The History of Education

THE NEW INTEREST IN HEALTH. Another new expansion of the educational service which has come in since the middle of the nineteenth century, and which has recently grown to be one of large significance, is work in the medical inspection of schools, the supervision of the health of pupils, and the new instruction in preventive hygiene. This is a product of the scientific and social and industrial revolutions which the nineteenth century brought, rather than of humanitarian influences, and represents an application of newly discovered scientific knowledge to health work among children. Its basis is economic, though its results are largely physical and educational and social (R. 375).

The discovery and isolation of bacteria; the vast amount of new knowledge which has come to us as to the transmission and possibilities for the elimination of many diseases; the spread of information as to sanitary science and preventive medicine; the change in emphasis in medical practice, from curative to preventive and remedial; the closer crowding together of all cla.s.ses of people in cities; the change of habits for many from life in the open to life in the factory, shop, and apartment; and the growing realization of the economic value to the nation of its manhood and womanhood; have all alike combined with modern humanitarianism and applied Christianity to make progressive nations take a new interest in child health and proper child development. European nations have so far done much more in school health work than has the United States, though a very commendable beginning has been made here.

MEDICAL INSPECTION AND HEALTH SUPERVISION. Medical inspection of schools began in France, in 1837, though genuine medical inspection, in a modern sense, was not begun in France until 1879. The pioneer country for real work was Sweden, where health officers were a.s.signed to each large school as early as 1868. Norway made such appointments optional in 1885, and obligatory in 1891. Belgium began the work in 1874. Tests of eyesight were begun in Dresden in 1867. Frankfort-on-Main appointed the first German school physician in 1888. England first employed school nurses in 1887; and, in 1907, following the revelations as to low physical vitality growing out of the Boer War, adopted a mandatory medical-inspection and health-development act applying to England and Wales, and the year following Scotland did the same. Argentine and Chili both inst.i.tuted such service in 1888, and j.a.pan made medical inspection compulsory and universal in 1898.

In the United States the work was begun voluntarily in Boston, in 1894, following a series of epidemics. Chicago organized medical inspection in 1895, New York City in 1897, and Philadelphia in 1898. From these larger cities the idea spread to the smaller ones, at first slowly, and then very rapidly. The first school nurse in the United States was employed in New York City, in 1902, and the idea at once proved to be of great value. In 1906 Ma.s.sachusetts adopted the first state medical inspection law. In 1912 Minnesota organized the first "State Division of Health Supervision of Schools" in the United States, and this plan has since been followed by other States.

From mere medical inspection to detect contagious diseases, in which the movement everywhere began, it was next extended to tests for eyesight and hearing, to be made by teachers or physicians, and has since been enlarged to include physical examinations to detect hidden diseases and a constructive health-program for the schools. The work has now come to include eye, ear, nose, throat, and teeth, as well as general physical examinations; the supervision of the teaching of hygiene in the schools, and to a certain extent the physical training and playground activities; and a constructive program for the development of the health and physical welfare of all children. All this represents a further extension of the public-education idea.

V. THE SCIENTIFIC ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION

An important recent development in the field of public education, and in a sense an outgrowth of all the preceding recent development which we have described, has been the organization of collegiate and university instruction in the history, theory, practice, and administration of education. Still more recent has been the organization of Teachers'

Colleges and Schools of Education to give advanced training in educational research and in the solution of the practical problems of school organization and administration. So important has this recent development become that no history of educational progress would be complete without at least a brief mention of this recent attempt to give scientific organization to the educational process.

EARLY BEGINNERS. Though the teachers' seminaries had been organized in Germany and other northern lands toward the close of the eighteenth century, the normal school in France early in the nineteenth, and the training-college in England and the normal school in the United States by the close of the first third of that century, the work in these remained for a long time almost entirely academic in nature and elementary in character. This was also true of the superior normal school for training teachers for the _lycees_ of France.

The reason for this is easy to find. The writings of the earlier educational reformers were little known; the contributions of Herbart and Froebel had not as yet been popularized; there was no organized psychology of the educational process, and no psychology better than that of John Locke; the detailed Pestalozzian procedure had not as yet been worked out in the form of teaching technique; the history of the development of educational theory or of educational practice had not been written; and almost no philosophy of the educational purpose had been formulated which could be used in the training-schools. In consequence the training of teachers, both for elementary and secondary instruction, [22] was almost entirely in academic subjects, with some talks on school-keeping and cla.s.s organization and management added, and at times a little philosophy as to educational work, such as habit-formation, morality, thinking, and the training of the will. Educational journalism did not begin in either Europe or America until near the close of the first quarter of the nineteenth century, and it was 1850 before it attained any significance, and 1840 to 1850 before any important pedagogical literature arose. [23]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 238. KARL GEORG VON RAUMER (1783-1865)]

NEW INFLUENCE. In 1843 there appeared, in Germany, the first two volumes of a very celebrated and influential History of Education, by a professor of mineralogy in the University of Erlangen, by the name of Karl Gcorg von Raumer. As a young man in Paris (1808-09), studying the great mineral collections found there, he read and was deeply stirred by Fichte's "Address to the German Nation" (p. 567). As a result he went to Yverdon, in 1809, and spent some months in studying the work in Pestalozzi's Inst.i.tute. This

This is a great treasure-house of pedagogical literature for American educators.

After 1850 the organization of a technique of instruction for the elementary-school subjects took place rapidly, in the normal schools of all lands, as it had earlier in the German teachers' seminaries. By 1868 the study of the new Herbartian psychology and educational theory was well under way in Germany, and by 1890 in the United States. By 1875 the kindergarten, with its new theory of child life, was also beginning to make itself felt in both Europe and America. Between 1850 and 1875 Weber, Lotze, Fechner, and Wundt laid the foundations for a new psychology (R.

357), and in 1878 Wundt opened the first laboratory for the experimental study of psychology at the University of Leipzig. In 1890 William James published his two-volume work on _Principles of Psychology_, a book so original and lucid in treatment that it at once gave a new teaching organization to modern psychology. After about 1880, the extension of education upward and outward in the United States, and the rapid development of state school systems which had by that time begun, began to make new demands for better scientific and legal and administrative organization, and this gave rise to a new type of educational literature.

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 lectures.h.i.+ps 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 cla.s.sroom methodology and school management, since almost entirely pa.s.sed 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 inst.i.tution 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 inst.i.tution 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 inst.i.tutions 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 inst.i.tutions anywhere, In the munic.i.p.al universities of England, in Canada, in j.a.pan 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.

s.p.a.ce 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 relations.h.i.+ps 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 leaders.h.i.+p with a one-cla.s.s school system as with a two- cla.s.s; the opening-up of opportunity for youth of brains in any social cla.s.s 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. Ill.u.s.trate.

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 apprentices.h.i.+p 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 a.s.sumed 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 ill.u.s.trative 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.