The History Of Education, Ellwood P. Cubberley [motivational novels .TXT] 📗

made its first grant of money in aid of education. Up to 1840 this was distributed through the two National Societies, and in 1839 a portion of this aid was definitely set aside to enable these Societies to establish model schools (R. 347).

From this beginning, the model training-schools for the different religious Societies were developed. In these model schools prospective teachers were educated, being trained in religious instruction and in the art of teaching. In 1836, with the founding of the “Home and Colonial Infant Society,” a Pestalozzian Training College was founded by it.

 

In a further effort to secure trained teachers the government, in 1846, adopted a plan then in use in Holland, and instituted what became known as the “pupil-teacher system” (R. 348). This was an improvement on the waning monitorial training system previously in use. Under this, a favorite old English method, used somewhat for the same purpose a century earlier (R.

243), was adapted to meet the new need.’ Under it promising pupils were apprenticed to a head teacher for five years (usually from thirteen to eighteen), he agreeing to give them instruction in both secondary-school subjects and in the art of teaching in return for their help in the schoolroom. Beginning in 1846, there were, by 1848, 200 pupil teachers; by 1861, 13,871; and by 1870, 14,612. This system formed the great dependence of England before the days of national education. In 1874 the pupil-teacher-center system was begun, and between 1878 and 1896 the age for entering as a pupil-teacher was raised from thirteen to sixteen, and the years of apprenticeship reduced from five to two. In most cases now the academic preparation continues to seventeen or eighteen, and is followed by one year of practice teaching in an elementary school, under supervision. After that the teacher may, or may not, enter what is there known as a Training-College. [7] So far the training of teachers has not made such headway in England and Wales as has been the case in the German States, France, the United States, or Scotland, but important progress may be expected in the near future as an outcome of new educational impulses arising as a result of the World War.

 

SPREAD OF THE NORMAL-SCHOOL IDEA. The movement for the creation of normal schools to train teachers for the elementary schools has in time spread to many nations. As nation after nation has awakened to the desirability of establishing a system of modern-type state schools, a normal school to train leaders has often been among the first of the institutions created.

The normal school, in consequence, is found to-day in all the continental European States; in all the English self-governing dominions; in nearly all the South American States; and in China, [8] Japan, Siam, the Philippines, Cuba, Algiers, India, and other less important nations. In all these there is an attempt, often reaching as yet to but a small percentage of the teachers, to extend to them some of that training in the theory and art of instruction which has for long been so important a feature of the education of the elementary teacher in the German States, France, and the United States. Since about 1890 other nations have also begun to provide, as the German States and France have done for so long, some form of professional training for the teachers intended for their secondary schools [9] as well.

 

PSYCHOLOGY BECOMES THE MASTER SCIENCE. Everywhere the establishment of normal schools has meant the acceptance of the newer conceptions as to child development and the nature of the educational process. These are that the child is a slowly developing personality, needing careful study, and demanding subject-matter and method suited to his different stages of development. The new conception of teaching as that of directing and guiding the education of a child, instead of hearing recitations and “keeping school,” in time replaced the earlier knowledge-conception of school work. Psychology accordingly became the guiding science of the school, and the imparting to prospective teachers proper ideas as to psychological procedure, and the proper methodology of instruction in each of the different elementary-school subjects, became the great work of the normal school. Teachers thus trained carried into the schools a new conception as to the nature of childhood; a new and a minute methodology of instruction; and a new enthusiasm for teaching;—all of which were important additions to school work.

 

A new methodology was soon worked out for all the subjects of instruction, both old and new. The centuries-old alphabet method of teaching reading was superseded by the word and sound methods; the new oral language instruction was raised to a position of first importance in developing pupil-thinking; spelling, word-analysis, and sentence-analysis were given much emphasis in the work of the school; the Pestalozzian mental arithmetic came as an important addition to the old ciphering of sums; the old writing from copies was changed into a drill subject, requiring careful teaching for its mastery; the “back to nature” ideas of Rousseau and Pestalozzi proved specially fruitful in the new study of geography, which called for observation out of doors, the study of type forms, and the substitution of the physical and human aspects of geography for the older political and statistical; object lessons on natural objects, and later science and nature study, were used to introduce children to a knowledge of nature and to train them in thinking and observation; while the new subjects of music and drawing came in, each with an elaborate technique of instruction.

 

By 1875 the normal school in all lands was finding plenty to do, and teaching, by the new methods and according to the new psychological procedure, seemed to many one of the most wonderful and most important occupations in the world. How great a change in the scope, as well as in the nature of elementary-school instruction had been effected in a century, the above diagram of American elementary-school development will reveal. History and literature, it will be noticed, had also come in as additional new subjects, but these were relatively unimportant in either the elementary school or the normal school until after the coming of Herbartian ideas, to which we shall refer a little further on.

 

[Illustration: FIG. 226. EVOLUTION OF THE ELEMENTARY-SCHOOL CURRICULUM AND

OF METHODS OF TEACHING]

 

Accompanying the organization of professional instruction for teachers, another important change in the nature of the elementary school was effected.

 

THE GRADING OF SCHOOLROOM INSTRUCTION. For some time after elementary schools began it was common to teach all the children of the different ages together in one room, or at most in two rooms. In the latter case the subjects of instruction were divided between the teachers, rather than the children. [10] Many of the pictures of early elementary schools show such mixed-type schools. In these the children were advanced individually and by subjects as their progress warranted, [11] until they had progressed as far as the instruction went or the teacher could teach (R. 352). From this point on the division of the elementary school into classes and a graded organization has proceeded by certain rather well-defined steps.

 

The first step (Rs. 353, 354) was the division of the school into two schools, one more advanced than the other, such as lower and higher, or primary and grammar. Another division was introduced when the Infant School was added, beneath. The next step was the division of each school into classes. This began by the employment of assistant teachers, in England and America known as “ushers,” to help the “master,” and the provision of small recitation rooms, off the main large schoolroom, to which the usher could take his class to hear recitations. The third and final step came with the erection of a new type of school building, with smaller and individual classrooms, or the subdivision of the larger schoolrooms. It was then possible to assign a teacher to each classroom, sort and grade the pupils by ages and advancement, outline the instruction by years, and the modern graded elementary school was at hand.

 

The transition to the graded elementary school came easily and naturally.

For half a century the course of instruction in the evolving elementary state school had been in process of expansion. Pestalozzi paved the way for its creation by changing the purpose and direction, and greatly enlarging (p. 543) the field of instruction of the vernacular school.

After him other new subjects of study were added (see diagram, Figure 226), new and better and longer textbooks were prepared (R. 351), and the school term was gradually lengthened. The way in time became clear, earliest in the German lands and in a few American cities, but by about 1850 in most leading nations, for that simple reorganization of school work which would divide the school into a number of classes, or forms, or grades, and give one to each teacher to handle. When this point had been reached, which came about 1850 to 1860 in most nations, but earlier in a few, the modern type of town or city graded elementary school was at hand.

Teaching had by this time become an organized and a psychological process; graded courses of study began to appear; professional school superintendents began to be given the direction and supervision of instruction; and the modern science of school organization and administration began to take shape. From this point on the further development of the graded elementary public school has come through the addition of new materials of instruction, and by changing the direction of the school to adapt it better to meeting the new needs of society brought about by the scientific, industrial, social, and political revolutions which we, in previous chapters, have described. A few of the more important of these additions and changes in direction we shall now briefly describe.

 

[Illustration: FIG. 227. AN “USHER” AND HIS CLASS.

The usher, or assistant teacher, is here shown with a class in one of the small recitation-rooms, off the large schoolroom.]

 

II. NEW IDEAS FROM HERBARTIAN SOURCES

 

THE WORK OF HERBART. Taking up the problem as Pestalozzi left it, a German by the name of Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841) carried it forward by organizing a truer psychology for the whole educational process, by erecting a new social aim for instruction, by formulating new steps in method, and by showing the place and the importance of properly organized instruction in history and literature in the education of the child.

Though the two men were entirely different in type, and worked along entirely different lines, the connection between Herbart and Pestalozzi was, nevertheless, close. [12]

 

The two men, however, approached the educational problem from entirely different angles. Pestalozzi gave nearly all his long life to teaching and human service, while Herbart taught only as a traveling private tutor for three years, and later a class of twenty children in his university practice school. Pestalozzi was a social reformer, a visionary, and an impractical enthusiast, but was possessed of a remarkable intuitive insight into child nature. Herbart, on the other hand, was a well-trained scholarly thinker, who spent the most of his life in the peaceful occupation of a professor of philosophy in a German university. [13] It was while at K�nigsberg, between 1810 and 1832, and as an appendix to his work as professor of philosophy, that he organized a small practice school, conducted a Pedagogical Seminar, and worked out his educational theory and method. His work was a careful, scholarly attempt at the organization of education as a science, carried out amid the peace and quiet which a university atmosphere almost alone affords. He addressed himself chiefly to three things: (1) the aim, (2) the content, and (3) the method of instruction.

 

THE AIM AND THE CONTENT OF EDUCATION. Locke had set up as the aim of education the ideal of a physically