Books.
Volume 14, 1903, pgs. 311-314
Special Reports on Educational Subjects. Vols. X. and XI. (Eyre & Spottiswoode). Vol. X., 2/3; vol. XI., 2/6. The two volumes of the Special Reports, dealing with education in the United States, are of peculiar value and interest. We must go to the United States to witness the apotheosis of educational theory; we say theory rather than practice because the American mind seems to us, like the French, severely logical as well as generously impulsive. A theory arrives, is liberally entertained, and is set to work with due appliances on a magnificent scale to do that which in it lies for the education of a great people. That is to say, educational science in America appears to be deductive rather than inductive; theories are translated into experiments with truly imposing zeal and generosity. An inductive theory of education is, on the other hand, arrived at by means of long, slow, various, and laborious experiments which disclose, here a little, and there a little, of universal truth. The Americans have chosen, perhaps, the easier way, and in the end they too experiment upon their theory. The Kindergarten system illustrates what we mean; notwithstanding its German name, the kindergarten is not a common product in the Fatherland; it is in America that the ideas of Froebel have received their greatest development, that the kindergarten has become a cult, and the great Teacher a prophet. But the impulse has worn itself out, any way, is waxing weak. According to Mr. Thistleton Mark,--whose able paper on Moral Education in American Schools offers matter for much profitable reflection--"Even a stationary Froebelian is driven to have some better holdfast than the ipse dixit of the great reformer. The word kindergarten is no longer a proper noun signifying always and everywhere the one, sole, original, and identical thing. It is a common noun and as such is assured of a more permanent place in American speech." That is to say, educational thought in America is tending towards the broad and natural conception which we of the P.N.E.U. express in the phrase, "education is a life." But we wish educationalist would give up the name kindergarten. We cannot help thinking that it is somewhat of a strain to conscientious minds to draw the cover of Froebelian doctrine and practice over the broader and more living conceptions that are abroad to-day. Even revolutionised kindergarten practice must suffer from the memory and habit of the weaknesses pointed out by Dr. Stanley Hall in a passage quoted by Mr. Mark:--
"The most decadent intellectual new departure of the American Froebelians is the emphasis now laid upon the mother plays as the acme of kindergarten wisdom. These are represented by very crude poems, indifferent music and pictures, illustrating certain incidents of child life believed to be of fundamental and typical significance. I have read these in German and in English, have strummed the music, and have given a brief course of lectures from the sympathetic standpoint, trying to put all the new wine of meaning I could think of into them. But I am driven to the conclusion that, if they are not positively unwholesome and harmful for the child, and productive of antiscientific and unphilosophical intellectual habits in the teacher, they should nevertheless be superseded by the far better things now available." At the same time Dr. hall admits that they now have a certain advantage of position, because so much meaning has accumulated about them.
"Another cardinal error of the kindergarten is the intensity of its devotion to gifts and occupations. In devising these Froebel shewed great sagacity; but the scheme as it left his own hands was a very inadequate expression of his educational ideas, even for his time. He thought it a perfect grammar of play and an alphabet of industries; and in this opinion he was utterly mistaken. Play and industry were then relatively undeveloped; and while his devices were beneficent for the peasant children in the country, they lead in the interests of the modern city child a very pallid and unreal life."
Volume XI. This volume of the Special Reports deals exhaustively with Secondary Education in the United States, and, less full, with American Universities. The several papers are enormously interesting and contain hints of very great value to educators. But the whole effect is, not the conviction that in America they have solved the problem of Secondary Education, but, rather, that there, as in the Primary Schools, America is experiments upon theories adopted en bloc. The causes of very evident dissatisfaction are perhaps summed up in two phrases. The one (quoted by Mr. Sadler) from Colonel Parker, who says:--"Character constantly realising itself in citizenship. . . . is the immediate, everlasting and only purpose of the school." We should say that character is no doubt the result of the school, as of all the other forces at work in life, but that the immediate purpose of the school is very distinctly knowledge, of the varied sorts for which a human being has proper affinities. Where character is the direct and immediate aim we are apt to get a somewhat priggish and shallow person whose little goodnesses are conscious and are apt to be fatiguing to others.
Again, Mr. Percy Ashley in Some Notes on American Universities, says that--"they have attempted to bring themselves into touch with the actual problems of the national life and to send their students out equipped to meet every-day needs." The old English Universities, he adds, have hitherto had another ideal. We hope that they will keep that other ideal, but enlarge it, not from the standpoint of economic needs, but from that of the affinities proper to man in the realm of knowledge: that is, that their training shall not be in the way of qualification, but of culture in an ever more inclusive sense.
Mr. Sadler, in his penetrating study called A Contrast between German and American Ideals in Education, again sounds the note with which he has made us familiar, that of the "educational unrest," which he finds alike pathetic and universal. If the writer of this paper does not make any dogmatic pronouncement as to a better way, he, at any rate, warns us off the shallows. He would not have us patch our old bottles with shreds of German or American or other educational thought. "Education is a life," and every nation must grow it out of its own soil. But Mr. Sadler offers us an ideal and a warning good for us to lay to heart. "Among the qualities which are most precious are resourcefulness, initiative, constructive ability, artistic power, leadership, trustworthiness, gaiety of mind, moral courage, reverence, faith. Yet these qualities are but little tested or developed by the ordinary kind of school studies. Let us beware, therefore, of riveting down on the nation a system of intellectual tests which will take no account of the very qualities on which in the long run national welfare most depends. Chaos may be a bad thing, but over-organization is worse."
The Schoolmaster's Year Book and Directory for 1903 (Swan, Sonnenschein & Co., 5/--net). We congratulate the publishers on the production of a very useful handbook. Part I., under the head of General Information, treats of societies and organizations concerned with education, of official bodies so concerned, of colleges, diplomas, examinations, and what not, and contains a satisfactory history of the educational year 1901-1902. The powers of the Board of Education and the Teacher Registration Order are very fully dealt with. The information appears to be as complete and exact as we can expect in a general handbook. Part II. contains alphabetical lists of secondary schoolmasters and schools, and Part III., articles and reviews. There are some fifteen articles dealing in a liberal temper with the various educational questions that have come up during the year. Girls' schools and women teachers are necessarily left out, but no doubt a similar volume will be prepared in their interests. it seems to us that much judgment has been shewn in covering topics of general educational interest in Parts I. and III., though the lists are concerned only with secondary schoolmasters and secondary schools for boys.
Philosophy: its Scope and Relations, by the late Henry Sidgwick (Macmillan, 6/6 net). Any utterance by the late Professor Sidgwick on the subject of Philosophy is important and in this posthumous publication a real difficulty in the mind of the student is elucidated. He has been tempted to imagine on the one hand that the kindred studies--Psychology, Logic, Ethics, and the rest, cover the whole ground; and that "Philosophy" is more or less a vague counter, current when thought is not definite; or, on the other hand, his conception of "Philosophy" is inclusive and exhaustive and he holds that in fact it covers all closely related subjects of enquiry. Now Professor Sidgwick's searching examination into the scope of philosophy leaves us with the certainty that philosophy is concerned in harmony and effectiveness all those sciences which affect individual and collective living. The writer's examination of the historical method adopted by the evolutionist is particularly instructive. The argument concerning the Darwinian theory is especially interesting, and the conclusion will be welcome to many of us who have felt ourselves in danger of being swept off our feet by the rash assertion that man is a material organism and nothing more. The author considers and demonstrates that the question of the immortality of the soul is no wise affected by the Darwinian theory of evolution; and adds, "I conclude, then, that the historical method as applied to anthropology on the basis of Darwin's theory, leaves the metaphysical problem of the relation of mind and matter exactly where it was."
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