Part 78 (1/2)

That man, I think, has had a liberal education who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanisic engine, with all its parts of equal strength, and in sine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossae the anchors of the reat and fundamental truths of Nature and of the laws of her operations; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to coorous will, the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of Nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself

Such an one and no other, I conceive, has had a liberal education; for he is, as completely as a man can be, in harmony with Nature He will ether rarely: she as his ever-beneficent mother; he as her mouthpiece, her conscious self, her minister and interpreter

The inter-relation between the movement for the study of the sciences and the other movements for the improvement of instruction which we have so far described in this chapter, was close Pestalozzi had eraphy and the study of nature; Froebel had given a pro; the manual-arts work tended to exhibit industrial processes and relationshi+ps; and the scientific emphasis on content rather than drill was in harmony with the theories of all the modern reformers Still more, the scientific movement was in close harmony with the new individualistic tendency of the early part of the nineteenth century, and with the movements for the improvement of individual and national welfare which have been so prominent a characteristic of the latter half of the century

V SOCIAL MEANING OF THESE CHANGES

A CENTURY OF PROGRESS Pestalozzi, true to the individualistic spirit of the age in which he lived and worked, had seen education as an individual development, and the ends of education as individual ends The spirit of the French Revolutionary period was the spirit of individualisress of the Industrial Revolution and the consequent rise of new social probleradually shi+fted frole man to the man in the mass The first educational thinker of importance to see and clearly state this new conception in ter the educational purpose in far clearer perspective than had those who had gone before him, he showed that education must have for its function the preparation of anized society, and that character and social morality, rather than individual developer aiht, and seeing clearly the educational importance of activity and expression, had opened up for children a wealth of new contacts with the world about them in the new type of educational institution which he created His principles, he said, when thoroughly worked out and applied to education ”would revolutionize the world” He did not coanization he had planned, but in the hands of the Swedes and Finns similar ideas orked out in practical for Froebel's idea to instruction in the old trades and industries, declining in importance in the face of the rise of the factory syste activities, and these have since been ent ideas as to the industrial relationshi+ps and economic problems of our coes in school work have been nu importance The methods and purpose of instruction in the older subjects have been revised; new studies, which would serve to interpret to the young the industrial and social revolutions of the nineteenth century, have been introduced; the expression-subjects--the do, color work, the iven a new direction to school work; and the study of science and the vocations has attained to a place of i the past half-century the school has been transformed, in the principal world nations, fro the rudiiven, into an instru, for useful service in the office and shop and hoent participation in the increasingly complex social and political and industrial life of a modern world This transformation of the school has not always been easy (R 365), but the vastly changed conditions of ressive nations

THE CONTRIBUTION OF JOHN DEWEY The foremost American interpreter, in teres which have marked the nineteenth century, is John Dewey [36] (1859- ) Better perhaps than anyone else he has thought out and stated a new educational philosophy, suited to the changed and changing conditions of hu

His work, both experiize (R 364) and socialize education; to give to it a practical content, along scientific and industrial lines; and to interpret to the child the new social and industrial conditions ofthe activities of the school closely with those of real life

[Illustration: FIG 231 A REORGANIZED KINDERGARTEN Drawn froarten activities, as worked out by Dewey at Chicago]

Starting with the premises that ”the school cannot be a preparation for social life except as it reproduces the typical conditions of social life”; that ”industrial activities are the ht, the ideals, and the social organization of a people”; and that ”the school should be life, not a preparation for living”; Dewey for a time conducted an experie, to give concrete expression to his educational ideas These, first consciously set forth by Froebel, were: [37]

1 That the primary business of the school is to train in cooperative and

2 That the primary root of all educational activity is in the instinctive, impulsive attitudes and activities of the child, and not in the presentation and application of external material

3 That these individual tendencies and activities are organized and directed through the usesadvantage of thes and occupations of the larger, o forth; and that it is through production and creative use that valuable knowledge is clinched

The work of this school [38] was of fundaanization of the work of the kindergarten along different and larger lines, and also has been of significance in redirecting the instruction in both the social subjects--history (R 366), literature, etc--and the manual, domestic, and artistic activities of the school In his subsequent writings he may be said to have stated an important new philosophy for the school in terms of modern social, political, and industrial needs

THE DEWEY EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY Believing that the public school is the chief reanized society, Professor Dewey has tried to sho to change the work of the school so as to make it a miniature of society itself Social efficiency, and not e, he has conceived to be the end, and this social efficiency is to be produced through participation in the activities of an institution of society, the school The different parts of the school system thus becoht how to live a complexities of modern social and industrial life

Education, therefore, in Dewey's conception, involves not , but play, construction, use of tools, contact with nature, expression, and activity; and the school should be a place where children are working rather than listening, learning life by living life, and beco acquainted with social institutions and industrial processes by studying thee part to reduce the complexity of modern life to such terms as children can understand, and to introduce the child to h simplified experiences Its primary business may be said to be to train children in cooperative andThe virtues of a school, as Dewey points out, are learning by doing; the use of ; and the einality, and initiative The virtues of the school in the past were the colorless, negative virtues of obedience, docility, and submission Mere obedience and the careful performance of imposed tasks he holds to be not only a poor preparation for social and industrial efficiency, but a poor preparation for deood governanization, rests with all, and the school should prepare for the political life of to- its pupils tosocial insight, and causing each to shoulder a fair share of the work of governreat contributions to a philosophy for the educational processof the nineteenth century

Many other workers in different lands, but land, and the United States, have added their labors to the expansion and redirection of the school They are too nuh often nationally important, need not be included here Still more, the contributions of Pestalozzi, Herbart, Froebel, Spencer, Dewey, and their followers and disciples are so interwoven in the educational theory and practice of to-day that it is in most cases impossible to separate them from one another [39]

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1 How do you explain the long-continued objection to teacher-training?

2 Contrast ”oral and objective teaching” with the former ”individual instruction”

3 Sho coe in classroom procedure this involved

4 Sho Pestalozzian ideas necessitated a ”technique of instruction”

5 Why is it that Pestalozzian ideas as to language and arithrae, and arithmetic?

6 How do you explain the decline in importance of the once-popular mental arithmetic?

7 Sho child study was a natural developy