Classes, the beginners usually practise first in the lowest grades.
It is considered easier to teach little children than older ones, and
less dangerous to the pupils. Indeed, the heads of many schools, far
from adopting the theory that the primary teaching should be in the
hands of the most skilled and efficient teachers, give their youngest
classes into the care of those disqualified to teach in higher grades,
on account of lack of knowledge, or want of skill. It may be urged
in support of the plan of allowing teachers unqualified for other
grades of teaching to become teachers in the primary schools, that the
knowledge actually used in the teaching of little children is much less
than that needed for work with elder children, and that certain devices
for keeping children quiet, and for interesting them, can be followed
empirically by the unskilful teacher. But this argument, instead of
sanctioning the practice so commonly adopted, would serve to show that
it is in the lower grades that bad teaching can remain undetected, and
results, rather than means, made criteria of success. Much of the
growth of the child-mind, in its early stages, depends on the teacher’s
width of interest, a width only secured by a thorough knowledge of
the subjects taught, and a broad range of subjects. This breadth of
interest not only influences the class, but reacts on the teacher; for
teachers of young children, having little necessity to make constant
intellectual efforts, stand in great danger of becoming intellectually
narrowed.
Partly as a result of the fact that most of the students in Normal
and City Training Schools are prepared for work as primary teachers,
and that others who hope eventually to teach in higher grades must
first gain their experience in primary grades, we find that much more
attention is given to primary methods than to methods of the Grammar
School. This is true not only in Practising Schools and Model Schools,
but elsewhere.
Therefore, the most rapid progress in American Education has been
connected with elementary teaching. The present movement to reform
the curriculum and methods of the Grammar School is only of recent
development.
_UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENTS OF PEDAGOGY._
The pedagogical courses connected with the Universities of the United
States differ so much in organization and scope, and in the nature of
their connection with the University, that it is impossible to consider
them under one comprehensive title, unless the exact meaning of the
term “University Department” be defined. In the present case, the title
“University Department of Pedagogy” is used to include all higher
courses of study in philosophy, psychology, history, science or art of
education established by Universities or Colleges of high standing, in
definite recognition of the fact that the work of secondary teaching
requires distinct and special professional or technical preparation,
beyond a sound general education. Such instruction may be given in
connection with Chairs of Pedagogy by series of lectures on science and
art of teaching, theory and practice of teaching, etc., or it may be so
complete as to constitute a school of pedagogy in itself, thoroughly
organized and equipped to carry out professional training in all its
branches. Pedagogical study may be a so-called “elective”--viz., one
of the subjects chosen by the student to count towards his degree, or
it may be a course for post-graduates only. It may consist merely of
courses in special pedagogy or “methods,” by the various professors
of different subjects in a University, or it may be chiefly the study
of education from a scientific standpoint, as in Clark University,
Massachusetts, where experimental and physiological psychology is
pursued, not with the view of meeting the needs of intending teachers,
but of offering opportunities of thorough study to scientific experts,
whose results may be of great value to education in general. The
number of Universities or Colleges in the United States which report
pedagogical courses of some kind is 114. In many of these, however,
the work is mostly of the Normal School type, with a view to prepare
for teaching in the Grammar Schools of the State, and the certificate
of proficiency given on completion of the course is not such as to
entitle the work to be called “Higher Instruction in the Theory and Art
of Teaching.” Leaving such departments out of consideration, as not
belonging to the field of higher education, the departments of pedagogy
in connection with Universities may, for convenience, be considered
under two heads:
1. Those in connection with State Universities.
2. Those connected with other endowed Universities or Colleges of high
standing.
DEPARTMENTS OF STATE UNIVERSITIES.
State Universities, founded in accordance with the resolution,
“Schools and the means of education shall for ever be encouraged,”
have naturally been looked up to as the institutions more fitted than
any other to supply higher instruction in the science and art of
teaching. The first was established as the result of the Ordinance
of 1787, by which two townships of land were appropriated from the
North-West Territory for the support of a State University. Since then,
twenty-eight States of the Union have set apart funds, derived from the
sale of State lands, for the founding and endowing of institutions for
higher education. These universities, gradually increasing in number
and influence, and spreading from their origin in Ohio both west and
east, are dependent for the most part for their students upon the
city High Schools and other secondary schools; and the efficiency of
their work depends greatly upon the efficiency of the preparatory work
done in these schools. It is, therefore, to the interest of the State
Universities to secure that the secondary schools are well equipped and
well taught, and from this point of view one of the distinctive lines
of work of a State University should be the professional preparation
of secondary teachers. The University of Michigan, at Ann Arbor, was
the first State University to recognise the necessity of this work.
In 1879 it established a Chair to give instruction in science and
art of teaching, and since then, Training and Normal departments, or
courses in pedagogy, have been established in the State Universities of
Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Nevada, N. Dakota, Ohio, Washington
and others.
In some Universities the work of training is entirely given over to
the pedagogical department and the professor of pedagogy. In some,
there are no purely professional departments, but “Teachers’ Courses”
are organized in various subjects of the college curriculum. These
courses are given by college professors of the various subjects, and
deal with the different methods of treating the subject. In some
State Universities, however, training is provided both in pedagogical
departments and “Teachers’ Courses”; and good work in both is required
before a student can gain a “Teacher’s Diploma.” Where the two parts
of the work are maintained harmoniously together, they must greatly
strengthen each other, and advantages must accrue both to the students
and to the work of training generally. In such a case the scientific,
but more or less theoretical instruction of the professedly pedagogical
department of the University is supplemented by the practical
instruction, which is the result of the experience of experts in the
respective subjects. The discussion of “methods” in any subject, with
a specialist, who is constantly teaching that subject, must be most
valuable to the future teacher, and especially so when the specialist
can illustrate his methods by actual class work, and the learner is
himself somewhat of a specialist. The existence of these double lines
of work is also important, where it occurs, as illustrating unity of
opinion among the presidents and professors of colleges as regards the
needs and means of training of secondary teachers. Thus it will help on
the cause of secondary training generally.
One of those State Universities which recognise these two distinctive
branches of professional training is the University of Michigan, at
Ann Arbor. Work in both departments has been required in order to gain
a “Teacher’s Diploma,” ever since the pedagogical course was arranged
in 1879. The student must have completed three courses offered by the
professor of pedagogy--one a practical course in the art of teaching
and governing, school hygiene, school law, etc.; one a theoretical and
critical course on the principles of teaching or applied psychology;
and one other course which may be either:
History of education, ancient and mediæval.
History of education, modern, or,
School Management.
He must also have taken a “Teacher’s Course” in connection with one of
the subjects in the college curriculum--work which implies not only
extra professional instruction in methods by the college professor,
but also a special examination in the subject matter of study. Beyond
the courses of study already enumerated as belonging to the Department
of Science and Art of Teaching in the Michigan University, there is
one on the comparative study of educational systems, and a section
for seminary work. This seminary work, taken up in pedagogy, as in
other subjects, only towards the completion of the course, is very
much on the lines of the German “Seminar.” It is work of research and
discussion, done with the help of the educational library. Special
points are taken up by the students and worked out. The teacher guides
the work and reading, and generally conducts the Seminary. As regards
the time devoted to different parts of the pedagogical curriculum,
four hours a week are given to each of the courses on the art of
teaching and the principles of teaching, three hours a week to each of
the history courses and those on school supervision, and two hours a
week to the other optional subjects. The required course may be taken
among the graduate or post-graduate studies. “Teachers’ Diplomas” are
presented on graduation, provided the prescribed course has been taken.
A “Teachers’ Certificate” given by the Faculty, on the gaining of
degree and diploma, qualifies to teach in any school of the State.
At the State University, Illinois, the course in pedagogy is work
which counts towards a degree. It is placed among one of the major
or principal subjects of the “restricted electives,” that is, one of
six subjects, each occupying six terms, two subjects of which must be
chosen by the student for graduation work. Pedagogy is suggested as
part of the work of the third and fourth year in the classical course,
and when taken up for a third and fourth year, after any ordinary “Two
Years’ Course,” it constitutes a course in philosophy and pedagogy. The
different branches of pedagogy taken up in this way are:
Educational psychology, hygiene, philosophy of education, history of
education, school supervision.
The “Pedagogical Seminary” is open only to students who have taken
two other pedagogical courses. Psychology, school hygiene, and school
supervision, constitute full courses for a term--the rest are half
courses. In connection with the Philosophical Department is a course
of lectures and laboratory work in experimental psychology. Apparatus
has been purchased and considerably used in making psychological
experiments.
In the University of Missouri there are two distinct courses,
elementary and advanced. The elementary course corresponds very much
to a Normal School course. The subjects for the first year’s study
are chiefly English, algebra, physiology, zoology, botany, physical
geography, rhetoric. In the second year, pedagogics, including applied
psychology, history and school organization, are taken up with history,
literature, physics, chemistry and civil government. Drawing and
elocution are required subjects during all but one term of the course.
The certificate at the end of the elementary course qualifies the
holder to teach for two years in any public school of the State. The
advanced course leads on to the degree of bachelor of pedagogics. The
required work in this department may be taken by students who are
preparing for degrees in other courses, or by those who have already
a degree conferred by this or any approved University. The graduate
students may, by selecting four of the offered subjects, and devoting
five hours a week to the pedagogical work, complete the course in one
year. Others, take certain prescribed courses, and certain optional
courses in pedagogics, during the third and fourth years of their
ordinary graduate work. The degree entitles to a life-certificate to
teach in any of the public schools of the State. It is noticeable, in
connection with the prescribed courses in this University, that the
study of education, historically, comes before the consideration of
theory or philosophy of education and its application in school work.
The elective or optional studies are four--viz., school systems of
Europe; school systems of the cities and States of the United States;
the educational theories of Herbert Spencer; the philosophy of Froebel.
Of the other State Universities, some make pedagogics a complete course
for graduates or undergraduates, while some, as at Missouri, make it
an elective study during the third and fourth years of an ordinary
graduate course. Where two complete courses exist--an elementary and
an advanced--in the same department, the distinction is based chiefly
on the difference of qualification needed for admission. Students
qualified to enter the University may pursue the elementary course;
only those of the third year or fourth year, or graduates, may take up
the advanced course. As a rule, the students of the elementary course
teach in the Primary or Grammar Schools, those of the advanced courses
become teachers of secondary schools and colleges.
The State Universities of America, as a whole, follow, more or less
strictly, the lines of German Universities. This is not only so as
regards organization merely, but as regards methods of study, and
lines of thought. In no department is the German influence more seen
than in that of pedagogics, where methods of the German “Seminar” are
increasingly used and valued by professors and advanced students.
Few State Universities having pedagogical departments would be found
which had not begun to use Seminar methods. In many Universities, a
“Seminar room,” in which is a pedagogical reference library, is set
apart especially for research and conference in matters educational.
A natural accompaniment of these methods is much study of German
pedagogical theory, and a constant tendency to emphasize and elaborate
German lines of thought. The two great Schools in American psychology
to-day, both of which are making rapid strides in progress, and
influencing the whole of American education to an important extent,
are the Herbartians and the Experimental Psychologists. Both had their
beginnings in German Universities.
The most modern feature of German University Departments of Pedagogy
is, however, one which has not yet been adopted by American State
Universities. A means of connection between the theoretical and
practical sides of training, by the establishment of a practising
school attached to the University, has been made at Jena for some time.
Such a connection would be of the greatest value to American State
University Departments, but until now actual practical departments
have not existed. The instruction in university departments of
pedagogy, although such as to be of the greatest possible value and
stimulation as a theoretical basis for teaching and organizing in
secondary schools, is however incomplete unless opportunities are also
supplied of gaining actual experience in teaching. A practising school,
organized as a part of the University, and having as its principal one
of the University Faculty, might, besides affording such a practising
ground for secondary teachers, be the means of supplying tested facts
to the teaching world in general, and would greatly help the University
Department to fulfil its true function--that of stimulating teachers
and unifying education in the State.
UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENTS OF PEDAGOGY IN THE EASTERN STATES.
The study of pedagogy in connection with the universities and colleges
of the Eastern States is a department of work of comparatively recent
origin. The conservative attitude of the older Universities, such as
Harvard and Yale, with regard to the recognition of the claims of
pedagogy to be a science, and the needs of distinctly professional
instruction for those who intend to become teachers in higher schools
and colleges, has resulted in the fact that the training of secondary
teachers has, until a few years ago, been almost entirely restricted
to the Western State Universities. It is remarkable, however, that
since the older educational institutions of the Eastern States have
recognised education as a science, rapid progress has been made, and
one finds on surveying the work of university departments of pedagogy
as a whole certain features which, when further developed, will
possibly cause university instruction to be the most valuable means of
training secondary teachers. Among such lines of work, already begun in
these pedagogical departments, are:
i. Supervision of secondary school work.
ii. Stimulation of all teachers by research work in educational
matters.
iii. The acknowledgment by scientific workers in the field of
pedagogy and psychology of the results of teachers’ observations of
children in the school-room, as helpful to the scientific researches
of the laboratory.
iv. Preparation and stimulation of professors of pedagogy, and of
teachers for higher schools and colleges.
A very early attempt was made in Brown University, Providence, Rhode
Island, to arrange courses in theory and methods of teaching, but
the movement was not successful. Little actual work in the training
of secondary teachers was done in the Eastern States, until the
Industrial Education Association of New York City, feeling the demand
for skilful teachers in manual training, began to organize plans for
preparing them for their work, and sending them out daily to teach in
the schools. At the beginning of 1889, the work had developed so much,
not only in connection with one branch of training, but many, that the
institution gained a provisional charter from the Board of Regents of
the University of the State of New York, under the name of the New York
College for the Training of Teachers.
In 1892 the charter of the New York College for the Training of
Teachers was made absolute, and the name changed to Teachers’ College.
An agreement was also made, whereby certain pedagogical courses in
the Teachers’ College are considered as courses in the Faculty of
Philosophy at Columbia University, New York, and count towards a
Columbia University degree. By the same agreement, qualified students
of the Teachers’ College are admitted to the courses in philosophy
and pedagogy at Columbia University. In this way we may regard the
Teachers’ College as the newest of University departments, although,
on the other hand, it has developed and become a most important
and successful means of secondary training, quite apart from any
connection with a college or university. The courses in pedagogy given
at Columbia University, and open to students of the Teachers’ College,
are:
The History of Educational Theories and Institutions--a course given
each alternate year.
Systematic Pedagogics; the Psychology of Childhood; Principles of
Teaching; (given also every alternate year).
A Pedagogical Seminar (one hour a week for advanced students).
The lectures in philosophy and experimental psychology are also open
under the same conditions. Among them are the following courses:
(_a_) Logic and Psychology; (_b_) Ethics; (_c_) Introductory course
in Physiological Psychology (lectures and laboratory work); (_d_)
Advanced course in Physiological Psychology (experiment work in the
laboratory); (_e_) Introductory course in Experimental Psychology
(lectures, themes and laboratory work); (_f_) Vision (lectures,
reports and advanced laboratory work); (_g_) Advanced work in
Experimental Psychology and Research (individual instruction daily).
The courses at the Teachers’ College, open to all Columbia University
Students, are:
i. Educational Psychology; Study of Children.
ii. Science and Art of Teaching, with illustrations from the
Kindergarten and Elementary Schools. Observation.
iii. Introductory course on the History of Education.
iv. _Institutes of Education_, by Laurie. Rosenkranz’s _Philosophy of
Education_ and Herbart’s _Science of Education_.
v. Methods of teaching History in secondary schools.
The following can be taken only by advanced students:
i. Methods of teaching Science in elementary and secondary schools.
ii. Methods of teaching Manual Training in elementary and secondary
schools.
iii. Methods of teaching Latin, Greek, French and German.
iv. Reading and discussion of German and French pedagogical works in
the original.
v. Methods of teaching Educational Psychology. Observation and
Practice.
vi. Practice in teaching and supervision. Criticism, School
Management, Discipline.
Candidates for the A.B. degree of Columbia University may specialize
for the last year in the department of pedagogy. They are required to
take two subjects, one as major or principal subject, one as minor
subject. A third optional subject may be taken.
To gain a Diploma of the Teachers’ College, a two years’ course of
study is required. This includes:
i. Elements of Psychology--“a course to give skill in description and
explanation of mental phenomena and insight into the observing and
training of children.”
ii. Educational Theories since the Renaissance, with a general survey
of earlier theories.
iii. A course in Psychology, History of Education, or in Principles
of Logic and Psychology as applied to Science and Manual Training.
iv. Study of range of child’s mental activities as the basis
of primary instruction: the vocabulary as a basis of language
teaching; the child’s power and skill of hand as the basis of manual
expression; Methods of Teaching: Observation lessons; Language,
including Reading; Number; Manual Exercises.
v. Principles of Teaching, with special reference to application
of Psychology to the cultivation of intellectual powers, the
feeling, the will. The application of the principles of education to
classification, organization, and school discipline.
vi. Observation and practice teaching, under supervision, and
independently.
vii. Physical training.
viii. Special methods of one subject of study.
The college is distinctly and solely a professional school. There is
no direct instruction in the subject matter of study, the admission
qualification being such as to exclude all persons who have not had
a satisfactory secondary education. Each college department provides
training in the principles and practice of teaching the subjects which
more especially belong to it; but all instruction is entirely from the
standpoint of the teacher. It is particularly stated in connection
with this teaching, that no student is admitted to a course in the
methods of any particular subject unless he can show himself to be
proficient in the subject matter of that branch of instruction. For
those not qualified, by training or academic standing, to pursue the
ordinary work of the college, it has been found advisable to arrange an
introductory course to occupy one year. The preparatory course includes
the study of English, an introduction to science, either drawing,
domestic science, or wood-carving, and either constructive geometry,
with the solution of original problems, or one branch of science with
laboratory work. I spent several days in this college and heard some of
the teaching in psychology, and in science. The psychology and history
of education are both two years’ courses. In psychology the students
begin by learning to make records of their individual observation of
children. The chief use of psychology to the teacher is regarded as
the making him conscious of processes of thought, which before might
have been accurate, but were not known. As the end of education is
assumed to be a moral end, in so far as it has to do with character
and conduct, the will is made the basis of educational psychology and
is treated first in order. One advantage of such an order of treatment
is that the practical value of the study of psychology to education
can be early shown. As the whole question of education is a question
of the guiding and controlling of action, great importance is given to
the practical study of action in its three phases of instinct, will and
habit. Each of these is followed out as far as possible by means of
the observation of children at play, or by the study of the student’s
own willed movements. All questions of physiological psychology are
avoided as much as possible in the study of psychology for educational
purposes, the two reasons given being: