Read Ebook: The New Education A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) by Nearing Scott

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INTRODUCTION. THE OLD EDUCATION 11

THE NEW EDUCATION

INTRODUCTION

THE OLD EDUCATION

I The Critical Spirit and the Schools

"Everybody is doing it," said a high school principal the other day. "I look through the new books and I find it; it stands out prominently in technical as well as in popular magazines; even the educational papers are taking it up,--everybody seems to be whacking the schools. Yesterday I picked up a funny sheet on which there were four raps at the schools. One in particular that I remember ran something like this,--

"'James,' said the teacher, 'if Thomas has three red apples and William has five yellow apples, how many apples have Thomas and William?'

"James looked despondent.

"'Don't you know?' queried the teacher, 'how much three plus five is?'

"'Oh, yes, ma'am, I know the answer, but the formula, ma'am,--it's the formula that appals me.'

"Probably nine-tenths of the people who read that story enjoyed it hugely," continued the schoolman, "and they enjoyed it because it struck a responsive chord in their memories. At one time or another in their school lives, they, too, bowed in dejection before the tyranny of formulas."

This criticism of school formulas is not confined to popular sources. Prominent authorities in every field which comes in contact with the school are barbarous in their onslaughts. State and city superintendents, principals, teachers, parents, employers,--all have made contribution to the popular clamor. On every hand may be gleaned evidences of an unsatisfied critical spirit.

II Some Harsh Words from the Inside

The Commissioner of Education of New York State writes of the schools,-- "A child is worse off in a graded school than in an ungraded one, if the work of a grade is not capable of some specific valuation, and if each added grade does not provide some added power. The first two grades run much to entertainment and amusement. The third and fourth grades repeat the work supposed to have been done in the first two. Too many unimportant and unrelated facts are taught. It is like the wearying orator who reels off stories only to amuse, seems incapable of choosing an incident to enforce a point, and makes no progress toward a logical conclusion.

"When but one-third of the children remain to the end of the elementary course, there is something the matter with the schools. When half of the men who are responsible for the business activities and who are guiding the political life of the country tell us that children from the elementary schools are not able to do definite things required in the world's real affairs, there is something the matter with the schools. When work seeks workers, and young men and women are indifferent to it or do not know how to do it, there is something the matter with the schools.

"There is a waste of time and productivity in all of the grades of the elementary schools." "The things that are weighing down the schools are the multiplicity of studies which are only informatory, the prolongation of branches so as to require many text-books, and the prolixity of treatment and illustration that will accommodate psychological theory and sustain pedagogical methods which have some basis of reason, but which have been most ingeniously overdone."

Former United States Commissioner of Education, E. E. Brown, is responsible for the statement that,--"With all that we have done to secure regular and continuous attendance at school, it is still a mark of distinction when any city is able to keep even one-half of the pupils who are enrolled in its schools until they have passed even the seventh grade."

Here is an illustration, from the pen of a widely known educational expert, of the character of educational facilities in the well-to-do suburb of an Eastern city. After describing two of the newer schools Prof. Hanus continues,--"The Maple Avenue School is too small for its school population, without a suitable office for the principal or a common room for the teachers, and, of course, very inadequately equipped for the work it ought to do; it ought, therefore, to be remodeled and added to without delay. The Chestnut Street School is old, gloomy, crowded, badly ventilated, and badly heated, has steep and narrow stairways, and it would be dangerous in case of fire. There are fire escapes, to be sure, but the access to some of these, though apparently easy in a fire drill, might be seriously inadequate and dangerous in case of haste or panic due to a real fire. In such a building sustained good work by teachers and pupils is very difficult....

"The High School is miserably housed. It is dingy, badly lighted and badly ventilated. These defects constitute a serious menace to the physical welfare of pupils and teachers and, of course, seriously interfere with good work. It is crowded. Intercommunication is devious and inconvenient. The building is quite unfit for high school uses. Some of the school furniture is very poor; the physical and chemical classrooms and laboratories are very unsatisfactory, and its biological laboratory and equipment scarcely less so. The assembly room is too small, badly arranged, and badly furnished. There are no toilet-rooms for the teachers, and there is no common room. There is no satisfactory or adequate lunch-room. The library is in crowded quarters; the principal's office space is altogether too small, and his private office almost derisively so."

Overwork in the school is said to be alarmingly prevalent. "It is generally recognized by physicians and educators to-day that many children in the schools are being seriously injured through nervous overstrain. Throughout the world there is a developing conviction that one of the most important duties of society is to determine how education may be carried on without depriving children of their health. It is probable that we are not requiring too much work of our pupils, but they are not accomplishing their tasks economically in respect to the expenditure of nervous energy. Some experiments made at home and abroad seem to indicate that children could accomplish as much intellectually, with far less dissipation of nervous energy, if they were in the schoolroom about one-half the time which they now spend there. German educators and physicians are convinced that a fundamental reform in this respect is needed. In fact, among school children we are learning the same lesson as among factory employees, viz., that high pressure and long hours are not economy but waste of time."

The school has been rendered monotonous. "We have worked for system till the public schools have become machines. It has been insistently proclaimed that all children must do things the same way for so long a time, that many of us have actually come to believe it. Children unborn are predestined to work after the same fashion that their grandparents did."

These are typical of a host of similar criticisms of the schools which leading educators, men working within the school system, are directing against it. Out of the fullness of their experience they spread the conviction that the school often fails to prepare for life, that it frequently distorts more effectively than it builds. The thought is not new. Thomas Huxley asked, years ago, whether education should not be definitely related to life. He wrote,--"If there were no such things as industrial pursuits, a system of education which does nothing for the faculties of observation, which trains neither the eye nor the hand, and is compatible with utter ignorance of the commonest natural truths, might still be reasonably regarded as strangely imperfect. And when we consider that the instruction and training which are lacking are exactly those which are of most importance for the great mass of our population, the fault becomes almost a crime, the more so in that there is no practical difficulty in making good these defects."

Approaching the matter from another side, Tyler puts a pertinent question in his "Growth and Education,--" "In the grammar grade is learning and mental discipline of chief importance to the girl, or is care of the body and physical exercise absolutely essential at this period? No one seems to know, and very few care. What would nature say?"

Herbert Spencer answers Tyler's question in spirited fashion. "While many years are spent by a boy in gaining knowledge, of which the chief value is that it constitutes 'the education of a gentleman;' and while many years are spent by a girl in those decorative acquirements which fit her for evening parties; not an hour is spent by either of them in preparation for that gravest of all responsibilities--the management of a family." "For shoe-making or house-building, for the management of a ship or a locomotive-engine, a long apprenticeship is needful. It is, then, that the unfolding of a human being in body and mind, may we superintend and regulate it with no preparation whatever?"

One fact is self-evident,--the existence of a body of criticism and hostility is prima facia evidence of weakness on the part of the institution criticised, particularly when the criticism comes strong and sharp from school-men themselves. The extent and severity of school criticism certainly bespeaks the careful consideration of those most interested in maintaining the efficiency of the school system.

IV Some Honest Facts

Let us face the facts honestly. If you include country schools, and they must be included in any discussion of American Education, the school mortality,--i. e., the children who drop out of school between the first and eighth years--is appalling. We may quarrel over percentages, but the dropping out is there.

The United States Commissioner of Education writes,-- "Of twenty-five million children of school age , less than twenty million are enrolled in schools of all kinds and grades, public and private; and the average daily attendance does not exceed fourteen million, for an average school term of less than 8 months of 20 days each. The average daily attendance of those enrolled in the public schools is only 113 days in the year, less than 5-3/4 months. The average attendance of the entire school population is only 80-1/2 days, or 4 months of 20 days each. Assuming that this rate of attendance shall continue through the 13 school years , the average amount of schooling received by each child of the school population will be 1,046 days, or a little more than 5 years of 10 school months. This bureau has no reliable statistics on the subject, but it is quite probable that less than half the children of the country finish successfully more than the first 6 grades; only about one-fourth of the children ever enter high school; and less than 8 in every 100 do the full 4 years of high school work. Fewer than 5 in 100 receive any education above the high school."

Taking this dropping out into consideration, it is probable that the majority of children who enter American schools receive no more education than will enable them to read clumsily, to write badly, to spell wretchedly, and to do the simplest mathematical problems with difficulty. In any real sense of the word, they are neither educated nor cultured.

Judge Draper, Superintendent of Public Instruction in New York State, writes,-- "We cannot exculpate the schools. They are as wasteful of child life as are the homes. From the bottom to the top of the American educational system we take little account of the time of the child.... We have eight or nine elementary grades for work which would be done in six if we were working mainly for productivity and power. We have shaped our secondary schools so that they confuse the thinking of youth and break the equilibrium between education and vocations, and people and industries.... In the graded elementary schools of the State of New York, less than half of the children remain to the end of the course. They do not start early enough. They do not attend regularly enough. The course is too full of mere pedagogical method, exploitation and illustration, if not of kinds and classes of work. The terms are too short and the vacations too long.... More than half of the children drop out by the time they are fourteen or fifteen, the limits of the compulsory attendance age, because the work of the schools is behind the age of the pupils, and we do not teach them the things which lead them and their parents to think it will be worth their while to remain."

Observe that Judge Draper writes of the graded schools only. Could you conceive of a more stinging rebuke to an institution from a man who is making it his business to know its innermost workings?

These statements refer, not to the small percentage of children who go to high school, but to that great mass of children who leave the school at, or before, fourteen years of age. If you do not believe them, go among working children and find out what their intellectual qualifications really are.

One fact must be clearly borne in mind,--the school system is a social institution. In the schools are the people's children. Public taxes provide the funds for public education. Perhaps no great institution is more generally a part of community interest and experience than the public school system.

The most surprising thing about the school figures is the overwhelming proportion of students in the elementary grades--17,050,441 of the 18,207,803. If you draw three lines, the first representing the number of children in the elementary schools, the second showing the number in the high school, and the third the number of students in colleges, professional and normal schools, the contrast is astonishing.

It is perfectly evident, therefore, that the real work of education must be done in the elementary grades. The high schools with a million students, and the universities, colleges, professional and normal schools with three hundred thousand more, constitute an increasingly important factor in education; at the same time, for every seven students in these higher schools, there are ninety-three children in the elementary grades. The proportion is so unexpected that it staggers us--more than nine-tenths of the children who attend school in the United States are in the elementary grades! Can this be the school system of which our forefathers dreamed when they established a universal, free education nearly a hundred years ago? Did they foresee that such an overwhelming proportion of American children would never have an opportunity to secure more than the rudiments of an education?

Be that as it may, the facts glower menacingly at us from city, town and countryside,--the overcrowded elementary grades and the higher schools with but a scant proportion of the students. So, if we wish to educate the great mass of American children, we must go to the primary grades to do it.

There are, in the public schools, 533,606 teachers, four-fifths of whom are women. These teachers are at work in 267,153 school buildings having a total value of ,221,695,730. Each year some four hundred and fifty million dollars are devoted to maintaining and adding to this educational machine.

The school system is the greatest saving fund which the American people possess. The total value of school property is greater than the entire fortune of the richest American. Each year the people spend upon their schools a sum sufficient to construct a Panama Canal or a transcontinental railway system. Thus the public school is the greatest public investment in the United States.

It is one thing to invest, and quite a different matter to be assured a fair return on the investment. Nevertheless, the individual investor believes in his right to a fair return. From their public investments, the people, in fairness, can demand no more; in justice to themselves, they may accept no less. Are they receiving a fair return? The people of the United States have invested nearly a billion dollars in the public school system; each year they contribute nearly half a billion dollars more toward the same end. Are they getting what they pay for?

Turn to another section of the Report of the Commissioner of Education, and note how, in mild alarm, he protests against teachers' salaries so low "that it is clearly impossible to hire the services of men and women of good native ability and sufficient scholarship, training and experience to enable them to do satisfactory work;" against the schoolhouses, which are "cheap, insanitary, uncomfortable and unattractive;" against "thousands of schools" in which "one teacher teaches from twenty to thirty classes a day;" against "courses of study ill-adapted to the interest of country children or the needs of country life;" against "a small enrollment of the total children of school age," and a school attendance so low that "the average of the entire school population is only 80-1/2 days per year."

The tone of these statements is certainly not reassuring. Perhaps it is high time that the citizens inquired into the status of their educational securities--their public school system.

V Have We Fulfilled the Object of Education?

The object of education is complete living. A perfect educational system would prepare those participating in it to live every phase of their lives, and to derive from life all possible benefit. Any educational system which enables men to live completely is therefore fulfilling its function. On the other hand, an educational system which does not prepare for life is not meeting the necessary requirements.

Charles Dickens, in his characteristic way, thus describes in "Hard Times" a public school class under the title "Murdering the Innocents:"

"'In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but Facts.'

"The speaker and the school master swept with their eyes the inclined plane of little vessels then and there arranged in order, ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim. So Mr. M'Choakumchild began in his best manner. He went to work on this preparatory lesson, not unlike Morgiana in the Forty Thieves--looking into all the vessels ranged before him, one after another, to see what they contained. Say, good Mr. M'Choakumchild: when from thy store thou shalt fill each jar brim full by and by, dost thou think thou wilt always kill outright the robber Fancy lurking within, or sometimes only maim him and distort him!"

Is the picture overdrawn? Are there grades in our large American cities where conditions similar to those just portrayed may be found? Every parent who has a child in the public schools, every taxpayer who contributes to school support, has a right to a direct, impartial and honest answer to that question.

Among educators as well as among members of the general public a spirit of educational unrest has developed. Everywhere there is an ill-defined feeling of dissatisfaction with the work of the schools; everywhere an earnest desire to see the schools do more effectively the school work which is regarded, on every hand, as imperative.

The facts of school failure are more generally known than the facts of school success; yet there are successful schools. Indeed, some of the school systems of the United States are doing remarkably effective work. Emphasis has been lavished on the failure side of the educational problem, until public opinion is fairly alive to the necessity of some action. The time is, therefore, ripe for a positive statement of educational policy. Many schools have succeeded. Let us read the story of the good work. Efficient educational systems are in operation. Let us model the less successful experiments on those more successful ones.

FOOTNOTES:

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