It is a long look forward and a wide one that Dr. Colin A. Scott takes
in Social Education and one that social workers other than the teachers
for whom the book was primarily written, will find themselves enriched
by sharing.
[2] Social Education by Colin A. Scott, Boston, 1908. Pp. 300. Price
$1.50. This book may be obtained at publisher's price through the
offices of CHARITIES AND THE COMMONS.
The school as a special organ of a constantly changing social order,
must itself be easily capable of change. Instead of the uniformity on
which the clan and early religions insisted must come the great variety
of characters and capacities which the modern highly differentiated
state demands.
How shall the school, called into existence by society for its own
service and protection, most effectively educate the formers of the
"New Society"?
Turning to real life for an answer we find that "society at its best
organizes itself in groups in which each individual in the various
groups to which he may belong finds himself in contact with others
whose weakness he supplements or whose greater powers he depends upon."
"If the school is to prepare for society as it is, it would be natural
to expect that some such form of social activity, however embryonic,
should be found as a necessary feature of its life." "The group must be
capable of going to pieces, a thing it cannot do if it is to depend on
the authoritative backing or constraint of the teacher. Indeed it is
only when it can go to pieces that there is any reality in the effort
to hold it together." "True responsibility and even obedience of the
highest type is felt only when the group is free."
The positive view of liberty and independence is urged, not
the negative one which teachers,--and he might have added club
leaders,--are too prone to take. "If children are to be trained
socially, they must feel the full effects of social causes,--not merely
of society at large, but especially those of the embryonic society
of child life to which they belong. They must study these effects
practically, and must see to what extent, as social beings, they are
real causes themselves. It is on a basis of experience of this kind
that they can best interpret the larger and more complex life of adult
society and the state."
Declaring social serviceableness and the highest development of
personality "to be the aims of the school, he urges that there shall be
some test of its success in securing these." "This test can be found
only in the extent to which pupils, when freed from the oversight and
benevolent coercion of the teacher, can use the knowledge and carry out
the habits and ideals which it is the aim of the school to foster and
protect."
In the three succeeding chapters, three types of school in which the
social spirit has been specially manifest are criticized according to
this test. The schools are: (1) Abbotsholme, the "monarchy," under the
principalship of Dr. Cecil Reddie; (2) The George Junior Republic; (3)
The Dewey School.
In each he finds "elements of a high degree of social value, and an
approximate solution of the problem of educative social organization."
But it is in the two following chapters on Organized Group Work,
fragments of which appeared in the _Social Education Quarterly_ of
March, 1907, that Dr. Scott makes his own most valuable contribution
to the problem. It is an attempt to show how it is possible, "even
with crowded classes and without special equipment, to obtain in the
people's schools, those co-operative and self-sustaining motives which
are worthy of democracy and best able to measure the teachers' work."
The experiences which he describes he calls "experiments simply in the
sense that all life is experimental, and they were devised with the
view that the development of intention and resourcefulness on the part
of the pupil is the greatest and most undeniable duty of any form of
education."
The method was as follows: Each teacher said to her class: "If you had
time given to you for something that you enjoy doing, and that you
think worth while, what should you choose to do?
"When you have decided how you would spend the time, come and tell me
about your plan. You may come all together, or in groups, or each by
himself; but whatever you say you want to do, you must tell the length
of time you will need to finish it, and how you expect to do it."
A most varied and interesting set of plans resulted. A printing group;
cooking groups; groups for bookbinding; many for the writing and giving
of plays, suggestive of the festival work of the Ethical Culture
School, which has already been so helpful to club leaders.
The history of these groups, their human and humorous experiences:--of
the child who was "bossy" and the way in which the group handled
her,--are given in delightful detail and carry conviction with them as
to the worth of the method.
To one judging socially and not pedagogically the closing chapter on
The Education of the Conscience is disappointing. It seems to keep
too much to the idea of personal morality as an end rather than as a
means to the more vital and individually inspiring and healthful social
morality; and to admit of the implication that the moral side of school
life is a thing at least a little apart, rather than finding, when
given a teacher with the right spirit, that, to quote Dr. Dewey, "every
incident of school life is pregnant with ethical life."