will come from tuitions; $5,000 has been
-given by friends interested in the school, and there remains about
-$1,500 yet to be raised for the conduct of the school. This is an
-indication of the increase of expenses. The average expense per pupil is
-about the same since the start, _i. e._, $120 per child per school year.
-Relatively speaking, this year the expenses of the school took something
-of a jump, through the expense of moving to a new building, and the
-repairs and changes there necessary. An increase in the staff of
-teachers has also enlarged the work as well as the debits of the school.
-Next year (1899–1900) we hope to have about 120 children, and apparently
-the expenses will be about $2,500 more than this. Of this amount $2,000
-will be met by the increase in tuition from the pupils. The cost of a
-child to the school, $120 a year, is precisely the tuition charged by
-the University for students and is double the average tuition charged by
-the school. But it is not expected that the University tuition will come
-anywhere near meeting the expense involved there. One reason for not
-increasing the tuition here, even if it were advisable for other
-reasons, is that it is well to emphasize, from an educational point of
-view, that elementary as well as advanced education requires endowment.
-There is every reason why money should be spent freely for the
-organization and maintenance of foundation work in education as well as
-for the later stages.
-
-The elementary school has had from the outset two sides: one, the
-obvious one of instruction of the children who have been intrusted to
-it; the other, relationship to the University, since the school is under
-the charge, and forms a part of the pedagogical work of the University.
-
-When the school was started, there were certain ideas in mind—perhaps it
-would be better to say questions and problems; certain points which it
-seemed worth while to test. If you will permit one personal word, I
-should like to say that it is sometimes thought that the school started
-out with a number of ready-made principles and ideas which were to be
-put into practice at once. It has been popularly assumed that I am the
-author of these ready-made ideas and principles which were to go into
-execution. I take this opportunity to say that the educational conduct
-of the school, as well as its administration, the selection of
-subject-matter, and the working out of the course of study, as well as
-actual instruction of children, have been almost entirely in the hands
-of the teachers of the school; and that there has been a gradual
-development of the educational principles and methods involved, not a
-fixed equipment. The teachers started with question marks, rather than
-with fixed rules, and if any answers have been reached, it is the
-teachers in the school who have supplied them. We started upon the whole
-with four such questions, or problems:
-
-1. What can be done, and how can it be done, to bring the school into
-closer relation with the home and neighborhood life—instead of having
-the school a place where the child comes solely to learn certain
-lessons? What can be done to break down the barriers which have
-unfortunately come to separate the school life from the rest of the
-everyday life of the child? This does not mean, as it is sometimes,
-perhaps, interpreted to mean, that the child should simply take up in
-the school things already experienced at home and study them, but that,
-so far as possible, the child shall have the same attitude and point of
-view in the school as in the home; that he shall find the same interest
-in going to school, and in there doing things worth doing for their own
-sake, that he finds in the plays and occupations which busy him in his
-home and neighborhood life. It means, again, that the motives which keep
-the child at work and growing at home shall be used in the school, so
-that he shall not have to acquire another set of principles of actions
-belonging only to the school—separate from those of the home. It is a
-question of the unity of the child’s experience, of its actuating
-motives and aims, not of amusing or even interesting the child.
-
-2. What can be done in the way of introducing subject-matter in history
-and science and art, that shall have a positive value and real
-significance in the child’s own life; that shall represent, even to the
-youngest children, something worthy of attainment in skill or knowledge;
-as much so to the little pupil as are the studies of the high-school or
-college student to him? You know what the traditional curriculum of the
-first few years is, even though many modifications have been made. Some
-statistics have been collected showing that 75 or 80 per cent. of the
-first three years of a child in school are spent upon the form—not the
-substance—of learning, the mastering of the symbols of reading, writing,
-and arithmetic. There is not much positive nutriment in this. Its
-purpose is important—is necessary—but it does not represent the same
-kind of increase in a child’s intellectual and moral experience that is
-represented by positive truth of history and nature, or by added insight
-into reality and beauty. One thing, then, we wanted to find out is how
-much can be given a child that is really worth his while to get, in
-knowledge of the world about him, of the forces in the world, of
-historical and social growth, and in capacity to express himself in a
-variety of artistic forms. From the strictly educational side this has
-been the chief problem of the school. It is along this line that we hope
-to make our chief contribution to education in general; we hope, that
-is, to work out and publish a positive body of subject-matter which may
-be generally available.
-
-3. How can instruction in these formal, symbolic branches—the mastering
-of the ability to read, write, and use figures intelligently—be carried
-on with everyday experience and occupation as their background and in
-definite relations to other studies of more inherent content, and be
-carried on in such a way that the child shall feel their necessity
-through their connection with subjects which appeal to him on their own
-account? If this can be accomplished, he will have a vital motive for
-getting the technical capacity. It is not meant, as has been sometimes
-jocosely stated, that the child learn to bake and sew at school, and to
-read, write, and figure at home. It is intended that these formal
-subjects shall not be presented in such large doses at first as to be
-the exclusive objects of attention, and that the child shall be led by
-that which he is doing to feel the need for acquiring skill in the use
-of symbols and the immediate power they give. In any school, if the
-child realizes the motive for the use and application of number and
-language he has taken the longest step toward securing the power; and he
-can realize the motive only as he has some particular—not some general
-and remote—use for the symbols.
-
-4. Individual attention. This is secured by small groupings—eight or ten
-in a class—and a large number of teachers supervising systematically the
-intellectual needs and attainments and physical well-being and growth of
-the child. To secure this we have now 135 hours of instructors’ time per
-week, that is, the time of nine teachers for three hours per day, or one
-teacher per group. It requires but a few words to make this statement
-about attention to individual powers and needs, and yet the whole of the
-school’s aims and methods, moral, physical, intellectual, are bound up
-in it.
-
-I think these four points present a fair statement of what we have set
-out to discover. The school is often called an experimental school, and
-in one sense that is the proper name. I do not like to use it too much,
-for fear parents will think we are experimenting upon the children, and
-that they naturally object to. But it is an experimental school—at least
-I hope so—with reference to education and educational problems. We have
-attempted to find out by trying, by doing—not alone by discussion and
-theorizing—_whether_ these problems may be worked out, and _how_ they
-may be worked out.
-
-Next a few words about the means that have been used in the school in
-order to test these four questions, and to supply their answers, and
-first as to the place given to hand-work of different kinds in the
-school. There are three main lines regularly pursued: (_a_) the
-shop-work with wood and tools, (_b_) cooking work, and (_c_) work with
-textiles—sewing and weaving. Of course, there is other hand-work in
-connection with science, as science is largely of an experimental
-nature. It is a fact that may not have come to your attention that a
-large part of the best and most advanced scientific work involves a
-great deal of manual skill, the training of the hand and eye. It is
-impossible for one to be a first-class worker in science without this
-training in manipulation, and in handling apparatus and materials. In
-connection with the history work, especially with the younger children,
-hand-work is brought in in the way of making implements, weapons, tools,
-etc. Of course, the art work is another side—drawing, painting, and
-modeling. Logically, perhaps, the gymnasium work does not come in here,
-but as a means of developing moral and intellectual control through the
-medium of the body it certainly does. The children have one-half hour
-per day of this form of physical exercise. Along this line we have found
-that hand-work, in large variety and amount, is the most easy and
-natural method of keeping up the same attitude of the child in and out
-of the school. The child gets the largest part of his acquisitions
-through his bodily activities, until he learns to work systematically
-with the intellect. That is the purpose of this work in the school, to
-direct these activities, to systematize and organize them, so that they
-shall not be as haphazard and as wandering as they are outside of
-school. The problem of making these forms of practical activity work
-continuously and definitely together, leading from one factor of skill
-to another, from one intellectual difficulty to another, has been one of
-the most difficult, and at the same time one in which we have been most
-successful. The various kinds of work, carpentry, cooking, sewing, and
-weaving, are selected as involving different kinds of skill, and
-demanding different types of intellectual attitude on the part of the
-child, and because they represent some of the most important activities
-of the everyday outside world: the question of living under shelter, of
-daily food and clothing, of the home, of personal movement and exchange
-of goods. He gets also the training of sense organs, of touch, of sight,
-and the ability to coördinate eye and hand. He gets healthy exercise;
-for the child demands a much larger amount of physical activity than the
-formal program of the ordinary school permits. There is also a continual
-appeal to memory, to judgment, in adapting ends to means, a training in
-habits of order, industry, and neatness in the care of the tools and
-utensils, and in doing things in a systematic, instead of a haphazard,
-way. Then, again, these practical occupations make a background,
-especially in the earlier groups, for the later studies. The children
-get a good deal of chemistry in connection with cooking, of number work
-and geometrical principles in carpentry, and a good deal of geography in
-connection with their theoretical work in weaving and sewing. History
-also comes in with the origin and growth of various inventions, and
-their effects upon social life and political organization.
-
-Perhaps more attention, upon the whole, has been given to our second
-point, that of positive subject-matter, than to any one other thing. On
-the history side the curriculum is now fairly well worked out. The
-younger children begin with the home and occupations of the home. In the
-sixth year the intention is that the children should study occupations
-outside the home, the larger social industries—farming, mining, lumber,
-etc.—that they may see the complex and various social industries on
-which life depends, while incidentally they investigate the use of the
-various materials—woods, metals, and the processes applied—thus getting
-a beginning of scientific study. The next year is given to the
-historical development of industry and invention—starting with man as a
-savage and carrying him through the typical phases of his progress
-upward, until the iron age is reached and man begins to enter upon a
-civilized career. The object of the study of primitive life is not to
-keep the child interested in lower and relatively savage stages, but to
-show him the steps of progress and development, especially along the
-line of invention, by which man was led into civilization. There is a
-certain nearness, after all, in the child to primitive forms of life.
-They are much more simple than existing institutions. By throwing the
-emphasis upon the progress of man, and upon the way advance has been
-made, we hope to avoid the objections that hold against paying too much
-attention to the crudities and distracting excitements of savage life.
-
-The next two or three years, _i. e._, the fourth and fifth grades, and
-perhaps the sixth, will be devoted to American history. It is then that
-history, properly speaking, begins, as the study of primitive life can
-hardly be so called.
-
-Then comes Greek history and Roman, in the regular chronological order,
-each year having its own work planned with reference to what has come
-before and after.
-
-The science work was more difficult to arrange and systematize, because
-there was so little to follow—so little that has been already done in an
-organized way. We are now at work upon a program,[2] and I shall not
-speak in detail about it. The first two or three years cultivate the
-children’s powers of observation, lead them to sympathetic interest in
-the habits of plants and animals, and to look at things with reference
-to their uses. Then the center of the work becomes geographical—the
-study of the earth, as the most central thing. From this almost all the
-work grows out, and to it the work goes back. Another standpoint in the
-science work is that of the application of natural forces to the service
-of man through machines. Last year a good deal of work was done in
-electricity (and will be repeated this year), based on the telegraph and
-telephone—taking up the things that can easily be grasped.
-
-Footnote 2:
-
- This year’s program is published in the _Elementary School Record_.
- Address The University of Chicago Press for particulars.
-
-In mechanics they have studied locks and clocks with reference to the
-adaptation of the various parts of the machinery. All this work makes a
-most excellent basis for more formal physics later on. Cooking gives
-opportunity for getting a great many ideas of heat and water, and of
-their effects. The scientific work taken up in the school differs mainly
-from that of other schools in having the experimental part—physics and
-chemistry—emphasized, and is not confined simply to nature study—the
-study of plants and animals. Not that the latter is less valuable, but
-that we find it possible to introduce the physical aspects from the
-first.
-
-If I do not spend a large amount of time in speaking of the music and
-art work, it is not because they are not considered valuable and
-important—certainly as much so as any other work done in the school, not
-only in the development of the child’s moral and æsthetic nature, but
-also from a strictly intellectual point of view. I know of no work in
-the school that better develops the power of attention, the habit of
-observation and of consecutiveness, of seeing parts in relation to a
-whole.
-
-I shall now say a few words about the administrative side of the school.
-At the outset we mixed up the children of different ages and attainments
-as much as possible, believing there were mental advantages in the
-give-and-take thus secured, as well as the moral advantages in having
-the older assume certain responsibilities in the care of the younger. As
-the school grew, it became necessary to abandon the method, and to group
-the children with reference to their common capacities. These groupings,
-however, are based, not on ability to read and write, but upon
-similarity of mental attitude and interest, and upon general
-intellectual capacity and mental alertness. There are ways in which we
-are still trying to carry out the idea of mixing up the children, that
-we may not build the rigid stepladder system of the “graded” school. One
-step in this direction is having the children move about and come in
-contact with different teachers. While there are difficulties and evils
-connected with this, I think one of the most useful things in the school
-is that children come into intimate relation with a number of different
-personalities. The children also meet in general assemblies—for singing,
-and for the report of the whole school work as read by members of the
-different groups. The older children are also given a half hour a week
-in which to join some of the younger groups, and, if possible, as in
-hand-work, enter into the work of the younger children. In various ways
-we are attempting to keep a family spirit throughout the school, and not
-the feeling of isolated classes and grades.
-
-The organization of the teaching force has gradually become
-departmental, as the needs of the work have indicated its chief
-branches. So we now have recognized divisions of Science, History,
-Domestic or Household Arts, Manual Training in the limited sense (wood
-and metals), Music, Art (that is, drawing, water colors, clay modeling,
-etc.), and Gymnasium. As the work goes on into the secondary period, the
-languages and mathematics will also of necessity assume a more
-differentiated and distinct position. As it is sometimes said that
-correlated or thoroughly harmonized work cannot be secured upon this
-basis, I am happy to say that our experience shows positively that there
-are no intrinsic difficulties. Through common devotion to the best
-development of the child, through common loyalty to the main aims and
-methods of the school, our teachers have demonstrated that in education,
-as in business, the best organization is secured through proper regard
-for natural divisions of labor, interest, and training. The child
-secures the advantage in discipline and knowledge of contact with
-experts in each line, while the individual teachers serve the common
-thought in diverse ways, thus multiplying and reinforcing it.
-
-Upon the moral side, that of so-called discipline and order, where the
-work of the University Elementary School has perhaps suffered most from
-misunderstanding and misrepresentation, I shall say only that our ideal
-has been, and continues to be, that of the best form of family life,
-rather than that of a rigid graded school. In the latter, the large
-number of children under the care of a single teacher, and the very
-limited number of modes of activity open to the pupils, have made
-necessary certain fixed and somewhat external forms of “keeping order.”
-It would be very stupid to copy these, under the changed conditions of
-our school, its small groups permitting and requiring the most intimate
-personal acquaintance of child and teacher, and its great variety of
-forms of work, with their differing adaptations to the needs of
-different children. If we have permitted to our children more than the
-usual amount of freedom, it has not been in order to relax or decrease
-real discipline, but because under our particular conditions larger and
-less artificial responsibilities could thus be required of the children,
-and their entire development of body and spirit be more harmonious and
-complete. And I am confident that the parents who have intrusted their
-children to us for any length of time will agree in saying that, while
-the children like, or love, to come to school, yet work, and not
-amusement, has been the spirit and teaching of the school; and that this
-freedom has been granted under such conditions of intelligent and
-sympathetic oversight as to be a means of upbuilding and strengthening
-character.
-
-At the end of three years, then, we are not afraid to say that some of
-our original questions have secured affirmative answers. The increase of
-our children from fifteen to almost one hundred, along with a practical
-doubling of fees, has shown that parents are ready for a form of
-education that makes individual growth its sole controlling aim. The
-presence of an organized corps of instructors demonstrates that
-thoroughly educated teachers are ready to bring to elementary education
-the same resources of training, knowledge, and skill that have long been
-at the command of higher education. The everyday work of the school
-shows that children can live in school as out of it, and yet grow daily
-in wisdom, kindness, and the spirit of obedience—that learning may, even
-with little children, lay hold upon the substance of truth that
-nourishes the spirit, and yet the forms of knowledge be observed and
-cultivated; and that growth may be genuine and thorough, and yet a
-delight.
-
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- TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
-
-
- 1. Silently corrected typographical errors.
- 2. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.
- 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
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-<pre>
-
-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The School and Society, by John Dewey
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-Title: The School and Society
- Being three lectures
-
-Author: John Dewey
-
-Release Date: January 7, 2017 [EBook #53910]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SCHOOL AND SOCIETY ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed
-Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
-produced from images generously made available by The
-Internet Archive)
-
-
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-
-
-
-</pre>
-
-
-<div class='tnotes covernote'>
-
-<p class='c000'><strong>Transcriber's Note:</strong></p>
-
-<p class='c000'>The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph1'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c001'>
- <div>THE SCHOOL AND SOCIETY</div>
- </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-<div class='pbb'>
- <hr class='pb c002' />
-</div>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c001'>
- <div>THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS</div>
- <div>CHICAGO, ILLINOIS</div>
- <div class='c002'>Agents</div>
- <div class='c003'>THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS</div>
- <div>LONDON AND EDINBURGH</div>
- <div class='c003'>THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA</div>
- <div>TOKYO, OSAKA, KYOTO</div>
- <div class='c003'>KARL W. HIERSEMANN</div>
- <div>LEIPZIG</div>
- <div class='c003'>THE BAKER &amp; TAYLOR COMPANY</div>
- <div>NEW YORK</div>
- </div>
-</div>
-
-<div class='pbb'>
- <hr class='pb c003' />
-</div>
-<div class='box'>
-
-<div>
- <h1 class='c004'><span class='color_red'><span class='xlarge'><em>The</em></span><br /> <span class='under'>SCHOOL</span><br /> <span class='xlarge'><em>and</em></span><br /> <span class='under'>SOCIETY</span></span><br /> <span class='large'><em>BEING THREE LECTURES</em></span></h1>
-</div>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
- <div><span class='large'><em>by</em></span></div>
- <div class='c003'><span class='xlarge'>JOHN DEWEY</span></div>
- </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='box'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
- <div class='nf-center'>
- <div><span class='large'><em>SUPPLEMENTED BY</em></span></div>
- <div><span class='large'>A STATEMENT OF THE UNIVERSITY ELEMENTARY SCHOOL</span></div>
- </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='box'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
- <div class='nf-center'>
- <div>THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS</div>
- <div>CHICAGO, ILLINOIS</div>
- </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-<div class='pbb'>
- <hr class='pb c003' />
-</div>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c001'>
- <div><span class='sc'>Copyright 1900 By</span></div>
- <div><span class='sc'>John Dewey</span></div>
- <div class='c003'>All Rights Reserved</div>
- </div>
-</div>
-
-<table class='table0' summary=''>
- <tr>
- <td class='c005'><span class='sc'>First Edition</span></td>
- <td class='c005'>-–1,000 copies.</td>
- <td class='c006'>Printed November, 1899.</td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td class='c005'><span class='sc'>Second Impression</span></td>
- <td class='c005'>-–1,500 copies.</td>
- <td class='c006'>Printed February, 1900.</td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td class='c005'><span class='sc'>Third Impression</span></td>
- <td class='c005'>-–5,000 copies.</td>
- <td class='c006'>Printed July, 1900.</td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td class='c005'><span class='sc'>Fourth Impression</span></td>
- <td class='c005'>-–1,000 copies.</td>
- <td class='c006'>Printed June, 1904.</td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td class='c005'><span class='sc'>Fifth Impression</span></td>
- <td class='c005'>-–2,500 copies.</td>
- <td class='c006'>Printed February, 1905.</td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td class='c005'><span class='sc'>Sixth Impression</span></td>
- <td class='c005'>-–2,500 copies.</td>
- <td class='c006'>Printed August, 1907.</td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td class='c005'><span class='sc'>Seventh Impression</span></td>
- <td class='c005'>-–1,000 copies.</td>
- <td class='c006'>Printed September, 1909.</td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td class='c005'><span class='sc'>Eighth Impression</span></td>
- <td class='c005'>-–1,000 copies.</td>
- <td class='c006'>Printed August, 1910.</td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td class='c005'><span class='sc'>Ninth Impression</span></td>
- <td class='c005'>-–1,000 copies.</td>
- <td class='c006'>Printed August, 1911.</td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td class='c005'><span class='sc'>Tenth Impression</span></td>
- <td class='c005'>-–1,000 copies.</td>
- <td class='c006'>Printed March, 1912.</td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td class='c005'><span class='sc'>Eleventh Impression</span></td>
- <td class='c005'>-–2,000 copies.</td>
- <td class='c006'>Printed August, 1913.</td>
- </tr>
-</table>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
- <div>Composed and Printed By</div>
- <div>The University of Chicago Press</div>
- <div>Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.</div>
- </div>
-</div>
-
-<div class='pbb'>
- <hr class='pb c003' />
-</div>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c001'>
- <div>TO</div>
- <div class='c003'>MRS. EMMONS BLAINE</div>
- <div class='c003'>TO WHOSE INTEREST IN EDUCATIONAL</div>
- <div>REFORM</div>
- <div>THE APPEARANCE OF THIS BOOK</div>
- <div>IS DUE</div>
- </div>
-</div>
-
-<div class='pbb'>
- <hr class='pb c003' />
-</div>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
- <h2 class='c007'>CONTENTS</h2>
-</div>
-
-<table class='table1' summary='CONTENTS'>
- <tr>
- <th class='c008'></th>
- <th class='c009'>&nbsp;</th>
- <th class='c010'>PAGE</th>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td class='c008'>I.</td>
- <td class='c009'><span class='sc'>The School and Social Progress</span></td>
- <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_19'>19</a></td>
- </tr>
- <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
- <tr>
- <td class='c008'>II.</td>
- <td class='c009'><span class='sc'>The School and the Life of the Child</span></td>
- <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_47'>47</a></td>
- </tr>
- <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
- <tr>
- <td class='c008'>III.</td>
- <td class='c009'><span class='sc'>Waste in Education</span></td>
- <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_77'>77</a></td>
- </tr>
- <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
- <tr>
- <td class='c008'>IV.</td>
- <td class='c009'><span class='sc'>Three Years of the University Elementary School</span></td>
- <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_113'>113</a></td>
- </tr>
-</table>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
- <h2 class='c007'>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
-</div>
-
-<table class='table1' summary='LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS'>
- <tr>
- <th class='c005'></th>
- <th class='c010'>FACING PAGE</th>
- </tr>
- <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
- <tr>
- <td class='c005'><span class='sc'>Drawing of a Cave and Trees</span></td>
- <td class='c010'><a href='#i56'>56</a></td>
- </tr>
- <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
- <tr>
- <td class='c005'><span class='sc'>Drawing of a Forest</span></td>
- <td class='c010'><a href='#i58'>58</a></td>
- </tr>
- <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
- <tr>
- <td class='c005'><span class='sc'>Drawing of Hands Spinning</span></td>
- <td class='c010'><a href='#i60'>60</a></td>
- </tr>
- <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
- <tr>
- <td class='c005'><span class='sc'>Drawing of a Girl Spinning</span></td>
- <td class='c010'><a href='#i62'>62</a></td>
- </tr>
-</table>
-<div class='pbb'>
- <hr class='pb c003' />
-</div>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
- <h2 class='c007'>PUBLISHER’S NOTE</h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'>The three lectures presented in the following
-pages were delivered before an audience of
-parents and others interested in the University
-Elementary School, in the month of April of
-the year 1899. Mr. Dewey revised them in
-part from a stenographic report, and unimportant
-changes and the slight adaptations necessary
-for the press have been made in his absence.
-The lectures retain therefore the unstudied character
-as well as the power of the spoken word.
-As they imply more or less familiarity with
-the work of the Elementary School, Mr. Dewey’s
-supplementary statement of this has been added.</p>
-<div class='pbb'>
- <hr class='pb c003' />
-</div>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
- <span class='pageno' id='Page_I'>I</span>
- <h2 class='c007'>AUTHOR’S NOTE</h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'>A second edition affords a grateful opportunity
-for recalling that this little book is a sign of the
-coöperating thoughts and sympathies of many
-persons. Its indebtedness to Mrs. Emmons
-Blaine is partly indicated in the dedication.
-From my friends, Mr. and Mrs. George Herbert
-Mead, came that interest, unflagging attention to
-detail, and artistic taste which, in my absence,
-remade colloquial remarks until they were fit to
-print, and then saw the results through the press
-with the present attractive result—a mode of
-authorship made easy, which I recommend to
-others fortunate enough to possess such friends.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>It would be an extended paragraph which
-should list all the friends whose timely and persisting
-generosity has made possible the school
-which inspired and defined the ideas of these
-pages. These friends, I am sure, would be the
-first to recognize the peculiar appropriateness of
-especial mention of the names of Mrs. Charles R.
-Crane and Mrs. William R. Linn.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>And the school itself in its educational work is
-a joint undertaking. Many have engaged in
-shaping it. The clear and experienced intelligence
-of my wife is wrought everywhere into its
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_II'>II</span>texture. The wisdom, tact and devotion of its
-instructors have brought about a transformation
-of its original amorphous plans into articulate
-form and substance with life and movement of
-their own. Whatever the issue of the ideas presented
-in this book, the satisfaction coming from
-the coöperation of the diverse thoughts and deeds
-of many persons in undertaking to enlarge the
-life of the child will abide.</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-r'>
- <div class='linegroup'>
- <div class='group'>
- <div class='line'>January 5, 1900</div>
- </div>
- </div>
-</div>
-
-<div class='pbb'>
- <hr class='pb c003' />
-</div>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
- <span class='pageno' id='Page_19'>19</span>
- <h2 class='c007'>I<br /> THE SCHOOL AND SOCIAL PROGRESS</h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'>We are apt to look at the school from an individualistic
-standpoint, as something between teacher
-and pupil, or between teacher and parent. That
-which interests us most is naturally the progress
-made by the individual child of our acquaintance,
-his normal physical development, his advance in
-ability to read, write, and figure, his growth in
-the knowledge of geography and history, improvement
-in manners, habits of promptness,
-order, and industry—it is from such standards as
-these that we judge the work of the school. And
-rightly so. Yet the range of the outlook needs
-to be enlarged. What the best and wisest parent
-wants for his own child, that must the community
-want for all of its children. Any other ideal for
-our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon,
-it destroys our democracy. All that society has
-accomplished for itself is put, through the agency
-of the school, at the disposal of its future members.
-All its better thoughts of itself it hopes to
-realize through the new possibilities thus opened
-to its future self. Here individualism and socialism
-are at one. Only by being true to the full
-growth of all the individuals who make it up, can
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_20'>20</span>society by any chance be true to itself. And in
-the self-direction thus given, nothing counts as
-much as the school, for, as Horace Mann said,
-“Where anything is growing, one former is
-worth a thousand re-formers,”</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Whenever we have in mind the discussion of
-a new movement in education, it is especially
-necessary to take the broader, or social view.
-Otherwise, changes in the school institution and
-tradition will be looked at as the arbitrary inventions
-of particular teachers; at the worst transitory
-fads, and at the best merely improvements
-in certain details—and this is the plane upon
-which it is too customary to consider school
-changes. It is as rational to conceive of the
-locomotive or the telegraph as personal devices.
-The modification going on in the method and
-curriculum of education is as much a product of
-the changed social situation, and as much an effort
-to meet the needs of the new society that is
-forming, as are changes in modes of industry and
-commerce.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>It is to this, then, that I especially ask your
-attention: the effort to conceive what roughly
-may be termed the “New Education” in the
-light of larger changes in society. Can we
-connect this “New Education” with the general
-march of events? If we can, it will lose its isolated
-character, and will cease to be an affair which
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_21'>21</span>proceeds only from the over-ingenious minds of
-pedagogues dealing with particular pupils. It
-will appear as part and parcel of the whole social
-evolution, and, in its more general features at
-least, as inevitable. Let us then ask after the main
-aspects of the social movement; and afterwards
-turn to the school to find what witness it gives of
-effort to put itself in line. And since it is quite
-impossible to cover the whole ground, I shall for
-the most part confine myself to one typical
-thing in the modern school movement—that
-which passes under the name of manual training,
-hoping if the relation of that to changed social
-conditions appears, we shall be ready to concede
-the point as well regarding other educational
-innovations.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>I make no apology for not dwelling at length
-upon the social changes in question. Those I
-shall mention are writ so large that he who runs
-may read. The change that comes first to mind,
-the one that overshadows and even controls all
-others, is the industrial one—the application of
-science resulting in the great inventions that have
-utilized the forces of nature on a vast and inexpensive
-scale: the growth of a world-wide
-market as the object of production, of vast
-manufacturing centers to supply this market, of
-cheap and rapid means of communication and
-distribution between all its parts. Even as to its
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_22'>22</span>feebler beginnings, this change is not much more
-than a century old; in many of its most important
-aspects it falls within the short span of those
-now living. One can hardly believe there has
-been a revolution in all history so rapid, so
-extensive, so complete. Through it the face of
-the earth is making over, even as to its physical
-forms; political boundaries are wiped out and
-moved about, as if they were indeed only lines
-on a paper map; population is hurriedly gathered
-into cities from the ends of the earth; habits of
-living are altered with startling abruptness and
-thoroughness; the search for the truths of nature
-is infinitely stimulated and facilitated and their
-application to life made not only practicable,
-but commercially necessary. Even our moral
-and religious ideas and interests, the most conservative
-because the deepest-lying things in
-our nature, are profoundly affected. That this
-revolution should not affect education in other
-than formal and superficial fashion is inconceivable.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Back of the factory system lies the household
-and neighborhood system. Those of us who
-are here today need go back only one, two, or
-at most three generations, to find a time when
-the household was practically the center in which
-were carried on, or about which were clustered,
-all the typical forms of industrial occupation.
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_23'>23</span>The clothing worn was for the most part not only
-made in the house, but the members of the household
-were usually familiar with the shearing of
-the sheep, the carding and spinning of the wool,
-and the plying of the loom. Instead of pressing
-a button and flooding the house with electric
-light, the whole process of getting illumination
-was followed in its toilsome length, from the
-killing of the animal and the trying of fat, to the
-making of wicks and dipping of candles. The
-supply of flour, of lumber, of foods, of building
-materials, of household furniture, even of metal
-ware, of nails, hinges, hammers, etc., was in the
-immediate neighborhood, in shops which were
-constantly open to inspection and often centers
-of neighborhood congregation. The entire industrial
-process stood revealed, from the production
-on the farm of the raw materials, till the
-finished article was actually put to use. Not
-only this, but practically every member of the
-household had his own share in the work. The
-children, as they gained in strength and capacity,
-were gradually initiated into the mysteries of the
-several processes. It was a matter of immediate
-and personal concern, even to the point of actual
-participation.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>We cannot overlook the factors of discipline
-and of character-building involved in this: training
-in habits of order and of industry, and in
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_24'>24</span>the idea of responsibility, of obligation to do
-something, to produce something, in the world.
-There was always something which really
-needed to be done, and a real necessity that each
-member of the household should do his own part
-faithfully and in coöperation with others. Personalities
-which became effective in action were bred
-and tested in the medium of action. Again, we
-cannot overlook the importance for educational
-purposes of the close and intimate acquaintance
-got with nature at first hand, with real things and
-materials, with the actual processes of their manipulation,
-and the knowledge of their social necessities
-and uses. In all this there was continual
-training of observation, of ingenuity, constructive
-imagination, of logical thought, and of the sense
-of reality acquired through first-hand contact with
-actualities. The educative forces of the domestic
-spinning and weaving, of the saw-mill, the gristmill,
-the cooper shop, and the blacksmith forge,
-were continuously operative.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>No number of object-lessons, got up <em>as</em> object-lessons
-for the sake of giving information, can
-afford even the shadow of a substitute for acquaintance
-with the plants and animals of the
-farm and garden, acquired through actual living
-among them and caring for them. No training of
-sense-organs in school, introduced for the sake of
-training, can begin to compete with the alertness
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_25'>25</span>and fullness of sense-life that comes through daily
-intimacy and interest in familiar occupations.
-Verbal memory can be trained in committing
-tasks, a certain discipline of the reasoning
-powers can be acquired through lessons in science
-and mathematics; but, after all, this is
-somewhat remote and shadowy compared with
-the training of attention and of judgment that is
-acquired in having to do things with a real motive
-behind and a real outcome ahead. At present,
-concentration of industry and division of labor
-have practically eliminated household and neighborhood
-occupations—at least for educational purposes.
-But it is useless to bemoan the departure
-of the good old days of children’s modesty, reverence,
-and implicit obedience, if we expect merely
-by bemoaning and by exhortation to bring them
-back. It is radical conditions which have
-changed, and only an equally radical change in
-education suffices. We must recognize our compensations—the
-increase in toleration, in breadth
-of social judgment, the larger acquaintance with
-human nature, the sharpened alertness in reading
-signs of character and interpreting social situations,
-greater accuracy of adaptation to differing
-personalities, contact with greater commercial
-activities. These considerations mean much to
-the city-bred child of today. Yet there is a real
-problem: how shall we retain these advantages,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_26'>26</span>and yet introduce into the school something representing
-the other side of life—occupations
-which exact personal responsibilities and which
-train the child with relation to the physical realities
-of life?</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>When we turn to the school, we find that one
-of the most striking tendencies at present is
-toward the introduction of so-called manual
-training, shop-work, and the household arts—sewing
-and cooking.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>This has not been done “on purpose,” with a
-full consciousness that the school must now supply
-that factor of training formerly taken care of
-in the home, but rather by instinct, by experimenting
-and finding that such work takes a vital hold
-of pupils and gives them something which was not
-to be got in any other way. Consciousness of its
-real import is still so weak that the work is often
-done in a half-hearted, confused, and unrelated way.
-The reasons assigned to justify it are painfully
-inadequate or sometimes even positively wrong.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>If we were to cross-examine even those who are
-most favorably disposed to the introduction of
-this work into our school system, we should,
-I imagine, generally find the main reasons to be
-that such work engages the full spontaneous interest
-and attention of the children. It keeps them
-alert and active, instead of passive and receptive;
-it makes them more useful, more capable, and
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_27'>27</span>hence more inclined to be helpful at home; it
-prepares them to some extent for the practical
-duties of later life—the girls to be more efficient
-house managers, if not actually cooks and sempstresses;
-the boys (were our educational system
-only adequately rounded out into trade schools)
-for their future vocations. I do not underestimate
-the worth of these reasons. Of those indicated
-by the changed attitude of the children I
-shall indeed have something to say in my next talk,
-when speaking directly of the relationship of the
-school to the child. But the point of view is,
-upon the whole, unnecessarily narrow. We must
-conceive of work in wood and metal, of weaving,
-sewing, and cooking, as methods of life not as
-distinct studies.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>We must conceive of them in their social significance,
-as types of the processes by which society
-keeps itself going, as agencies for bringing home
-to the child some of the primal necessities of community
-life, and as ways in which these needs have
-been met by the growing insight and ingenuity of
-man; in short, as instrumentalities through which
-the school itself shall be made a genuine form of
-active community life, instead of a place set apart
-in which to learn lessons.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>A society is a number of people held together
-because they are working along common lines, in
-a common spirit, and with reference to common
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_28'>28</span>aims. The common needs and aims demand a
-growing interchange of thought and growing
-unity of sympathetic feeling. The radical reason
-that the present school cannot organize itself
-as a natural social unit is because just this element
-of common and productive activity is absent.
-Upon the playground, in game and sport,
-social organization takes place spontaneously and
-inevitably. There is something to do, some
-activity to be carried on, requiring natural divisions
-of labor, selection of leaders and followers,
-mutual coöperation and emulation. In the
-schoolroom the motive and the cement of social
-organization are alike wanting. Upon the ethical
-side, the tragic weakness of the present school is
-that it endeavors to prepare future members of
-the social order in a medium in which the conditions
-of the social spirit are eminently wanting.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>The difference that appears when occupations
-are made the articulating centers of school life is
-not easy to describe in words; it is a difference
-in motive, of spirit and atmosphere. As one
-enters a busy kitchen in which a group of
-children are actively engaged in the preparation
-of food, the psychological difference, the change
-from more or less passive and inert recipiency
-and restraint to one of buoyant outgoing energy,
-is so obvious as fairly to strike one in the face.
-Indeed, to those whose image of the school is
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_29'>29</span>rigidly set the change is sure to give a shock.
-But the change in the social attitude is equally
-marked. The mere absorption of facts and
-truths is so exclusively individual an affair that
-it tends very naturally to pass into selfishness.
-There is no obvious social motive for the
-acquirement of mere learning, there is no clear
-social gain in success thereat. Indeed, almost
-the only measure for success is a competitive
-one, in the bad sense of that term—a comparison
-of results in the recitation or in the examination
-to see which child has succeeded in
-getting ahead of others in storing up, in accumulating
-the maximum of information. So thoroughly
-is this the prevalent atmosphere that for
-one child to help another in his task has become
-a school crime. Where the school work consists
-in simply learning lessons, mutual assistance,
-instead of being the most natural form of coöperation
-and association, becomes a clandestine
-effort to relieve one’s neighbor of his proper
-duties. Where active work is going on all this is
-changed. Helping others, instead of being a
-form of charity which impoverishes the recipient,
-is simply an aid in setting free the powers and
-furthering the impulse of the one helped. A
-spirit of free communication, of interchange of
-ideas, suggestions, results, both successes and
-failures of previous experiences, becomes the
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_30'>30</span>dominating note of the recitation. So far as
-emulation enters in, it is in the comparison of
-individuals, not with regard to the quantity of
-information personally absorbed, but with reference
-to the quality of work done—the genuine
-community standard of value. In an informal
-but all the more pervasive way, the school life
-organizes itself on a social basis.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Within this organization is found the principle
-of school discipline or order. Of course, order
-is simply a thing which is relative to an end. If
-you have the end in view of forty or fifty
-children learning certain set lessons, to be
-recited to a teacher, your discipline must be
-devoted to securing that result. But if the end
-in view is the development of a spirit of social
-coöperation and community life, discipline must
-grow out of and be relative to this. There is
-little order of one sort where things are in
-process of construction; there is a certain
-disorder in any busy workshop; there is not
-silence; persons are not engaged in maintaining
-certain fixed physical postures; their arms are not
-folded; they are not holding their books thus
-and so. They are doing a variety of things, and
-there is the confusion, the bustle, that results
-from activity. But out of occupation, out of
-doing things that are to produce results, and out
-of doing these in a social and coöperative way,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_31'>31</span>there is born a discipline of its own kind and
-type. Our whole conception of school discipline
-changes when we get this point of view. In
-critical moments we all realize that the only
-discipline that stands by us, the only training that
-becomes intuition, is that got through life itself.
-That we learn from experience, and from books
-or the sayings of others <em>only</em> as they are related
-to experience, are not mere phrases. But the
-school has been so set apart, so isolated from
-the ordinary conditions and motives of life, that
-the place where children are sent for discipline
-is the one place in the world where it is most
-difficult to get experience—the mother of all
-discipline worth the name. It is only where a
-narrow and fixed image of traditional school
-discipline dominates, that one is in any danger of
-overlooking that deeper and infinitely wider discipline
-that comes from having a part to do in constructive
-work, in contributing to a result which,
-social in spirit, is none the less obvious and tangible
-in form—and hence in a form with reference
-to which responsibility may be exacted and accurate
-judgment passed.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>The great thing to keep in mind, then, regarding
-the introduction into the school of various
-forms of active occupation, is that through them
-the entire spirit of the school is renewed. It has
-a chance to affiliate itself with life, to become the
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_32'>32</span>child’s habitat, where he learns through directed
-living; instead of being only a place to learn
-lessons having an abstract and remote reference
-to some possible living to be done in the
-future. It gets a chance to be a miniature community,
-an embryonic society. This is the fundamental
-fact, and from this arise continuous and
-orderly sources of instruction. Under the industrial
-<i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">régime</span></i> described, the child, after all, shared in the
-work, not for the sake of the sharing, but for the
-sake of the product. The educational results secured
-were real, yet incidental and dependent.
-But in the school the typical occupations followed
-are freed from all economic stress. The aim is
-not the economic value of the products, but the
-development of social power and insight. It is
-this liberation from narrow utilities, this openness
-to the possibilities of the human spirit that makes
-these practical activities in the school allies of
-art and centers of science and history.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>The unity of all the sciences is found in geography.
-The significance of geography is that it
-presents the earth as the enduring home of the
-occupations of man. The world without its relationship
-to human activity is less than a world.
-Human industry and achievement, apart from their
-roots in the earth, are not even a sentiment, hardly
-a name. The earth is the final source of all man’s
-food. It is his continual shelter and protection,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_33'>33</span>the raw material of all his activities, and the
-home to whose humanizing and idealizing all his
-achievement returns. It is the great field, the
-great mine, the great source of the energies of
-heat, light, and electricity; the great scene of
-ocean, stream, mountain, and plain, of which all
-our agriculture and mining and lumbering, all our
-manufacturing and distributing agencies, are but
-the partial elements and factors. It is through
-occupations determined by this environment that
-mankind has made its historical and political
-progress. It is through these occupations that the
-intellectual and emotional interpretation of nature
-has been developed. It is through what we do
-in and with the world that we read its meaning
-and measure its value.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>In educational terms, this means that these
-occupations in the school shall not be mere practical
-devices or modes of routine employment,
-the gaining of better technical skill as cooks,
-sempstresses, or carpenters, but active centers of
-scientific insight into natural materials and processes,
-points of departure whence children shall
-be led out into a realization of the historic development
-of man. The actual significance of
-this can be told better through one illustration
-taken from actual school work than by general
-discourse.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>There is nothing which strikes more oddly upon
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_34'>34</span>the average intelligent visitor than to see boys as
-well as girls of ten, twelve, and thirteen years of
-age engaged in sewing and weaving. If we look
-at this from the standpoint of preparation of the
-boys for sewing on buttons and making patches,
-we get a narrow and utilitarian conception—a
-basis that hardly justifies giving prominence to
-this sort of work in the school. But if we look
-at it from another side, we find that this work
-gives the point of departure from which the child
-can trace and follow the progress of mankind in
-history, getting an insight also into the materials
-used and the mechanical principles involved. In
-connection with these occupations, the historic
-development of man is recapitulated. For example,
-the children are first given the raw material—the
-flax, the cotton plant, the wool as it comes
-from the back of the sheep (if we could take them
-to the place where the sheep are sheared, so much
-the better). Then a study is made of these materials
-from the standpoint of their adaptation to
-the uses to which they may be put. For instance,
-a comparison of the cotton fiber with wool fiber is
-made. I did not know until the children told
-me, that the reason for the late development of
-the cotton industry as compared with the woolen
-is, that the cotton fiber is so very difficult to free
-by hand from the seeds. The children in one
-group worked thirty minutes freeing cotton fibers
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_35'>35</span>from the boll and seeds, and succeeded in getting
-out less than one ounce. They could
-easily believe that one person could only gin
-one pound a day by hand, and could understand
-why their ancestors wore woolen instead
-of cotton clothing. Among other things discovered
-as affecting their relative utilities, was
-the shortness of the cotton fiber as compared with
-that of wool, the former being one-tenth of an
-inch in length, while that of the latter is an inch
-in length; also that the fibers of cotton are smooth
-and do not cling together, while the wool has a
-certain roughness which makes the fibers stick, thus
-assisting the spinning. The children worked this
-out for themselves with the actual material, aided
-by questions and suggestions from the teacher.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>They then followed the processes necessary for
-working the fibers up into cloth. They re-invented
-the first frame for carding the wool—a couple of
-boards with sharp pins in them for scratching it
-out. They re-devised the simplest process for
-spinning the wool—a pierced stone or some
-other weight through which the wool is passed,
-and which as it is twirled draws out the fiber;
-next the top, which was spun on the floor, while
-the children kept the wool in their hands until
-it was gradually drawn out and wound upon
-it. Then the children are introduced to the invention
-next in historic order, working it out
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_36'>36</span>experimentally, thus seeing its necessity, and
-tracing its effects, not only upon that particular
-industry, but upon modes of social life—in this
-way passing in review the entire process up to
-the present complete loom, and all that goes with
-the application of science in the use of our present
-available powers. I need not speak of the
-science involved in this—the study of the fibers,
-of geographical features, the conditions under
-which raw materials are grown, the great centers
-of manufacture and distribution, the physics
-involved in the machinery of production; nor,
-again, of the historical side—the influence which
-these inventions have had upon humanity. You
-can concentrate the history of all mankind into
-the evolution of the flax, cotton, and wool fibers
-into clothing. I do not mean that this is the
-only, or the best, center. But it is true that
-certain very real and important avenues to the
-consideration of the history of the race are thus
-opened—that the mind is introduced to much
-more fundamental and controlling influences than
-usually appear in the political and chronological
-records that pass for history.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Now, what is true of this one instance of fibers
-used in fabrics (and, of course, I have only
-spoken of one or two elementary phases of that)
-is true in its measure of every material used in
-every occupation, and of the processes employed.
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_37'>37</span>The occupation supplies the child with a genuine
-motive; it gives him experience at first hand;
-it brings him into contact with realities. It does
-all this, but in addition it is liberalized throughout
-by translation into its historic values and
-scientific equivalencies. With the growth of the
-child’s mind in power and knowledge it ceases to
-be a pleasant occupation merely, and becomes
-more and more a medium, an instrument, an
-organ—and is thereby transformed.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>This, in turn, has its bearing upon the teaching
-of science. Under present conditions, all activity,
-to be successful, has to be directed somewhere
-and somehow by the scientific expert—it is a
-case of applied science. This connection should
-determine its place in education. It is not only
-that the occupations, the so-called manual or
-industrial work in the school, give the opportunity
-for the introduction of science which
-illuminates them, which makes them material,
-freighted with meaning, instead of being mere
-devices of hand and eye; but that the scientific
-insight thus gained becomes an indispensable
-instrument of free and active participation in
-modern social life. Plato somewhere speaks of
-the slave as one who in his actions does not
-express his own ideas, but those of some other
-man. It is our social problem now, even more
-urgent than in the time of Plato, that method,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_38'>38</span>purpose, understanding, shall exist in the consciousness
-of the one who does the work, that
-his activity shall have meaning to himself.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>When occupations in the school are conceived
-in this broad and generous way, I can only stand
-lost in wonder at the objections so often heard,
-that such occupations are out of place in the
-school because they are materialistic, utilitarian,
-or even menial in their tendency. It sometimes
-seems to me that those who make these objections
-must live in quite another world. The world in
-which most of us live is a world in which everyone
-has a calling and occupation, something to
-do. Some are managers and others are subordinates.
-But the great thing for one as for
-the other is that each shall have had the education
-which enables him to see within his daily work
-all there is in it of large and human significance.
-How many of the employed are today mere
-appendages to the machines which they operate!
-This may be due in part to the machine itself, or
-to the <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">régime</span></i> which lays so much stress upon the
-products of the machine; but it is certainly due
-in large part to the fact that the worker has had
-no opportunity to develop his imagination and his
-sympathetic insight as to the social and scientific
-values found in his work. At present, the impulses
-which lie at the basis of the industrial system are
-either practically neglected or positively distorted
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_39'>39</span>during the school period. Until the instincts of
-construction and production are systematically
-laid hold of in the years of childhood and youth,
-until they are trained in social directions, enriched
-by historical interpretation, controlled and illuminated
-by scientific methods, we certainly are in
-no position even to locate the source of our economic
-evils, much less to deal with them effectively.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>If we go back a few centuries, we find a practical
-monopoly of learning. The term <em>possession</em>
-of learning was, indeed, a happy one. Learning
-was a class matter. This was a necessary result
-of social conditions. There were not in existence
-any means by which the multitude could possibly
-have access to intellectual resources. These were
-stored up and hidden away in manuscripts. Of
-these there were at best only a few, and it required
-long and toilsome preparation to be able
-to do anything with them. A high-priesthood of
-learning, which guarded the treasury of truth and
-which doled it out to the masses under severe restrictions,
-was the inevitable expression of these
-conditions. But, as a direct result of the industrial
-revolution of which we have been speaking,
-this has been changed. Printing was invented;
-it was made commercial. Books, magazines,
-papers were multiplied and cheapened. As a
-result of the locomotive and telegraph, frequent,
-rapid, and cheap intercommunication by
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_40'>40</span>mails and electricity was called into being.
-Travel has been rendered easy; freedom of movement,
-with its accompanying exchange of ideas,
-indefinitely facilitated. The result has been an
-intellectual revolution. Learning has been put
-into circulation. While there still is, and probably
-always will be, a particular class having the
-special business of inquiry in hand, a distinctively
-learned class is henceforth out of the question.
-It is an anachronism. Knowledge is no longer an
-immobile solid; it has been liquefied. It is actively
-moving in all the currents of society itself.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>It is easy to see that this revolution, as regards
-the materials of knowledge, carries with it a
-marked change in the attitude of the individual.
-Stimuli of an intellectual sort pour in upon us in
-all kinds of ways. The merely intellectual life,
-the life of scholarship and of learning, thus gets a
-very altered value. Academic and scholastic,
-instead of being titles of honor, are becoming
-terms of reproach.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>But all this means a necessary change in the
-attitude of the school, one of which we are as
-yet far from realizing the full force. Our school
-methods, and to a very considerable extent our
-curriculum, are inherited from the period when
-learning and command of certain symbols, affording
-as they did the only access to learning, were
-all-important. The ideals of this period are still
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_41'>41</span>largely in control, even where the outward methods
-and studies have been changed. We sometimes
-hear the introduction of manual training,
-art and science into the elementary, and even the
-secondary schools, deprecated on the ground that
-they tend toward the production of specialists—that
-they detract from our present scheme of
-generous, liberal culture. The point of this objection
-would be ludicrous if it were not often so
-effective as to make it tragic. It is our present
-education which is highly specialized, one-sided
-and narrow. It is an education dominated almost
-entirely by the mediæval conception of learning.
-It is something which appeals for the most part
-simply to the intellectual aspect of our natures,
-our desire to learn, to accumulate information,
-and to get control of the symbols of learning;
-not to our impulses and tendencies to make, to
-do, to create, to produce, whether in the form
-of utility or of art. The very fact that manual
-training, art and science are objected to as technical,
-as tending toward mere specialism, is of
-itself as good testimony as could be offered to
-the specialized aim which controls current education.
-Unless education had been virtually identified
-with the exclusively intellectual pursuits,
-with learning as such, all these materials and
-methods would be welcome, would be greeted
-with the utmost hospitality.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_42'>42</span>While training for the profession of learning
-is regarded as the type of culture, as a liberal
-education, that of a mechanic, a musician, a
-lawyer, a doctor, a farmer, a merchant, or a
-railroad manager is regarded as purely technical
-and professional. The result is that which we
-see about us everywhere—the division into “cultured”
-people and “workers,” the separation of
-theory and practice. Hardly one per cent. of
-the entire school population ever attains to what
-we call higher education; only five per cent. to
-the grade of our high school; while much more
-than half leave on or before the completion of
-the fifth year of the elementary grade. The simple
-facts of the case are that in the great majority
-of human beings the distinctively intellectual
-interest is not dominant. They have the so-called
-practical impulse and disposition. In many of those
-in whom by nature intellectual interest is strong,
-social conditions prevent its adequate realization.
-Consequently by far the larger number of pupils
-leave school as soon as they have acquired the
-rudiments of learning, as soon as they have enough
-of the symbols of reading, writing, and calculating
-to be of practical use to them in getting a
-living. While our educational leaders are talking
-of culture, the development of personality,
-etc., as the end and aim of education, the great
-majority of those who pass under the tuition of
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_43'>43</span>the school regard it only as a narrowly practical
-tool with which to get bread and butter enough
-to eke out a restricted life. If we were to conceive
-our educational end and aim in a less
-exclusive way, if we were to introduce into educational
-processes the activities which appeal to
-those whose dominant interest is to do and to
-make, we should find the hold of the school upon
-its members to be more vital, more prolonged,
-containing more of culture.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>But why should I make this labored presentation?
-The obvious fact is that our social life has
-undergone a thorough and radical change. If
-our education is to have any meaning for life,
-it must pass through an equally complete transformation.
-This transformation is not something
-to appear suddenly, to be executed in a day by
-conscious purpose. It is already in progress.
-Those modifications of our school system which
-often appear (even to those most actively concerned
-with them, to say nothing of their spectators)
-to be mere changes of detail, mere improvement
-within the school mechanism, are in reality
-signs and evidences of evolution. The introduction
-of active occupations, of nature study,
-of elementary science, of art, of history; the
-relegation of the merely symbolic and formal to
-a secondary position; the change in the moral
-school atmosphere, in the relation of pupils and
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_44'>44</span>teachers—of discipline; the introduction of more
-active, expressive, and self-directing factors—all
-these are not mere accidents, they are necessities
-of the larger social evolution. It remains
-but to organize all these factors, to appreciate
-them in their fullness of meaning, and to put the
-ideas and ideals involved into complete, uncompromising
-possession of our school system. To
-do this means to make each one of our schools
-an embryonic community life, active with types
-of occupations that reflect the life of the larger
-society, and permeated throughout with the
-spirit of art, history, and science. When the
-school introduces and trains each child of society
-into membership within such a little community,
-saturating him with the spirit of service, and providing
-him with the instruments of effective self-direction,
-we shall have the deepest and best
-guarantee of a larger society which is worthy,
-lovely, and harmonious.</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
- <span class='pageno' id='Page_47'>47</span>
- <h2 class='c007'>II<br /> THE SCHOOL AND THE LIFE OF THE CHILD</h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'>Last week I tried to put before you the relationship
-between the school and the larger life
-of the community, and the necessity for certain
-changes in the methods and materials of school
-work, that it might be better adapted to present
-social needs.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Today I wish to look at the matter from the
-other side, and consider the relationship of the
-school to the life and development of the children
-in the school. As it is difficult to connect
-general principles with such thoroughly concrete
-things as little children, I have taken the liberty
-of introducing a good deal of illustrative matter
-from the work of the University Elementary
-School, that in some measure you may appreciate
-the way in which the ideas presented work themselves
-out in actual practice.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Some few years ago I was looking about the
-school supply stores in the city, trying to find
-desks and chairs which seemed thoroughly suitable
-from all points of view—artistic, hygienic,
-and educational—to the needs of the children.
-We had a good deal of difficulty in finding what
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_48'>48</span>we needed, and finally one dealer, more intelligent
-than the rest, made this remark: “I am afraid
-we have not what you want. You want something
-at which the children may work; these are
-all for listening.” That tells the story of the traditional
-education. Just as the biologist can take
-a bone or two and reconstruct the whole animal,
-so, if we put before the mind’s eye the ordinary
-schoolroom, with its rows of ugly desks placed in
-geometrical order, crowded together so that there
-shall be as little moving room as possible, desks
-almost all of the same size, with just space enough
-to hold books, pencils and paper, and add a table,
-some chairs, the bare walls, and possibly a few pictures,
-we can reconstruct the only educational
-activity that can possibly go on in such a place.
-It is all made “for listening”—for simply studying
-lessons out of a book is only another kind of
-listening; it marks the dependency of one mind
-upon another. The attitude of listening means,
-comparatively speaking, passivity, absorption;
-that there are certain ready-made materials which
-are there, which have been prepared by the school
-superintendent, the board, the teacher, and of
-which the child is to take in as much as possible
-in the least possible time.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>There is very little place in the traditional
-schoolroom for the child to work. The workshop,
-the laboratory, the materials, the tools with which
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_49'>49</span>the child may construct, create, and actively inquire,
-and even the requisite space, have been for
-the most part lacking. The things that have to
-do with these processes have not even a definitely
-recognized place in education. They are what the
-educational authorities who write editorials in the
-daily papers generally term “fads” and “frills.”
-A lady told me yesterday that she had been
-visiting different schools trying to find one where
-activity on the part of the children preceded
-the giving of information on the part of the
-teacher, or where the children had some motive
-for demanding the information. She visited,
-she said, twenty-four different schools before she
-found her first instance. I may add that that was
-not in this city.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Another thing that is suggested by these schoolrooms,
-with their set desks, is that everything is
-arranged for handling as large numbers of children
-as possible; for dealing with children <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">en masse</span></i>,
-as an aggregate of units; involving, again, that
-they be treated passively. The moment children
-act they individualize themselves; they cease to
-be a mass, and become the intensely distinctive
-beings that we are acquainted with out of school,
-in the home, the family, on the playground, and
-in the neighborhood.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>On the same basis is explicable the uniformity
-of method and curriculum. If everything is on
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_50'>50</span>a “listening” basis, you can have uniformity of
-material and method. The ear, and the book
-which reflects the ear, constitute the medium
-which is alike for all. There is next to no opportunity
-for adjustment to varying capacities and
-demands. There is a certain amount—a fixed
-quantity—of ready-made results and accomplishments
-to be acquired by all children alike in a
-given time. It is in response to this demand
-that the curriculum has been developed from the
-elementary school up through the college. There
-is just so much desirable knowledge, and there
-are just so many needed technical accomplishments
-in the world. Then comes the mathematical
-problem of dividing this by the six,
-twelve, or sixteen years of school life. Now
-give the children every year just the proportionate
-fraction of the total, and by the time they have
-finished they will have mastered the whole. By
-covering so much ground during this hour or day
-or week or year, everything comes out with perfect
-evenness at the end—provided the children
-have not forgotten what they have previously
-learned. The outcome of all this is Matthew
-Arnold’s report of the statement, proudly made
-to him by an educational authority in France, that
-so many thousands of children were studying at a
-given hour, say eleven o’clock, just such a lesson
-in geography; and in one of our own western
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_51'>51</span>cities this proud boast used to be repeated to
-successive visitors by its superintendent.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>I may have exaggerated somewhat in order to
-make plain the typical points of the old education:
-its passivity of attitude, its mechanical massing of
-children, its uniformity of curriculum and method.
-It may be summed up by stating that the center of
-gravity is outside the child. It is in the teacher,
-the text-book, anywhere and everywhere you
-please except in the immediate instincts and activities
-of the child himself. On that basis there
-is not much to be said about the <em>life</em> of the child.
-A good deal might be said about the studying of
-the child, but the school is not the place where
-the child <em>lives</em>. Now the change which is coming
-into our education is the shifting of the center
-of gravity. It is a change, a revolution, not
-unlike that introduced by Copernicus when the
-astronomical center shifted from the earth to
-the sun. In this case the child becomes the sun
-about which the appliances of education revolve;
-he is the center about which they are organized.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>If we take an example from an ideal home,
-where the parent is intelligent enough to recognize
-what is best for the child, and is able to supply
-what is needed, we find the child learning
-through the social converse and constitution of
-the family. There are certain points of interest
-and value to him in the conversation carried on:
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_52'>52</span>statements are made, inquiries arise, topics are
-discussed, and the child continually learns. He
-states his experiences, his misconceptions are corrected.
-Again the child participates in the household
-occupations, and thereby gets habits of
-industry, order, and regard for the rights and
-ideas of others, and the fundamental habit of subordinating
-his activities to the general interest of
-the household. Participation in these household
-tasks becomes an opportunity for gaining knowledge.
-The ideal home would naturally have a
-workshop where the child could work out his
-constructive instincts. It would have a miniature
-laboratory in which his inquiries could
-be directed. The life of the child would extend
-out of doors to the garden, surrounding fields,
-and forests. He would have his excursions, his
-walks and talks, in which the larger world out of
-doors would open to him.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Now, if we organize and generalize all of this,
-we have the ideal school. There is no mystery
-about it, no wonderful discovery of pedagogy or
-educational theory. It is simply a question of doing
-systematically and in a large, intelligent, and
-competent way what for various reasons can be
-done in most households only in a comparatively
-meager and haphazard manner. In the first place,
-the ideal home has to be enlarged. The child
-must be brought into contact with more grown
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_53'>53</span>people and with more children in order that there
-may be the freest and richest social life. Moreover,
-the occupations and relationships of the
-home environment are not specially selected for
-the growth of the child; the main object is something
-else, and what the child can get out of them
-is incidental. Hence the need of a school. In
-this school the life of the child becomes the all-controlling
-aim. All the media necessary to further
-the growth of the child center there. Learning?—certainly,
-but living primarily, and learning
-through and in relation to this living. When we
-take the life of the child centered and organized
-in this way, we do not find that he is first of all a
-listening being; quite the contrary.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>The statement so frequently made that education
-means “drawing out” is excellent, if we mean
-simply to contrast it with the process of pouring
-in. But, after all, it is difficult to connect the idea
-of drawing out with the ordinary doings of the
-child of three, four, seven, or eight years of age.
-He is already running over, spilling over, with
-activities of all kinds. He is not a purely latent
-being whom the adult has to approach with great
-caution and skill in order gradually to draw out
-some hidden germ of activity. The child is already
-intensely active, and the question of education is
-the question of taking hold of his activities, of
-giving them direction. Through direction, through
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_54'>54</span>organized use, they tend toward valuable results,
-instead of scattering or being left to merely
-impulsive expression.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>If we keep this before us, the difficulty I find
-uppermost in the minds of many people regarding
-what is termed the new education is not so
-much solved as dissolved; it disappears. A question
-often asked is: if you begin with the child’s
-ideas, impulses and interests, all so crude, so
-random and scattering, so little refined or spiritualized,
-how is he going to get the necessary discipline,
-culture and information? If there were
-no way open to us except to excite and indulge
-these impulses of the child, the question might
-well be asked. We should either have to ignore
-and repress the activities, or else to humor them.
-But if we have organization of equipment and of
-materials, there is another path open to us. We
-can direct the child’s activities, giving them exercise
-along certain lines, and can thus lead up to
-the goal which logically stands at the end of
-the paths followed.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”
-Since they are not, since really to satisfy an
-impulse or interest means to work it out, and working
-it out involves running up against obstacles,
-becoming acquainted with materials, exercising
-ingenuity, patience, persistence, alertness, it of
-necessity involves discipline—ordering of power—and
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_55'>55</span>supplies knowledge. Take the example
-of the little child who wants to make a box. If
-he stops short with the imagination or wish, he
-certainly will not get discipline. But when he
-attempts to realize his impulse, it is a question of
-making his idea definite, making it into a plan, of
-taking the right kind of wood, measuring the
-parts needed, giving them the necessary proportions,
-etc. There is involved the preparation of
-materials, the sawing, planing, the sand-papering,
-making all the edges and corners to fit. Knowledge
-of tools and processes is inevitable. If the
-child realizes his instinct and makes the box, there
-is plenty of opportunity to gain discipline and
-perseverance, to exercise effort in overcoming
-obstacles, and to attain as well a great deal of
-information.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>So undoubtedly the little child who thinks he
-would like to cook has little idea of what it
-means or costs, or what it requires. It is simply
-a desire to “mess around,” perhaps to imitate
-the activities of older people. And it is doubtless
-possible to let ourselves down to that level
-and simply humor that interest. But here, too,
-if the impulse is exercised, utilized, it runs up
-against the actual world of hard conditions, to
-which it must accommodate itself; and there
-again come in the factors of discipline and knowledge.
-One of the children became impatient
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_56'>56</span>recently, at having to work things out by a long
-method of experimentation, and said: “Why do
-we bother with this? Let’s follow a recipe in
-a cook-book.” The teacher asked the children
-where the recipe came from, and the conversation
-showed that if they simply followed this they
-would not understand the reasons for what they
-were doing. They were then quite willing to go
-on with the experimental work. To follow that
-work will, indeed, give an illustration of just the
-point in question. Their occupation happened
-that day to be the cooking of eggs, as making a
-transition from the cooking of vegetables to that
-of meats. In order to get a basis of comparison
-they first summarized the constituent food elements
-in the vegetables and made a preliminary comparison
-with those found in meat. Thus they found
-that the woody fiber or cellulose in vegetables corresponded
-to the connective tissue in meat, giving
-the element of form and structure. They found
-that starch and starchy products were characteristic
-of the vegetables, that mineral salts were
-found in both alike, and that there was fat in
-both—a small quantity in vegetable food and a
-large amount in animal. They were prepared
-then to take up the study of albumen as the
-characteristic feature of animal food, corresponding
-to starch in the vegetables, and were ready
-to consider the conditions requisite for the proper
-treatment of albumen—the eggs serving as the
-material of experiment.</p>
-
-<div id='i56' class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_057.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>CHILD’S DRAWING OF A CAVE AND TREES</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_57'>57</span>They experimented first by taking water at
-various temperatures, finding out when it was
-scalding, simmering, and boiling hot, and ascertained
-the effect of the various degrees of temperature
-on the white of the egg. That worked
-out, they were prepared, not simply to cook
-eggs, but to understand the principle involved
-in the cooking of eggs. I do not wish to lose
-sight of the universal in the particular incident.
-For the child simply to desire to cook an egg,
-and accordingly drop it in water for three minutes,
-and take it out when he is told, is not educative.
-But for the child to realize his own
-impulse by recognizing the facts, materials and
-conditions involved, and then to regulate his
-impulse through that recognition, is educative.
-This is the difference, upon which I wish to insist,
-between exciting or indulging an interest and
-realizing it through its direction.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Another instinct of the child is the use of
-pencil and paper. All children like to express
-themselves through the medium of form and
-color. If you simply indulge this interest by
-letting the child go on indefinitely, there is no
-growth that is more than accidental. But let the
-child first express his impulse, and then through
-criticism, question, and suggestion bring him to
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_58'>58</span>consciousness of what he has done, and what he
-needs to do, and the result is quite different.
-Here, for example, is the work of a seven-year-old
-child. It is not average work, it is the best work
-done among the little children, but it illustrates
-the particular principle of which I have been
-speaking. They had been talking about the
-primitive conditions of social life when people
-lived in caves. The child’s idea of that found
-expression in this way: the cave is neatly set up
-on the hill side in an impossible way. You see
-the conventional tree of childhood; a vertical
-line with horizontal branches on each side. If
-the child had been allowed to go on repeating
-this sort of thing day by day, he would be indulging
-his instinct rather than exercising it. But
-the child was now asked to look closely at trees,
-to compare those seen with the one drawn, to
-examine more closely and consciously into the
-conditions of his work. Then he drew trees from
-observation.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Finally he drew again from combined observation,
-memory, and imagination. He made again
-a free illustration, expressing his own imaginative
-thought, but controlled by detailed study of
-actual trees. The result was a scene representing
-a bit of forest; so far as it goes, it seems to me
-to have as much poetic feeling as the work of an
-adult, while at the same time its trees are, in
-their proportions possible ones, not mere symbols.</p>
-
-<div id='i58' class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_061.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>CHILD’S DRAWING OF A FOREST</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_59'>59</span>If we roughly classify the impulses which are
-available in the school, we may group them
-under four heads. There is the social instinct of
-the children as shown in conversation, personal
-intercourse, and communication. We all know
-how self-centered the little child is at the age of
-four or five. If any new subject is brought up,
-if he says anything at all, it is: “I have seen
-that;” or, “My papa or mamma told me about
-that.” His horizon is not large; an experience
-must come immediately home to him, if he is to
-be sufficiently interested to relate it to others
-and seek theirs in return. And yet the egoistic
-and limited interest of little children is in this
-manner capable of infinite expansion. The language
-instinct is the simplest form of the social
-expression of the child. Hence it is a great,
-perhaps the greatest of all educational resources.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Then there is the instinct of making—the
-constructive impulse. The child’s impulse to
-do finds expression first in play, in movement,
-gesture, and make-believe, becomes more definite,
-and seeks outlet in shaping materials into tangible
-forms and permanent embodiment. The child has
-not much instinct for abstract inquiry. The
-instinct of investigation seems to grow out of the
-combination of the constructive impulse with the
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_60'>60</span>conversational. There is no distinction between
-experimental science for little children and the
-work done in the carpenter shop. Such work as
-they can do in physics or chemistry is not for
-the purpose of making technical generalizations
-or even arriving at abstract truths. Children
-simply like to do things, and watch to see what
-will happen. But this can be taken advantage
-of, can be directed into ways where it gives
-results of value, as well as be allowed to go on
-at random.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>And so the expressive impulse of the children,
-the art instinct, grows also out of the communicating
-and constructive instincts. It is their refinement
-and full manifestation. Make the construction
-adequate, make it full, free, and flexible, give
-it a social motive, something to tell, and you have
-a work of art. Take one illustration of this in connection
-with the textile work—sewing and weaving.
-The children made a primitive loom in the
-shop; here the constructive instinct was appealed
-to. Then they wished to do something with this
-loom, to make something. It was the type of
-the Indian loom, and they were shown blankets
-woven by the Indians. Each child made a
-design kindred in idea to those of the Navajo
-blankets, and the one which seemed best adapted
-to the work in hand was selected. The technical
-resources were limited, but the coloring and form
-were worked out by the children. The example
-shown was made by the twelve-year-old children.
-Examination shows that it took patience, thoroughness,
-and perseverance to do the work. It
-involved not merely discipline and information of
-both a historical sort and the elements of technical
-design, but also something of the spirit of
-art in adequately conveying an idea.</p>
-
-<div id='i60' class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_065.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>CHILD’S DRAWING OF HANDS SPINNING</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_61'>61</span>One more instance of the connection of the
-art side with the constructive side. The children
-had been studying primitive spinning and carding,
-when one of them, twelve years of age, made
-a picture of one of the older children spinning.
-Here is another piece of work which is not quite
-average; it is better than the average. It is an
-illustration of two hands and the drawing out of
-the wool to get it ready for spinning. This was
-done by a child eleven years of age. But, upon
-the whole, with the younger children especially,
-the art impulse is connected mainly with the
-social instinct—the desire to tell, to represent.</p>
-
-<div id='i62' class='figcenter id002'>
-<img src='images/i_069.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>CHILD’S DRAWING OF A GIRL SPINNING</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'>Now, keeping in mind these fourfold interests—the
-interest in conversation or communication;
-in inquiry, or finding out things; in making
-things, or construction; and in artistic expression—we
-may say they are the natural resources,
-the uninvested capital, upon the exercise of which
-depends the active growth of the child. I wish
-to give one or two illustrations, the first from the
-work of children seven years of age. It illustrates
-in a way the dominant desire of the children
-to talk, particularly about folks and of things
-in relation to folks. If you observe little children,
-you will find they are interested in the
-world of things mainly in its connection with
-people, as a background and medium of human
-concerns. Many anthropologists have told us
-there are certain identities in the child interests
-with those of primitive life. There is a sort or
-natural recurrence of the child mind to the
-typical activities of primitive peoples; witness
-the hut which the boy likes to build in the
-yard, playing hunt, with bows, arrows, spears,
-and so on. Again the question comes: What
-are we to do with this interest—are we to ignore
-it, or just excite and draw it out? Or shall we
-get hold of it and direct it to something ahead,
-something better? Some of the work that has
-been planned for our seven-year-old children has
-the latter end in view—to utilize this interest
-so that it shall become a means of seeing the
-progress of the human race. The children begin
-by imagining present conditions taken away until
-they are in contact with nature at first hand.
-That takes them back to a hunting people, to a
-people living in caves or trees and getting a precarious
-subsistence by hunting and fishing. They
-imagine as far as possible the various natural
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_63'>63</span>physical conditions adapted to that sort of life;
-say, a hilly, woody slope, near mountains and
-a river where fish would be abundant. Then
-they go on in imagination through the hunting to
-the semi-agricultural stage, and through the nomadic
-to the settled agricultural stage. The
-point I wish to make is that there is abundant
-opportunity thus given for actual study, for inquiry
-which results in gaining information. So,
-while the instinct primarily appeals to the social
-side, the interest of the child in people and their
-doings is carried on into the larger world of
-reality. For example, the children had some
-idea of primitive weapons, of the stone arrowhead,
-etc. That provided occasion for the testing
-of materials as regards their friability, their shape,
-texture, etc., resulting in a lesson in mineralogy, as
-they examined the different stones to find which
-was best suited to the purpose. The discussion
-of the iron age supplied a demand for the construction
-of a smelting oven made out of clay,
-and of considerable size. As the children did
-not get their drafts right at first, the mouth of
-the furnace not being in proper relation to the
-vent, as to size and position, instruction in the
-principles of combustion, the nature of drafts and
-of fuel, was required. Yet the instruction was not
-given ready-made; it was first needed, and then
-arrived at experimentally. Then the children
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_64'>64</span>took some material, such as copper, and went
-through a series of experiments, fusing it, working
-it into objects; and the same experiments
-were made with lead and other metals. This work
-has been also a continuous course in geography,
-since the children have had to imagine and
-work out the various physical conditions necessary
-to the different forms of social life implied.
-What would be the physical conditions appropriate
-to pastoral life? to the beginning of agriculture?
-to fishing? What would be the natural
-method of exchange between these peoples?
-Having worked out such points in conversation,
-they have afterward represented them in maps
-and sand-molding. Thus they have gained ideas
-of the various forms of the configuration of the
-earth, and at the same time have seen them
-in their relation to human activity, so that they
-are not simply external facts, but are fused and
-welded with social conceptions regarding the life
-and progress of humanity. The result, to my
-mind, justifies completely the conviction that
-children, in a year of such work (of five hours a
-week altogether), get indefinitely more acquaintance
-with facts of science, geography, and
-anthropology than they get where information is
-the professed end and object, where they are
-simply set to learning facts in fixed lessons. As
-to discipline, they get more training of attention,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_65'>65</span>more power of interpretation, of drawing inferences,
-of acute observation and continuous reflection,
-than if they were put to working out arbitrary
-problems simply for the sake of discipline.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>I should like at this point to refer to the recitation.
-We all know what it has been—a placer
-where the child shows off to the teacher and the
-other children the amount of information he has
-succeeded in assimilating from the text-book.
-From this other standpoint, the recitation becomes
-preëminently a social meeting place; it is
-to the school what the spontaneous conversation
-is at home, excepting that it is more organized,
-following definite lines. The recitation becomes
-the social clearing-house, where experiences and
-ideas are exchanged and subjected to criticism,
-where misconceptions are corrected, and new
-lines of thought and inquiry are set up.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>This change of the recitation from an examination
-of knowledge already acquired to the free
-play of the children’s communicative instinct,
-affects and modifies all the language work of the
-school. Under the old <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">régime</span></i> it was unquestionably
-a most serious problem to give the
-children a full and free use of language. The
-reason was obvious. The natural motive for
-language was seldom offered. In the pedagogical
-text-books language is defined as the
-medium of expressing thought. It becomes
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_66'>66</span>that, more or less, to adults with trained minds,
-but it hardly needs to be said that language
-is primarily a social thing, a means by which
-we give our experiences to others and get theirs
-again in return. When it is taken from its
-natural basis, it is no wonder that it becomes a
-complex and difficult problem to teach language.
-Think of the absurdity of having to teach language
-as a thing by itself. If there is anything the
-child will do before he goes to school, it is to
-talk of the things that interest him. But when
-there are no vital interests appealed to in the
-school, when language is used simply for the repetition
-of lessons, it is not surprising that one of the
-chief difficulties of school work has come to be
-instruction in the mother-tongue. Since the language
-taught is unnatural, not growing out of the
-real desire to communicate vital impressions and
-convictions, the freedom of children in its use
-gradually disappears, until finally the high-school
-teacher has to invent all kinds of devices to
-assist in getting any spontaneous and full use of
-speech. Moreover, when the language instinct is
-appealed to in a social way, there is a continual
-contact with reality. The result is that the child
-always has something in his mind to talk about,
-he has something to say; he has a thought to
-express, and a thought is not a thought unless
-it is one’s own. On the traditional method,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_67'>67</span>the child must say something that he has merely
-learned. There is all the difference in the
-world between having something to say and
-having to say something. The child who has a
-variety of materials and facts wants to talk about
-them, and his language becomes more refined
-and full, because it is controlled and informed
-by realities. Reading and writing, as well as the
-oral use of language, may be taught on this basis.
-It can be done in a <em>related</em> way, as the outgrowth
-of the child’s social desire to recount his experiences
-and get in return the experiences of others,
-directed always through contact with the facts
-and forces which determine the truth communicated.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>I shall not have time to speak of the work of
-the older children, where the original crude instincts
-of construction and communication have
-been developed into something like scientifically
-directed inquiry, but I will give an illustration of
-the use of language following upon this experimental
-work. The work was on the basis of a
-simple experiment of the commonest sort, gradually
-leading the children out into geological and
-geographical study. The sentences that I am going
-to read seem to me poetic as well as “scientific.”
-“A long time ago when the earth was new,
-when it was lava, there was no water on the earth,
-and there was steam all round the earth up in the
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_68'>68</span>air, as there were many gases in the air. One of
-them was carbon dioxide. The steam became
-clouds, because the earth began to cool off, and
-after a while it began to rain, and the water came
-down and dissolved the carbon dioxide from the
-air.” There is a good deal more science in
-that than probably would be apparent at the outset.
-It represents some three months of work on
-the part of the child. The children kept daily
-and weekly records, but this is part of the summing
-up of the quarter’s work. I call this language
-poetic, because the child has a clear image
-and has a personal feeling for the realities imaged.
-I extract sentences from two other records to illustrate
-further the vivid use of language when there
-is a vivid experience back of it. “When the
-earth was cold enough to condense, the water,
-with the help of carbon dioxide, <em>pulls</em> the calcium
-out of the rocks into a large body of water where
-the little animals could get it.” The other reads
-as follows: “When the earth cooled, calcium
-was in the rocks. Then the carbon dioxide and
-water united and formed a solution, and, as it ran,
-it <em>tore</em> out the calcium and carried it on to the sea,
-where there were little animals who took it out of
-solution.” The use of such words as “pulled” and
-“tore” in connection with the process of chemical
-combination evidences a personal realization
-which compels its own appropriate expression.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_69'>69</span>If I had not taken so much time in my other
-illustrations, I should like to show how, beginning
-with very simple material things, the children
-were led on to larger fields of investigation,
-and to the intellectual discipline that is the accompaniment
-of such research. I will simply
-mention the experiment in which the work
-began. It consisted in making precipitated
-chalk, used for polishing metals. The children,
-with simple apparatus—a tumbler, lime water,
-and a glass tube—precipitated the calcium carbonate
-out of the water; and from this beginning
-went on to a study of the processes by which
-rocks of various sorts, igneous, sedimentary, etc.,
-had been formed on the surface of the earth and
-the places they occupy; then to points in the geography
-of the United States, Hawaii, and Puerto
-Rico; to the effects of these various bodies of
-rock, in their various configurations, upon the
-human occupations; so that this geological record
-finally rounded itself out into the life of man at
-the present time. The children saw and felt the
-connection between these geologic processes taking
-place ages and ages ago, and the physical
-conditions determining the industrial occupations
-of today.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Of all the possibilities involved in the subject,
-“The School and the Life of the Child,” I have
-selected but one, because I have found that that
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_70'>70</span>one gives people more difficulty, is more of a
-stumbling-block, than any other. One may be
-ready to admit that it would be most desirable
-for the school to be a place in which the child
-should really live, and get a life-experience in
-which he should delight and find meaning for
-its own sake. But then we hear this inquiry:
-how, upon this basis, shall the child get the
-needed information; how shall he undergo the
-required discipline? Yes, it has come to this,
-that with many, if not most, people the normal
-processes of life appear to be incompatible with
-getting information and discipline. So I have
-tried to indicate, in a highly general and inadequate
-way (for only the school itself, in its daily
-operation, could give a detailed and worthy representation),
-how the problem works itself out—how
-it is possible to lay hold upon the rudimentary
-instincts of human nature, and, by supplying a
-proper medium, so control their expression as
-not only to facilitate and enrich the growth of the
-individual child, but also to supply the results,
-and far more, of technical information and discipline
-that have been the ideals of education in the
-past.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>But although I have selected this especial way
-of approach (as a concession to the question
-almost universally raised), I am not willing to
-leave the matter in this more or less negative and
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_71'>71</span>explanatory condition. Life is the great thing
-after all; the life of the child at its time and in
-its measure, no less than the life of the adult.
-Strange would it be, indeed, if intelligent and
-serious attention to what the child <em>now</em> needs and
-is capable of in the way of a rich, valuable, and
-expanded life should somehow conflict with the
-needs and possibilities of later, adult life. “Let
-us live with our children,” certainly means, first
-of all, that our children shall live—not that they
-shall be hampered and stunted by being forced
-into all kinds of conditions, the most remote consideration
-of which is relevancy to the present
-life of the child. If we seek the kingdom of
-heaven, educationally, all other things shall be
-added unto us—which, being interpreted, is that
-if we identify ourselves with the real instincts and
-needs of childhood, and ask only after its fullest
-assertion and growth, the discipline and information
-and culture of adult life shall all come in
-their due season.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Speaking of culture reminds me that in a way
-I have been speaking only of the outside of the
-child’s activity—only of the outward expression
-of his impulses toward saying, making, finding
-out, and creating. The real child, it hardly need
-be said, lives in the world of imaginative values,
-and ideas which find only imperfect outward
-embodiment. We hear much nowadays about
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_72'>72</span>the cultivation of the child’s “imagination.”
-Then we undo much of our own talk and work
-by a belief that the imagination is some special
-part of the child, that finds its satisfaction in some
-one particular direction—generally speaking, that
-of the unreal and make-believe, of the myth
-and made-up story. Why are we so hard of
-heart and so slow to believe? The imagination
-is the medium in which the child lives. To him
-there is everywhere and in everything that occupies
-his mind and activity at all, a surplusage of
-value and significance. The question of the relation
-of the school to the child’s life is at bottom
-simply this: shall we ignore this native setting
-and tendency, dealing not with the living child
-at all, but with the dead image we have erected,
-or shall we give it play and satisfaction? If
-we once believe in life and in the life of the child,
-then will all the occupations and uses spoken of,
-then will all history and science, become instruments
-of appeal and materials of culture to
-his imagination, and through that to the richness
-and the orderliness of his life. Where we
-now see only the outward doing and the outward
-product, there, behind all visible results, is the
-re-adjustment of mental attitude, the enlarged and
-sympathetic vision, the sense of growing power,
-and the willing ability to identify both insight
-and capacity with the interests of the world and
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_73'>73</span>man. Unless culture be a superficial polish, a
-veneering of mahogany over common wood, it
-surely is this—the growth of the imagination in
-flexibility, in scope, and in sympathy, till the life
-which the individual lives is informed with the
-life of nature and of society. When nature and
-society can live in the schoolroom, when the
-forms and tools of learning are subordinated to
-the substance of experience, then shall there be
-an opportunity for this identification, and culture
-shall be the democratic password.</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
- <span class='pageno' id='Page_77'>77</span>
- <h2 class='c007'>III<br /> WASTE IN EDUCATION</h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'>The subject announced for today was “Waste
-in Education.” I should like first to state briefly
-its relation to the two preceding lectures. The
-first dealt with the school in its social aspects,
-and the necessary re-adjustments that have to be
-made to render it effective in present social conditions.
-The second dealt with the school in
-relation to the growth of individual children.
-Now the third deals with the school as itself an
-institution, both in relation to society and to its
-own members—the children. It deals with the
-question of organization, because all waste is the
-result of the lack of it, the motive lying behind
-organization being promotion of economy and
-efficiency. This question is not one of the waste
-of money or the waste of things. These matters
-count; but the primary waste is that of human
-life, the life of the children while they are at
-school, and afterward because of inadequate and
-perverted preparation.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>So, when we speak of organization, we are not
-to think simply of the externals; of that which
-goes by the name “school system”—the school
-board, the superintendent, and the building, the
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_78'>78</span>engaging and promotion of teachers, etc. These
-things enter in, but the fundamental organization
-is that of the school itself as a community of individuals,
-in its relations to other forms of social
-life. All waste is due to isolation. Organization
-is nothing but getting things into connection
-with one another, so that they work easily, flexibly,
-and fully. Therefore in speaking of this
-question of waste in education, I desire to call
-your attention to the isolation of the various
-parts of the school system, to the lack of unity
-in the aims of education, to the lack of coherence
-in its studies and methods.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>I have made a chart (I) which, while I speak
-of the isolations of the school system itself, may
-perhaps appeal to the eye and save a little time
-in verbal explanations. A paradoxical friend of
-mine says there is nothing so obscure as an illustration,
-and it is quite possible that my attempt
-to illustrate my point will simply prove the truth
-of his statement.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>The blocks represent the various elements in
-the school system, and are intended to indicate
-roughly the length of time given to each division,
-and also the overlapping, both in time and subjects
-studied, of the individual parts of the system.
-With each block is given the historical
-conditions in which it arose and its ruling
-ideal.</p>
-
-<div class='figcenter id001'>
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_79'>79</span>
-<img src='images/i_087.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>Chart I</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_81'>81</span>The school system, upon the whole, has grown
-from the top down. During the middle ages it
-was essentially a cluster of professional schools—especially
-law and theology. Our present university
-comes down to us from the middle ages.
-I will not say that at present it is a mediæval
-institution, but it had its roots in the middle ages,
-and it has not outlived all mediæval traditions
-regarding learning.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>The kindergarten, rising with the present century,
-was a union of the nursery and of the philosophy
-of Schelling; a wedding of the plays
-and games which the mother carried on with her
-children, to Schelling’s highly romantic and symbolic
-philosophy. The elements that came from
-the actual study of child life—the continuation
-of the nursery—have remained a life-bringing
-force in all education; the Schellingesque factors
-made an obstruction between it and the rest of
-the school system, brought about isolations.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>The line drawn over the top indicates that
-there is a certain interaction between the kindergarten
-and the primary school; for, so far as the
-primary school remained in spirit foreign to the
-natural interests of child life, it was isolated from
-the kindergarten, so that it is a problem, at present,
-to introduce kindergarten methods into the
-primary school; the problem of the so-called
-connecting class. The difficulty is that the two
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_82'>82</span>are not one from the start. To get a connection
-the teacher has had to climb over the wall instead
-of entering in at the gate.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>On the side of aims, the ideal of the kindergarten
-was the moral development of the children,
-rather than instruction or discipline; an ideal
-sometimes emphasized to the point of sentimentality.
-The primary school grew practically out
-of the popular movement of the sixteenth century,
-when along with the invention of printing and
-the growth of commerce, it became a business
-necessity to know how to read, write, and figure.
-The aim was distinctly a practical one; it was
-utility; getting command of these tools, the symbols
-of learning, not for the sake of learning, but
-because they gave access to careers in life otherwise
-closed.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>The division next to the primary school is the
-grammar school. The term is not much used in
-the West, but is common in the eastern states.
-It goes back to the time of the revival of learning—a
-little earlier perhaps than the conditions
-out of which the primary school originated, and,
-even when contemporaneous, having a different
-ideal. It had to do with the study of language
-in the higher sense; because, at the time of the
-Renaissance, Latin and Greek connected people
-with the culture of the past, with the Roman and
-Greek world. The classic languages were the
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_83'>83</span>only means of escape from the limitations of the
-middle ages. Thus there sprang up the prototype
-of the grammar school, more liberal than
-the university (so largely professional in character),
-for the purpose of putting into the hands of
-the people the key to the old learning, that
-men might see a world with a larger horizon.
-The object was primarily culture, secondarily discipline.
-It represented much more than the
-present grammar school. It was the liberal element
-in the college, which, extending downward,
-grew into the academy and the high school.
-Thus the secondary school is still in part just a
-lower college (having an even higher curriculum
-than the college of a few centuries ago) or a preparatory
-department to a college, and in part a
-rounding up of the utilities of the elementary
-school.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>There appear then two products of the nineteenth
-century, the technical and normal schools.
-The schools of technology, engineering, etc., are,
-of course, mainly the development of nineteenth-century
-business conditions, as the primary school
-was the development of business conditions of
-the sixteenth century. The normal school arose
-because of the necessity for training teachers,
-with the idea partly of professional drill, and
-partly that of culture.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Without going into more detail, we have
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_84'>84</span>some eight different parts of the school system
-as represented on the chart, all of which arose
-historically at different times, having different
-ideals in view, and consequently different methods.
-I do not wish to suggest that all of the
-isolation, all of the separation, that has existed
-in the past between the different parts of the
-school system still persists. One must, however,
-recognize that they have never yet been welded
-into one complete whole. The great problem in
-education on the administrative side is how to
-unite these different parts.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Consider the training schools for teachers—the
-normal schools. These occupy at present a
-somewhat anomalous position, intermediate between
-the high school and the college, requiring
-the high-school preparation, and covering a certain
-amount of college work. They are isolated
-from the higher subject-matter of scholarship,
-since, upon the whole, their object has been
-to train persons <em>how</em> to teach, rather than <em>what</em>
-to teach; while, if we go to the college, we find
-the other half of this isolation—learning <em>what</em> to
-teach, with almost a contempt for methods of
-teaching. The college is shut off from contact
-with children and youth. Its members, to a great
-extent, away from home and forgetting their own
-childhood, become eventually teachers with a
-large amount of subject-matter at command, and
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_85'>85</span>little knowledge of how this is related to the
-minds of those to whom it is to be taught. In
-this division between what to teach and how to
-teach, each side suffers from the separation.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>It is interesting to follow out the inter-relation
-between primary, grammar, and high schools.
-The elementary school has crowded up and
-taken many subjects previously studied in the
-old New England grammar school. The high
-school has pushed its subjects down. Latin and
-algebra have been put in the upper grades, so
-that the seventh and eighth grades are, after all,
-about all that is left of the old grammar school.
-They are a sort of amorphous composite, being
-partly a place where children go on learning
-what they already have learned (to read, write,
-and figure), and partly a place of preparation for
-the high school. The name in some parts of
-New England for these upper grades was “Intermediate
-School.” The term was a happy one;
-the work was simply intermediate between something
-that had been and something that was
-going to be, having no special meaning on its
-own account.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Just as the parts are separated, so do the ideals
-differ—moral development, practical utility,
-general culture, discipline, and professional training.
-These aims are each especially represented
-in some distinct part of the system of education;
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_86'>86</span>and with the growing interaction of the parts,
-each is supposed to afford a certain amount of
-culture, discipline, and utility. But the lack of
-fundamental unity is witnessed in the fact that
-one study is still considered good for discipline,
-and another for culture; some parts of arithmetic,
-for example, for discipline and others for use,
-literature for culture, grammar for discipline,
-geography partly for utility, partly for culture;
-and so on. The unity of education is dissipated,
-and the studies become centrifugal; so much of
-this study to secure this end, so much of that to
-secure another, until the whole becomes a sheer
-compromise and patchwork between contending
-aims and disparate studies. The great problem
-in education on the administrative side is to
-secure the unity of the whole, in the place of a
-sequence of more or less unrelated and overlapping
-parts and thus to reduce the waste arising
-from friction, reduplication and transitions that
-are not properly bridged.</p>
-
-<div class='figcenter id001'>
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_87'>87</span>
-<img src='images/i_095.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>Chart II</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'>In this second symbolic diagram (II) I wish to
-suggest that really the only way to unite the parts
-of the system is to unite each to life. We can get
-only an artificial unity so long as we confine our
-gaze to the school system itself. We must look
-at it as part of the larger whole of social life. This
-block (A) in the center represents the school
-system as a whole. (1) At one side we have the
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_89'>89</span>home, and the two arrows represent the free
-interplay of influences, materials, and ideas between
-the home life and that of the school. (2)
-Below we have the relation to the natural environment,
-the great field of geography in the widest
-sense. The school building has about it a natural
-environment. It ought to be in a garden, and
-the children from the garden would be led on to
-surrounding fields, and then into the wider country,
-with all its facts and forces. (3) Above is
-represented business life, and the necessity for
-free play between the school and the needs
-and forces of industry. (4) On the other side
-is the university proper, with its various phases,
-its laboratories, its resources in the way of
-libraries, museums, and professional schools.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>From the standpoint of the child, the great
-waste in the school comes from his inability to
-utilize the experiences he gets outside the school
-in any complete and free way within the school
-itself; while, on the other hand, he is unable to
-apply in daily life what he is learning at school.
-That is the isolation of the school—its isolation
-from life. When the child gets into the schoolroom
-he has to put out of his mind a large part of
-the ideas, interests, and activities that predominate
-in his home and neighborhood. So the school,
-being unable to utilize this everyday experience,
-sets painfully to work, on another tack and by a
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_90'>90</span>variety of means, to arouse in the child an interest
-in school studies. While I was visiting in the city
-of Moline a few years ago, the superintendent told
-me that they found many children every year,
-who were surprised to learn that the Mississippi
-river in the text-book had anything to do with
-the stream of water flowing past their homes.
-The geography being simply a matter of the
-schoolroom, it is more or less of an awakening to
-many children to find that the whole thing is
-nothing but a more formal and definite statement
-of the facts which they see, feel, and touch every
-day. When we think that we all live on the
-earth, that we live in an atmosphere, that our lives
-are touched at every point by the influences of
-the soil, flora, and fauna, by considerations of
-light and heat, and then think of what the school
-study of geography has been, we have a typical
-idea of the gap existing between the everyday
-experiences of the child, and the isolated material
-supplied in such large measure in the school.
-This is but an instance, and one upon which most
-of us may reflect long before we take the present
-artificiality of the school as other than a matter
-of course or necessity.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Though there should be organic connection
-between the school and business life, it is not
-meant that the school is to prepare the child for
-any particular business, but that there should be
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_91'>91</span>a natural connection of the everyday life of the
-child with the business environment about him,
-and that it is the affair of the school to clarify
-and liberalize this connection, to bring it to consciousness,
-not by introducing special studies,
-like commercial geography and arithmetic, but
-by keeping alive the ordinary bonds of relation.
-The subject of compound-business-partnership is
-probably not in many of the arithmetics nowadays,
-though it was there not a generation ago,
-for the makers of text-books said that if they
-left out anything they could not sell their books.
-This compound-business-partnership originated
-as far back as the sixteenth century. The joint-stock
-company had not been invented, and as
-large commerce with the Indies and Americas
-grew up, it was necessary to have an accumulation
-of capital with which to handle it. One man
-said, “I will put in this amount of money for six
-months,” and another, “So much for two years,”
-and so on. Thus by joining together they got
-money enough to float their commercial enterprises.
-Naturally, then, “compound partnership”
-was taught in the schools. The joint-stock company
-was invented; compound partnership disappeared,
-but the problems relating to it stayed
-in the arithmetics for two hundred years. They
-were kept after they had ceased to have practical
-utility, for the sake of mental discipline—they
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_92'>92</span>were “such hard problems, you know.” A
-great deal of what is now in the arithmetics
-under the head of percentage is of the same
-nature. Children of twelve and thirteen years of
-age go through gain and loss calculations, and
-various forms of bank discount so complicated
-that the bankers long ago dispensed with them.
-And when it is pointed out that business is not
-done this way, we hear again of “mental discipline.”
-And yet there are plenty of real connections
-between the experience of children and
-business conditions which need to be utilized and
-illuminated. The child should study his commercial
-arithmetic and geography, not as isolated
-things by themselves, but in their reference to
-his social environment. The youth needs to
-become acquainted with the bank as a factor in
-modern life, with what it does, and how it does
-it; and then relevant arithmetical processes
-would have some meaning—quite in contradistinction
-to the time-absorbing and mind-killing
-examples in percentage, partial payments, etc.,
-found in all our arithmetics.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>The connection with the university, as indicated
-in this chart, I need not dwell upon. I
-simply wish to indicate that there ought to be
-a free interaction between all the parts of the
-school system. There is much of utter triviality
-of subject-matter in elementary and secondary
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_93'>93</span>education. When we investigate it, we find that
-it is full of facts taught that are not facts, which
-have to be unlearned later on. Now, this happens
-because the “lower” parts of our system
-are not in vital connection with the “higher.”
-The university or college, in its idea, is a place of
-research, where investigation is going on, a place
-of libraries and museums, where the best resources
-of the past are gathered, maintained and organized.
-It is, however, as true in the school as in
-the university that the spirit of inquiry can be
-got only through and with the attitude of inquiry.
-The pupil must learn what has meaning, what
-enlarges his horizon, instead of mere trivialities.
-He must become acquainted with truths, instead
-of things that were regarded as such fifty years
-ago, or that are taken as interesting by the misunderstanding
-of a partially educated teacher.
-It is difficult to see how these ends can be
-reached except as the most advanced part of the
-educational system is in complete interaction
-with the most rudimentary.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>The next chart (III) is an enlargement of the
-second. The school building has swelled out, so
-to speak, the surrounding environment remaining
-the same, the home, the garden and country, the
-relation to business life and the university. The
-object is to show what the school must become
-to get out of its isolation and secure the organic
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_94'>94</span>connection with social life of which we have been
-speaking. It is not our architect’s plan for the
-school building that we hope to have; but it is a
-diagrammatic representation of the idea which
-we want embodied in the school building. On
-the lower side you see the dining-room and the
-kitchen, at the top the wood and metal shops, and
-the textile room for sewing and weaving. The
-center represents the manner in which all come
-together in the library; that is to say, in a collection
-of the intellectual resources of all kinds that
-throw light upon the practical work, that give it
-meaning and liberal value. If the four corners
-represent practice, the interior represents the theory
-of the practical activities. In other words,
-the object of these forms of practice in the school
-is not found chiefly in themselves, or in the technical
-skill of cooks, seamstresses, carpenters and
-masons, but in their connection, on the social
-side, with the life without; while on the individual
-side they respond to the child’s need of action,
-of expression, of desire to do something, to be
-constructive and creative, instead of simply passive
-and conforming. Their great significance is
-that they keep the balance between the social
-and individual sides—the chart symbolizing particularly
-the connection with the social. Here on
-one side is the home. How naturally the lines of
-connection play back and forth between the home
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_96'>96</span>and the kitchen and the textile room of the school!
-The child can carry over what he learns in the
-home and utilize it in the school; and the things
-learned in the school he applies at home. These
-are the two great things in breaking down isolation,
-in getting connection—to have the child
-come to school with all the experience he has
-got outside the school, and to leave it with something
-to be immediately used in his everyday life.
-The child comes to the traditional school with a
-healthy body and a more or less unwilling mind,
-though, in fact, he does not bring both his body
-and mind with him; he has to leave his mind
-behind, because there is no way to use it in the
-school. If he had a purely abstract mind, he
-could bring it to school with him, but his is a
-concrete one, interested in concrete things, and
-unless these things get over into school life, he
-cannot take his mind with him. What we want
-is to have the child come to school with a whole
-mind and a whole body, and leave school with a
-fuller mind and an even healthier body. And
-speaking of the body suggests that, while there
-is no gymnasium in these diagrams, the active
-life carried on in its four corners brings with it
-constant physical exercise, while our gymnasium
-proper will deal with the particular weaknesses
-of children and their correction, and
-will attempt more consciously to build up the
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_97'>97</span>thoroughly sound body as the abode of the sound
-mind.</p>
-
-<div class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_103.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>Chart III</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_98'>98</span>That the dining-room and kitchen connect with
-the country and its processes and products it is
-hardly necessary to say. Cooking may be so
-taught that it has no connection with country life,
-and with the sciences that find their unity in geography.
-Perhaps it generally has been taught without
-these connections being really made. But
-all the materials that come into the kitchen have
-their origin in the country; they come from the
-soil, are nurtured through the influences of light
-and water, and represent a great variety of
-local environments. Through this connection,
-extending from the garden into the larger world,
-the child has his most natural introduction to the
-study of the sciences. Where did these things
-grow? What was necessary to their growth?
-What their relation to the soil? What the effect
-of different climatic conditions? and so on. We
-all know what the old-fashioned botany was:
-partly collecting flowers that were pretty, pressing
-and mounting them; partly pulling these
-flowers to pieces and giving technical names to
-the different parts, finding all the different leaves,
-naming all their different shapes and forms. It
-was a study of plants without any reference to
-the soil, to the country, or to growth. In contrast,
-a real study of plants takes them in their natural
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_99'>99</span>environment and in their uses as well, not simply
-as food, but in all their adaptations to the social
-life of man. Cooking becomes as well a most
-natural introduction to the study of chemistry, giving
-the child here also something which he can at
-once bring to bear upon his daily experience. I
-once heard a very intelligent woman say that she
-could not understand how science could be
-taught to little children, because she did not see
-how they could understand atoms and molecules.
-In other words, since she did not see how highly
-abstract facts could be presented to the child
-independently of daily experience, she could not
-understand how science could be taught at all.
-Before we smile at this remark, we need to ask
-ourselves if she is alone in her assumption, or
-whether it simply formulates almost all of our
-school practice.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>The same relations with the outside world are
-found in the carpentry and the textile shops.
-They connect with the country, as the source of
-their materials, with physics, as the science of
-applying energy, with commerce and distribution,
-with art in the development of architecture and
-decoration. They have also an intimate connection
-with the university on the side of its technological
-and engineering schools; with the laboratory,
-and its scientific methods and results.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>To go back to the square which is marked the
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_100'>100</span>library (Chart III, A): if you imagine rooms half
-in the four corners and half in the library, you will
-get the idea of the recitation room. That is the
-place where the children bring the experiences, the
-problems, the questions, the particular facts which
-they have found, and discuss them so that new
-light may be thrown upon them, particularly new
-light from the experience of others, the accumulated
-wisdom of the world—symbolized in the
-library. Here is the organic relation of theory and
-practice; the child not simply doing things, but
-getting also the <em>idea</em> of what he does; getting
-from the start some intellectual conception that
-enters into his practice and enriches it; while
-every idea finds, directly or indirectly, some application
-in experience, and has some effect upon
-life. This, I need hardly say, fixes the position
-of the “book” or reading in education. Harmful
-as a substitute for experience, it is all-important
-in interpreting and expanding experience.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_101'>101</span>The other chart (IV) illustrates precisely the
-same idea. It gives the symbolic upper story of
-this ideal school. In the upper corners are the
-laboratories; in the lower corners are the studios
-for art work, both the graphic and auditory
-arts. The questions, the chemical and physical
-problems, arising in the kitchen and shop, are
-taken to the laboratories to be worked out. For
-instance, this past week one of the older groups</p>
-
-<div class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_109.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>Chart IV</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_103'>103</span>of children doing practical work in weaving
-which involved the use of the spinning wheel,
-worked out the diagrams of the direction of
-forces concerned in treadle and wheel, and the
-ratio of velocities between wheel and spindle.
-In the same manner, the plants with which the
-child has to do in cooking, afford the basis for a
-concrete interest in botany, and may be taken and
-studied by themselves. In a certain school in
-Boston science work for months was centered in
-the growth of the cotton plant, and yet something
-new was brought in every day. We hope
-to do similar work with all the types of plants
-that furnish materials for sewing and weaving.
-These examples will suggest, I hope, the relation
-which the laboratories bear to the rest of the
-school.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>The drawing and music, or the graphic and
-auditory arts, represent the culmination, the
-idealization, the highest point of refinement of
-all the work carried on. I think everybody who
-has not a purely literary view of the subject recognizes
-that genuine art grows out of the work of
-the artisan. The art of the Renaissance was great,
-because it grew out of the manual arts of life. It
-did not spring up in a separate atmosphere, however
-ideal, but carried on to their spiritual meaning
-processes found in homely and everyday
-forms of life. The school should observe this
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_104'>104</span>relationship. The merely artisan side is narrow,
-but the mere art, taken by itself, and grafted on
-from without, tends to become forced, empty,
-sentimental. I do not mean, of course, that all
-art work must be correlated in detail to the
-other work of the school, but simply that a
-spirit of union gives vitality to the art, and depth
-and richness to the other work. All art involves
-physical organs, the eye and hand, the ear and
-voice; and yet it is something more than the
-mere technical skill required by the organs of
-expression. It involves an idea, a thought, a
-spiritual rendering of things; and yet it is other
-than any number of ideas by themselves. It is a
-living union of thought and the instrument of
-expression. This union is symbolized by saying
-that in the ideal school the art work might be
-considered to be that of the shops, passed through
-the alembic of library and museum into action
-again.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Take the textile room as an illustration of such
-a synthesis. I am talking about a future school,
-the one we hope, some time, to have. The basal
-fact in that room is that it is a workshop, doing
-actual things in sewing, spinning, and weaving.
-The children come into immediate connection
-with the materials, with various fabrics of silk, cotton,
-linen and wool. Information at once appears
-in connection with these materials; their origin,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_105'>105</span>history, their adaptation to particular uses, and
-the machines of various kinds by which the raw
-materials are utilized. Discipline arises in dealing
-with the problems involved, both theoretical and
-practical. Whence does the culture arise? Partly
-from seeing all these things reflected through
-the medium of their scientific and historic conditions
-and associations, whereby the child learns
-to appreciate them as technical achievements,
-as thoughts precipitated in action; and partly
-because of the introduction of the art idea into
-the room itself. In the ideal school there would
-be something of this sort: first, a complete industrial
-museum, giving samples of materials in various
-stages of manufacture, and the implements,
-from the simplest to the most complex, used in
-dealing with them; then a collection of photographs
-and pictures illustrating the landscapes
-and the scenes from which the materials come,
-their native homes, and their places of manufacture.
-Such a collection would be a vivid and
-continual lesson in the synthesis of art, science,
-and industry. There would be, also, samples of
-the more perfect forms of textile work, as Italian,
-French, Japanese, and Oriental. There would
-be objects illustrating motives of design and
-decoration which have entered into production.
-Literature would contribute its part in its idealized
-representation of the world-industries, as
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_106'>106</span>the Penelope in the Odyssey—a classic in literature
-only because the character is an adequate
-embodiment of a certain industrial phase of social
-life. So, from Homer down to the present time,
-there is a continuous procession of related facts
-which have been translated into terms of art.
-Music lends its share, from the Scotch song at
-the wheel to the spinning song of Marguerite, or
-of Wagner’s Senta. The shop becomes a pictured
-museum, appealing to the eye. It would have
-not only materials, beautiful woods and designs,
-but would give a synopsis of the historical evolution
-of architecture in its drawings and pictures.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Thus I have attempted to indicate how the
-school may be connected with life so that the
-experience gained by the child in a familiar,
-commonplace way is carried over and made
-use of there, and what the child learns in the
-school is carried back and applied in everyday
-life, making the school an organic whole, instead
-of a composite of isolated parts. The isolation
-of studies as well as of parts of the school system
-disappears. Experience has its geographical
-aspect, its artistic and its literary, its scientific
-and its historical sides. All studies arise from
-aspects of the one earth and the one life lived
-upon it. We do not have a series of stratified
-earths, one of which is mathematical, another
-physical, another historical, and so on. We
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_107'>107</span>should not live very long in any one taken by
-itself. We live in a world where all sides are
-bound together. All studies grow out of relations
-in the one great common world. When the child
-lives in varied but concrete and active relationship
-to this common world, his studies are naturally
-unified. It will no longer be a problem to
-correlate studies. The teacher will not have to
-resort to all sorts of devices to weave a little
-arithmetic into the history lesson, and the like.
-Relate the school to life, and all studies are of
-necessity correlated.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Moreover, if the school is related as a whole to
-life as a whole, its various aims and ideals—culture,
-discipline, information, utility—cease to be
-variants, for one of which we must select one
-study and for another another. The growth of
-the child in the direction of social capacity and
-service, his larger and more vital union with life,
-becomes the unifying aim; and discipline, culture
-and information fall into place as phases of this
-growth.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>I wish to say one word more about the relationship
-of our particular school to the University.
-The problem is to unify, to organize education,
-to bring all its various factors together,
-through putting it as a whole into organic union
-with everyday life. That which lies back of
-the pedagogical school of the University is the
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_108'>108</span>necessity of working out something to serve as a
-model for such unification, extending from work
-beginning with the four-year-old child up through
-the graduate work of the University. Already
-we have much help from the University in scientific
-work planned, sometimes even in detail, by heads
-of the departments. The graduate student comes
-to us with his researches and methods, suggesting
-ideas and problems. The library and museum
-are at hand. We want to bring all things educational
-together; to break down the barriers
-that divide the education of the little child from
-the instruction of the maturing youth; to identify
-the lower and the higher education, so that it
-shall be demonstrated to the eye that there is no
-lower and higher, but simply education.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Speaking more especially with reference to
-the pedagogical side of the work: I suppose
-the oldest university chair of pedagogy in our
-country is about twenty years old—that of the
-University of Michigan, founded in the latter
-seventies. But there are only one or two that
-have tried to make a connection between theory
-and practice. They teach for the most part by
-theory, by lectures, by reference to books, rather
-than through the actual work of teaching itself.
-At Columbia, through the Teachers’ College,
-there is an extensive and close connection between
-the University and the training of teachers.
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_109'>109</span>Something has been done in one or two other
-places along the same line. We want an even
-more intimate union here, so that the University
-shall put all its resources at the disposition of the
-elementary school, contributing to the evolution
-of valuable subject-matter and right method,
-while the school in turn will be a laboratory in
-which the student of education sees theories and
-ideas demonstrated, tested, criticised, enforced,
-and the evolution of new truths. We want the
-school in its relation to the University to be a
-working model of a unified education.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>A word as to the relation of the school to
-educational interests generally. I heard once
-that the adoption of a certain method in use in
-our school was objected to by a teacher on this
-ground: “You know that it is an experimental
-school. They do not work under the same
-conditions that we are subject to.” Now, the
-purpose of performing an experiment is that
-other people need not experiment; at least need
-not experiment so much, may have something
-definite and positive to go by. An experiment
-demands particularly favorable conditions in
-order that results may be reached both freely
-and securely. It has to work unhampered, with
-all the needed resources at command. Laboratories
-lie back of all the great business enterprises
-of today, back of every great factory,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_110'>110</span>every railway and steamship system. Yet the
-laboratory is not a business enterprise; it does
-not aim to secure for itself the conditions of
-business life, nor does the commercial undertaking
-repeat the laboratory. There is a difference
-between working out and testing a new truth, or
-a new method, and applying it on a wide scale,
-making it available for the mass of men, making
-it commercial. But the first thing is to discover
-the truth, to afford all necessary facilities, for
-this is the most practical thing in the world in
-the long run. We do not expect to have other
-schools literally imitate what we do. A working
-model is not something to be copied; it is to
-afford a demonstration of the feasibility of the
-principle, and of the methods which make it
-feasible. So (to come back to our own point)
-we want here to work out the problem of the
-unity, the organization of the school system in
-itself, and to do this by relating it so intimately
-to life as to demonstrate the possibility and
-necessity of such organization for all education.</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
- <span class='pageno' id='Page_113'>113</span>
- <h2 class='c007'>IV<br /> THREE YEARS OF THE UNIVERSITY ELEMENTARY SCHOOL<a id='r1' /><a href='#f1' class='c012'><sup>[1]</sup></a></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'>The school was started the first week in January,
-three years ago. I shall try this afternoon to
-give a brief statement of the ideas and problems
-that were in mind when the experiment was
-started, and a sketch of the development of the
-work since that time. We began in a small house
-in Fifty-seventh street, with fifteen children. We
-found ourselves the next year with twenty-five
-children in Kimbark avenue, and then moved in
-January to Rosalie court, the larger quarters
-enabling us to take forty children. The next
-year the numbers increased to sixty, the school
-remaining at Rosalie court. This year we have
-had ninety-five on the roll at one time, and are
-located at 5412 Ellis avenue, where we hope to
-stay till we have a building and grounds of our
-own.</p>
-
-<div class='footnote' id='f1'>
-<p class='c000'><span class='label'><a href='#r1'>1</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>Stenographic report of a talk by John Dewey at a meeting
-of the Parents’ Association of the University Elementary School,
-February, 1899; somewhat revised.</p>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'>The children during the first year of the school
-were between the ages of six and nine. Now
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_114'>114</span>their ages range between four and thirteen—the
-members of the oldest group being in their thirteenth
-year. This is the first year that we have
-children under six, and this has been made possible
-through the liberality of friends in Honolulu,
-H. I., who are building up there a memorial kindergarten
-along the same lines.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>The expenses of the school during the first
-year, of two terms only, were between $1,300 and
-$1,400. The expenses this year will be about
-$12,000. Of this amount $5,500 will come from
-tuitions; $5,000 has been given by friends interested
-in the school, and there remains about
-$1,500 yet to be raised for the conduct of the
-school. This is an indication of the increase of
-expenses. The average expense per pupil is
-about the same since the start, <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">i. e.</span></i>, $120 per
-child per school year. Relatively speaking, this
-year the expenses of the school took something
-of a jump, through the expense of moving to a
-new building, and the repairs and changes there
-necessary. An increase in the staff of teachers
-has also enlarged the work as well as the debits
-of the school. Next year (1899–1900) we hope
-to have about 120 children, and apparently the
-expenses will be about $2,500 more than this. Of
-this amount $2,000 will be met by the increase in
-tuition from the pupils. The cost of a child to
-the school, $120 a year, is precisely the tuition
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_115'>115</span>charged by the University for students and is
-double the average tuition charged by the school.
-But it is not expected that the University tuition
-will come anywhere near meeting the expense
-involved there. One reason for not increasing
-the tuition here, even if it were advisable for other
-reasons, is that it is well to emphasize, from an
-educational point of view, that elementary as
-well as advanced education requires endowment.
-There is every reason why money should be
-spent freely for the organization and maintenance
-of foundation work in education as well
-as for the later stages.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>The elementary school has had from the outset
-two sides: one, the obvious one of instruction
-of the children who have been intrusted to
-it; the other, relationship to the University,
-since the school is under the charge, and forms a
-part of the pedagogical work of the University.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>When the school was started, there were certain
-ideas in mind—perhaps it would be better
-to say questions and problems; certain points
-which it seemed worth while to test. If you will
-permit one personal word, I should like to say
-that it is sometimes thought that the school
-started out with a number of ready-made principles
-and ideas which were to be put into practice
-at once. It has been popularly assumed that I
-am the author of these ready-made ideas and
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_116'>116</span>principles which were to go into execution. I
-take this opportunity to say that the educational
-conduct of the school, as well as its administration,
-the selection of subject-matter, and the
-working out of the course of study, as well as
-actual instruction of children, have been almost
-entirely in the hands of the teachers of the
-school; and that there has been a gradual development
-of the educational principles and methods
-involved, not a fixed equipment. The teachers
-started with question marks, rather than with
-fixed rules, and if any answers have been reached,
-it is the teachers in the school who have supplied
-them. We started upon the whole with four such
-questions, or problems:</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>1. What can be done, and how can it be
-done, to bring the school into closer relation
-with the home and neighborhood life—instead of
-having the school a place where the child comes
-solely to learn certain lessons? What can be
-done to break down the barriers which have unfortunately
-come to separate the school life from the
-rest of the everyday life of the child? This does
-not mean, as it is sometimes, perhaps, interpreted
-to mean, that the child should simply take up in
-the school things already experienced at home
-and study them, but that, so far as possible, the
-child shall have the same attitude and point of
-view in the school as in the home; that he shall
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_117'>117</span>find the same interest in going to school, and in
-there doing things worth doing for their own sake,
-that he finds in the plays and occupations which
-busy him in his home and neighborhood life. It
-means, again, that the motives which keep the
-child at work and growing at home shall be used
-in the school, so that he shall not have to acquire
-another set of principles of actions belonging
-only to the school—separate from those of the
-home. It is a question of the unity of the child’s
-experience, of its actuating motives and aims,
-not of amusing or even interesting the child.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>2. What can be done in the way of introducing
-subject-matter in history and science and art,
-that shall have a positive value and real significance
-in the child’s own life; that shall represent,
-even to the youngest children, something worthy
-of attainment in skill or knowledge; as much so
-to the little pupil as are the studies of the high-school
-or college student to him? You know
-what the traditional curriculum of the first few
-years is, even though many modifications have
-been made. Some statistics have been collected
-showing that 75 or 80 per cent. of the first three
-years of a child in school are spent upon the
-form—not the substance—of learning, the
-mastering of the symbols of reading, writing,
-and arithmetic. There is not much positive nutriment
-in this. Its purpose is important—is
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_118'>118</span>necessary—but it does not represent the same kind
-of increase in a child’s intellectual and moral experience
-that is represented by positive truth of
-history and nature, or by added insight into reality
-and beauty. One thing, then, we wanted to find
-out is how much can be given a child that is
-really worth his while to get, in knowledge of the
-world about him, of the forces in the world, of
-historical and social growth, and in capacity to
-express himself in a variety of artistic forms.
-From the strictly educational side this has been
-the chief problem of the school. It is along this
-line that we hope to make our chief contribution
-to education in general; we hope, that is, to work
-out and publish a positive body of subject-matter
-which may be generally available.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>3. How can instruction in these formal, symbolic
-branches—the mastering of the ability to
-read, write, and use figures intelligently—be
-carried on with everyday experience and occupation
-as their background and in definite relations
-to other studies of more inherent content,
-and be carried on in such a way that the child
-shall feel their necessity through their connection
-with subjects which appeal to him on their own
-account? If this can be accomplished, he will
-have a vital motive for getting the technical
-capacity. It is not meant, as has been sometimes
-jocosely stated, that the child learn to bake and
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_119'>119</span>sew at school, and to read, write, and figure at
-home. It is intended that these formal subjects
-shall not be presented in such large doses at first
-as to be the exclusive objects of attention, and
-that the child shall be led by that which he is
-doing to feel the need for acquiring skill in the
-use of symbols and the immediate power they
-give. In any school, if the child realizes the motive
-for the use and application of number and
-language he has taken the longest step toward
-securing the power; and he can realize the motive
-only as he has some particular—not some
-general and remote—use for the symbols.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>4. Individual attention. This is secured by
-small groupings—eight or ten in a class—and
-a large number of teachers supervising systematically
-the intellectual needs and attainments and
-physical well-being and growth of the child. To
-secure this we have now 135 hours of instructors’
-time per week, that is, the time of nine
-teachers for three hours per day, or one teacher
-per group. It requires but a few words to make
-this statement about attention to individual powers
-and needs, and yet the whole of the school’s
-aims and methods, moral, physical, intellectual,
-are bound up in it.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>I think these four points present a fair statement
-of what we have set out to discover. The
-school is often called an experimental school, and
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_120'>120</span>in one sense that is the proper name. I do not
-like to use it too much, for fear parents will
-think we are experimenting upon the children,
-and that they naturally object to. But it is an
-experimental school—at least I hope so—with
-reference to education and educational problems.
-We have attempted to find out by trying, by doing—not
-alone by discussion and theorizing—<em>whether</em>
-these problems may be worked out, and
-<em>how</em> they may be worked out.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Next a few words about the means that have
-been used in the school in order to test these
-four questions, and to supply their answers,
-and first as to the place given to hand-work of
-different kinds in the school. There are three
-main lines regularly pursued: (<em>a</em>) the shop-work
-with wood and tools, (<em>b</em>) cooking work, and (<em>c</em>)
-work with textiles—sewing and weaving. Of
-course, there is other hand-work in connection
-with science, as science is largely of an experimental
-nature. It is a fact that may not have
-come to your attention that a large part of the
-best and most advanced scientific work involves
-a great deal of manual skill, the training of the
-hand and eye. It is impossible for one to be a
-first-class worker in science without this training
-in manipulation, and in handling apparatus
-and materials. In connection with the history
-work, especially with the younger children,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_121'>121</span>hand-work is brought in in the way of making
-implements, weapons, tools, etc. Of course, the
-art work is another side—drawing, painting, and
-modeling. Logically, perhaps, the gymnasium
-work does not come in here, but as a means
-of developing moral and intellectual control
-through the medium of the body it certainly
-does. The children have one-half hour per
-day of this form of physical exercise. Along
-this line we have found that hand-work, in large
-variety and amount, is the most easy and natural
-method of keeping up the same attitude of the
-child in and out of the school. The child gets the
-largest part of his acquisitions through his bodily
-activities, until he learns to work systematically
-with the intellect. That is the purpose of this
-work in the school, to direct these activities, to
-systematize and organize them, so that they shall
-not be as haphazard and as wandering as they are
-outside of school. The problem of making these
-forms of practical activity work continuously and
-definitely together, leading from one factor of skill
-to another, from one intellectual difficulty to
-another, has been one of the most difficult, and
-at the same time one in which we have been
-most successful. The various kinds of work,
-carpentry, cooking, sewing, and weaving, are
-selected as involving different kinds of skill, and
-demanding different types of intellectual attitude
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_122'>122</span>on the part of the child, and because they represent
-some of the most important activities of the
-everyday outside world: the question of living
-under shelter, of daily food and clothing, of the
-home, of personal movement and exchange of
-goods. He gets also the training of sense organs,
-of touch, of sight, and the ability to coördinate
-eye and hand. He gets healthy exercise; for the
-child demands a much larger amount of physical
-activity than the formal program of the ordinary
-school permits. There is also a continual
-appeal to memory, to judgment, in adapting
-ends to means, a training in habits of order,
-industry, and neatness in the care of the tools
-and utensils, and in doing things in a systematic,
-instead of a haphazard, way. Then, again,
-these practical occupations make a background,
-especially in the earlier groups, for the later
-studies. The children get a good deal of
-chemistry in connection with cooking, of number
-work and geometrical principles in carpentry, and
-a good deal of geography in connection with
-their theoretical work in weaving and sewing.
-History also comes in with the origin and growth
-of various inventions, and their effects upon
-social life and political organization.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Perhaps more attention, upon the whole, has
-been given to our second point, that of positive
-subject-matter, than to any one other thing. On
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_123'>123</span>the history side the curriculum is now fairly well
-worked out. The younger children begin with the
-home and occupations of the home. In the sixth
-year the intention is that the children should
-study occupations outside the home, the larger
-social industries—farming, mining, lumber, etc.—that
-they may see the complex and various social
-industries on which life depends, while incidentally
-they investigate the use of the various materials—woods,
-metals, and the processes applied—thus
-getting a beginning of scientific study. The
-next year is given to the historical development
-of industry and invention—starting with man as
-a savage and carrying him through the typical
-phases of his progress upward, until the iron age
-is reached and man begins to enter upon a
-civilized career. The object of the study of
-primitive life is not to keep the child interested
-in lower and relatively savage stages,
-but to show him the steps of progress and
-development, especially along the line of invention,
-by which man was led into civilization.
-There is a certain nearness, after all, in
-the child to primitive forms of life. They are
-much more simple than existing institutions.
-By throwing the emphasis upon the progress
-of man, and upon the way advance has been
-made, we hope to avoid the objections that
-hold against paying too much attention to
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_124'>124</span>the crudities and distracting excitements of savage
-life.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>The next two or three years, <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">i. e.</span></i>, the fourth
-and fifth grades, and perhaps the sixth, will be
-devoted to American history. It is then that
-history, properly speaking, begins, as the study
-of primitive life can hardly be so called.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Then comes Greek history and Roman, in
-the regular chronological order, each year having
-its own work planned with reference to what has
-come before and after.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>The science work was more difficult to arrange
-and systematize, because there was so little to
-follow—so little that has been already done in
-an organized way. We are now at work upon a
-program,<a id='r2' /><a href='#f2' class='c012'><sup>[2]</sup></a> and I shall not speak in detail about it.
-The first two or three years cultivate the children’s
-powers of observation, lead them to sympathetic
-interest in the habits of plants and
-animals, and to look at things with reference to
-their uses. Then the center of the work becomes
-geographical—the study of the earth, as the most
-central thing. From this almost all the work
-grows out, and to it the work goes back. Another
-standpoint in the science work is that of the
-application of natural forces to the service of man
-through machines. Last year a good deal of work
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_125'>125</span>was done in electricity (and will be repeated this
-year), based on the telegraph and telephone—taking
-up the things that can easily be grasped.</p>
-
-<div class='footnote' id='f2'>
-<p class='c000'><span class='label'><a href='#r2'>2</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>This year’s program is published in the <cite>Elementary School
-Record</cite>. Address The University of Chicago Press for particulars.</p>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'>In mechanics they have studied locks and clocks
-with reference to the adaptation of the various
-parts of the machinery. All this work makes
-a most excellent basis for more formal physics
-later on. Cooking gives opportunity for getting
-a great many ideas of heat and water, and
-of their effects. The scientific work taken up
-in the school differs mainly from that of other
-schools in having the experimental part—physics
-and chemistry—emphasized, and is not confined
-simply to nature study—the study of
-plants and animals. Not that the latter is less
-valuable, but that we find it possible to introduce
-the physical aspects from the first.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>If I do not spend a large amount of time in
-speaking of the music and art work, it is not
-because they are not considered valuable and
-important—certainly as much so as any other
-work done in the school, not only in the
-development of the child’s moral and æsthetic
-nature, but also from a strictly intellectual
-point of view. I know of no work in
-the school that better develops the power of
-attention, the habit of observation and of consecutiveness,
-of seeing parts in relation to a
-whole.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_126'>126</span>I shall now say a few words about the administrative
-side of the school. At the outset we
-mixed up the children of different ages and attainments
-as much as possible, believing there were
-mental advantages in the give-and-take thus
-secured, as well as the moral advantages in having
-the older assume certain responsibilities in
-the care of the younger. As the school grew, it
-became necessary to abandon the method, and to
-group the children with reference to their common
-capacities. These groupings, however, are
-based, not on ability to read and write, but upon
-similarity of mental attitude and interest, and
-upon general intellectual capacity and mental
-alertness. There are ways in which we are still
-trying to carry out the idea of mixing up the
-children, that we may not build the rigid stepladder
-system of the “graded” school. One
-step in this direction is having the children move
-about and come in contact with different teachers.
-While there are difficulties and evils connected
-with this, I think one of the most useful things
-in the school is that children come into intimate
-relation with a number of different personalities.
-The children also meet in general assemblies—for
-singing, and for the report of the whole
-school work as read by members of the different
-groups. The older children are also given a
-half hour a week in which to join some of the
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_127'>127</span>younger groups, and, if possible, as in hand-work,
-enter into the work of the younger children.
-In various ways we are attempting to
-keep a family spirit throughout the school, and
-not the feeling of isolated classes and grades.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>The organization of the teaching force has
-gradually become departmental, as the needs of the
-work have indicated its chief branches. So we
-now have recognized divisions of Science, History,
-Domestic or Household Arts, Manual Training in
-the limited sense (wood and metals), Music, Art
-(that is, drawing, water colors, clay modeling,
-etc.), and Gymnasium. As the work goes on
-into the secondary period, the languages and
-mathematics will also of necessity assume a more
-differentiated and distinct position. As it is
-sometimes said that correlated or thoroughly
-harmonized work cannot be secured upon this
-basis, I am happy to say that our experience
-shows positively that there are no intrinsic difficulties.
-Through common devotion to the best
-development of the child, through common loyalty
-to the main aims and methods of the school,
-our teachers have demonstrated that in education,
-as in business, the best organization is secured
-through proper regard for natural divisions
-of labor, interest, and training. The child
-secures the advantage in discipline and knowledge
-of contact with experts in each line, while
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_128'>128</span>the individual teachers serve the common thought
-in diverse ways, thus multiplying and reinforcing it.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Upon the moral side, that of so-called discipline
-and order, where the work of the University
-Elementary School has perhaps suffered most
-from misunderstanding and misrepresentation, I
-shall say only that our ideal has been, and continues
-to be, that of the best form of family life,
-rather than that of a rigid graded school. In
-the latter, the large number of children under
-the care of a single teacher, and the very limited
-number of modes of activity open to the
-pupils, have made necessary certain fixed and
-somewhat external forms of “keeping order.” It
-would be very stupid to copy these, under the
-changed conditions of our school, its small
-groups permitting and requiring the most intimate
-personal acquaintance of child and teacher,
-and its great variety of forms of work, with
-their differing adaptations to the needs of different
-children. If we have permitted to our
-children more than the usual amount of freedom,
-it has not been in order to relax or decrease real
-discipline, but because under our particular conditions
-larger and less artificial responsibilities
-could thus be required of the children, and their
-entire development of body and spirit be more
-harmonious and complete. And I am confident
-that the parents who have intrusted their
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_129'>129</span>children to us for any length of time will agree
-in saying that, while the children like, or love, to
-come to school, yet work, and not amusement,
-has been the spirit and teaching of the school;
-and that this freedom has been granted under
-such conditions of intelligent and sympathetic
-oversight as to be a means of upbuilding and
-strengthening character.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>At the end of three years, then, we are not
-afraid to say that some of our original questions
-have secured affirmative answers. The increase
-of our children from fifteen to almost one hundred,
-along with a practical doubling of fees, has
-shown that parents are ready for a form of education
-that makes individual growth its sole controlling
-aim. The presence of an organized
-corps of instructors demonstrates that thoroughly
-educated teachers are ready to bring to elementary
-education the same resources of training,
-knowledge, and skill that have long been at the
-command of higher education. The everyday
-work of the school shows that children can live
-in school as out of it, and yet grow daily in wisdom,
-kindness, and the spirit of obedience—that
-learning may, even with little children, lay hold
-upon the substance of truth that nourishes the
-spirit, and yet the forms of knowledge be observed
-and cultivated; and that growth may be
-genuine and thorough, and yet a delight.</p>
-
-<div class='pbb'>
- <hr class='pb c003' />
-</div>
-<div class='tnotes'>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
- <h2 class='c007'>TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES</h2>
-</div>
- <ol class='ol_1 c002'>
- <li>Silently corrected typographical errors.
-
- </li>
- <li>Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.
- </li>
- </ol>
-
-</div>
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<pre>
-
-
-
-
-
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