The History Of Education by Ellwood P. Cubberley (little red riding hood read aloud .txt) 📕

After von Raumer’s work, probably the greatest single stimulative influence of the mid-nineteenth century was that exerted by the marked successes of the Prussian armies in a series of short but very decisive wars. Against Denmark (1864) and Austria (1866), but in particular in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, the Prussian armies proved irresistible.

These military operations attracted new attention to education, and “the Prussian schoolmaster has triumphed” became a common world saying. This, coupled with the remarkable national development of United Germany which almost immediately set in, caused progressive nations to turn to the study of education with increased interest. The English and Scottish universities now began to establish lectureships in the theory and history of education, [25] and the first university chairs in education in the United States were founded.

THE UNIVERSITY STUDY OF EDUCATION. In no country in the world have the universities, within the past three decades, given the attention to the study of Education—a term that in English-speaking lands has replaced the earlier and more limited “Pedagogy”—that has been given in the United States. [26] After the United States the newer universities of England probably come next. Up to 1890 less than a dozen chairs of education had been established in all the colleges of the United States, and their work was still largely limited to historical and philosophical studies of education, and to a type of classroom methodology and school management, since almost entirely passed over to the normal schools. By 1920 there were some four hundred colleges in the United States giving serious courses on educational history and procedure and administration, many of them maintaining large and important professional Schools of Education for the more scientific study of the subject, and for the training of leaders for the service of the nation’s schools.

In the great advances which have taken place in the organization of education, during these three decades, no institution in the world has exerted a more important influence than has “Teachers College,” Columbia University, in the City of New York, which was organized in 1887 as “The New York College for the Training of Teachers,” but since 1890 has been affiliated with Columbia University, under its present name. This institution has been a model copied by many others over the world; has trained a large percentage of the leaders in education in the United States; and has been particularly influential with students from England, the English self-governing dominions, China, and South America.

To-day, in all the state universities and in many non-state institutions in the United States, we find well-organized Teachers’ Colleges engaged in a work which two decades ago was being attempted by but a few institutions anywhere, In the municipal universities of England, in Canada, in Japan and China, and in other democratic lands, we find the beginnings of a similar development of the scientific study of education. In these Schools or Colleges for the scientific study of education the best thinking on the problems of the reorganization and administration of education, and the most new and creative work, has been and is being done. [27]

THE PROBLEMS OF THE PRESENT. Pestalozzi dreamed that he might be able to psychologize instruction and reduce all to an orderly procedure, which, once learned, would make one a master teacher. What he was not able to accomplish he died thinking others after him would do. The problem of education has had, with time, no such simple and easy solution. Instead, with the development of state school systems, the extension of education in many new directions to meet new needs, and the application to the study of education of the same scientific methods which have produced such results in other fields of human knowledge, we have come to-day to have hundreds of problems, many of which are complex and difficult and which influence deeply the welfare of society and the State. That these problems, even with time, will receive any such simple solution as that of which Pestalozzi dreamed, may well be doubted. In the days of church control, memoriter instruction, and a school for religious ends, education was a simple matter; to-day it partakes of the difficulty and complexity which characterize most of the problems of modern world States. In consequence of this important change in the character of education a great number of important problems in educational organization, practice, and procedure now face us for solution.

Space can here be taken to mention only the more prominent of these present-day educational problems. On the administrative side is a whole group of problems relating to forms of organization: the proper educational relationships between the State and its subordinate units; the development of a state educational policy: the types of instruction the State must provide, and compel attendance upon; questions of taxation and support, compulsory attendance, and child labor; the training and oversight of teachers for the service of the State; problems of child health and welfare; the provision of adequate and professional supervision; the provision of continuation schools, and of industrial and vocational training; the supervision of school buildings for health and sanitary control; and the relation of the State to private and parochial education. The problem of how to produce as effective and as thorough education for leadership with a one-class school system as with a two-class; the opening-up of opportunity for youth of brains in any social class to rise and be trained for service; the selection and proper training of those of superior intelligence; the elimination of barriers to the advancement of children of large intellectual endowment; and what best to do with those of small intellectual capacity, form another important group of present-day educational problems. Vocational training and technical education, and the relation and the proper solution of these questions to national happiness and prosperity and human welfare, form still another important group. The many questions which hinge upon instruction; the elimination of useless subject-matter; the best organization of instruction; proper aims and ends; moral and civic training; the most economical organization of school work; the saving of time; and what are desirable educational reorganizations, all these form a group of instructional problems of large significance for the future of public education. Still more in detail, but of large importance, are the questions relating to the scientific measurement of the results of instruction; the erection of attainable goals in teaching; and the introduction of scientific accuracy into educational work. Still another important group of problems relates to the readjustment of inherited school organization and practices, the better to meet the changed and changing conditions of national life—social, industrial, political, religious, economic, scientific—brought about by the industrial and social and scientific and political revolutions which have taken place.

These represent some of the more important new problems in education which have come to challenge us since the school was taken over from the Church and transformed into the great constructive tool of the State. Their solution will call for careful investigation, experimentation, and much clear thinking, and before they are solved other new problems will arise.

So probably it will ever be under a democratic form of government; only in autocratic or strongly monarchical forms of government, where the study of problems of educational organization and adjustment are not looked upon with favor, can a school system to-day remain for long fixed in type or uniform in character. Education to-day has become intricate and difficult, requiring careful professional training on the part of those who would exercise intelligent control, and so intimately connected with national strength and national welfare that it may be truthfully said to have become, in many respects, the most important constructive undertaking of a modern State.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Show that education must be extended and increased in efficiency in proportion as the suffrage is extended, and additional political functions given to the electorate. Illustrate.

2. Trace the changes in the character of the instruction given in the schools, paralleling such changes.

3. Explain the difference in use of the schools for nationality ends in Germany and France.

4. Of what is the recent development of evening, adult, and extension education an index?

5. Show why university education is more important in national life to-day than ever before in history.

6. Compare the rate of development of universities during the nineteenth century, and all time before the nineteenth. Of what is the difference in rate an index?

7. Explain why Americans have been less successful in introducing science instruction into their schools than have the Germans. Agriculture than the French.

8. Explain the breakdown of the old apprenticeship education.

9. Explain the American recent rapid acceptance of the agricultural high school, whereas the agricultural colleges for a long time faced opposition and lack of interest and support.

10. Explain the continued emphasis of high-school studies leading to the professions rather than the vocations, though so small a percentage of people are needed for professional work.

11. In Germany this was largely regulated by the Government; show how it would be much easier there than in the United States.

12. Show why European nations would naturally take up vocational training ahead of the United States, Canada, Australia, or South America.

13. Explain the reasons for the new conceptions as to the value of child life which have come within the past hundred years, in all advanced nations. Why not in the less advanced nations?

14. Show the relation between the breakdown of the apprentice system, the Industrial Revolution, and the rise of compulsory school attendance.

15. Show that compulsory school attendance is a natural corollary to general taxation for education.

16. How do you account for the relatively recent interest in the education of defectives and delinquents? Of what is this interest an expression?

17. Does the obligation assumed to educate involve any greater exercise of state authority or recognition of duty than the advancement of the health of the people and the sanitary welfare of the State?

18. What additional unsolved problems would you add to the list given on the preceding page?

SELECTED READINGS

In the accompanying Book of Readings the following selections illustrative of the contents of this chapter are reproduced: 367. McKechnie, W. S.: The Environmental Influence of the State.

368. Emperor William II.: German Secondary Schools and National Ends.

369. Van Hise, Chas. R.: The University and the State.

370. Friend: What the Folk High Schools have done for Denmark.

371. U.S. Commission: The German System of Vocational Education.

372. U.S. Commission: Vocational Education and National Prosperity.

373. de Montmorency: English Conditions before the First Factory-Labor Act.

374. Giddings, F. R.: The New Problem of Child Labor.

375. Hoag, E. B., and Terman, L. M.: Health Work in the Schools.

QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS

1. Explain why it is now so important that the State properly environ (367) its youth.

2. What were the actuating motives behind the German Emperor’s speech (368)? Was he right in his position as to the relation of the schools and national needs and welfare?

3. Explain Van Hise’s conception (369) that the university is “The Soul of the State.”

4. Does Denmark form any exception as to what might be done (370) in any country, such as Russia? Mexico?

5. Show that the results justified the German emphasis (371) on vocational training. How do you explain this German far-sightedness?

6. What will be the result when many nations (372) become highly skilled?

7. Show the growth of humanitarian influences by contrasting conditions in England in 1802 (373), and conditions to-day.

8. Would the English 1802 conditions be found in any Christian land today?

Why?

9. Show