[Illustration: A test with books open. (Fairhope, Alabama.)
_Frontispiece_.]
SCHOOLS OF
TO-MORROW
BY
JOHN DEWEY
AND
EVELYN DEWEY
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
681 FIFTH AVENUE
COPYRIGHT, 1915
BY
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
_First Printing, May, 1915._
_Second Printing, August, 1915._
_Third Printing, March, 1916._
_Fourth Printing, March, 1916._
_Fifth Printing, July, 1916._
_Sixth Printing, July, 1916._
_Seventh Printing, Jan’y, 1917._
_Eighth Printing, Jan’y, 1917._
_Ninth Printing, April, 1919._
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
PREFACE
There has been no attempt in this book to develop a complete theory
of education nor yet review any “systems” or discuss the views of
prominent educators. This is not a text book of education, nor yet an
exposition of a new method of school teaching, aimed to show the weary
teacher or the discontented parent how education should be carried on.
We have tried to show what actually happens when schools start out to
put into practice, each in its own way, some of the theories that have
been pointed to as the soundest and best ever since Plato, to be then
laid politely away as precious portions of our “intellectual heritage.”
Certain views are well known to every teacher who has studied
pedagogy, and portions of them form an accepted part of every theory
of education. Yet when they are applied in a classroom the public in
general and other teachers in particular cry out against that classroom
as a place of fads and caprices; a place lacking in any far reaching
aim or guiding principle. We have hoped to suggest to the reader the
practical meaning of some of the more widely recognized and accepted
views of educational reformers by showing what happens when a teacher
applies these views.
The schools we have used for purposes of illustration are all of them
directed by sincere teachers trying earnestly to give their children
the best they have by working out concretely what they consider
the fundamental principles of education. More and more schools are
growing up all over the country that are trying to work out definite
educational ideas. It is the function of this book to point out how the
applications arise from their theories and the direction that education
in this country seems to be taking at the present time. We hope that
through the description of classroom work we may help to make some
theories living realities to the reader. On the other hand, we have
dwelt on theoretical aspects in order to point out some of the needs of
modern education and the way in which they are being met.
The schools that are used for illustration were chosen more or less
at random; because we already knew of them or because they were
conveniently located. They do not begin to represent all that is
being done to-day to vitalize the school life of children. Schools
with like traits may be found in every part of the country. Space
has forced us to omit a very important movement--the reorganization
of the rural school and the utilization of agriculture in education.
But this movement shows the tendencies that mark the schools we have
described; tendencies towards greater freedom and an identification of
the child’s school life with his environment and outlook; and, even
more important, the recognition of the rôle education must play in a
democracy. These tendencies seem truly symptoms of the times, and with
a single exception proved to be the most marked characteristics of all
the schools visited.
Without the very material help and interest of the teachers and
principals of the schools visited this book would not have been
possible. We thank them most sincerely for the unfailing courtesy they
have shown in placing their time and the material of their classrooms
at our disposal. Our thanks are especially due to Mrs. Johnson of
Fairhope and to Miss Georgia Alexander of Indianapolis for information
and suggestions. The visiting of the schools with one exception was
done by Miss Dewey, who is also responsible for the descriptive
chapters of the book.
J.D.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I EDUCATION AS NATURAL DEVELOPMENT 1
II AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION AS NATURAL DEVELOPMENT 17
III FOUR FACTORS IN NATURAL GROWTH 41
IV THE REORGANIZATION OF THE CURRICULUM 60
V PLAY 103
VI FREEDOM AND INDIVIDUALITY 132
VII THE RELATION OF THE SCHOOL TO THE COMMUNITY 164
VIII THE SCHOOL AS A SOCIAL SETTLEMENT 205
IX INDUSTRY AND EDUCATIONAL READJUSTMENT 229
X EDUCATION THROUGH INDUSTRY 251
XI DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION 287
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING
PAGE
A TEST WITH BOOKS OPEN. (FAIRHOPE, ALA.) _Frontispiece_
(1) NATURE WOULD HAVE CHILDREN BE CHILDREN BEFORE
THEY ARE MEN. 8
(2) TEACH THE CHILD WHAT IS OF USE TO HIM AS A CHILD.
(TEACHERS’ COLLEGE, N. Y. CITY) 8
TO LEARN TO THINK, WE MUST EXERCISE OUR LIMBS.
(FRANCIS PARKER SCHOOL, CHICAGO) 15
(1) AN HOUR A DAY SPENT IN THE “GYM.” 30
(2) THE GULLY IS A FAVORITE TEXTBOOK. (FAIRHOPE, ALA.) 30
GAMES OFTEN REQUIRE MUSCULAR SKILL, READING, WRITING, AND
ARITHMETIC. (UNIVERSITY SCHOOL, COLUMBIA, MO.) 45
(1) THE BASIS OF THE YEAR’S WORK. (INDIANAPOLIS) 58
(2) PRINTING TEACHES ENGLISH. (FRANCIS PARKER SCHOOL,
CHICAGO) 58
SONGS AND GAMES HELP ARITHMETIC. (PUBLIC SCHOOL 45,
INDIANAPOLIS) 75
THE PUPILS BUILD THE SCHOOL-HOUSES. (INTERLAKEN SCHOOL,
IND.) 87
REAL GARDENS FOR CITY NATURE STUDY. (PUBLIC SCHOOL 45,
INDIANAPOLIS) 97
(1) MAKING A TOWN, INSTEAD OF DOING GYMNASTIC EXERCISES.
(TEACHERS’ COLLEGE PLAYGROUND, N. Y. CITY) 109
(2) GYMNASIUM DANCES IN SEWING-CLASS COSTUMES. (HOWLAND
SCHOOL, CHICAGO) 109
CONSTRUCTING IN MINIATURE THE THINGS THEY SEE AROUND THEM.
(PLAY SCHOOL, NEW YORK CITY) 118
USING THE CHILD’S DRAMATIC INSTINCT TO TEACH HISTORY.
(COTTAGE SCHOOL, RIVERSIDE, ILL.) 129
LEARNING TO LIVE THROUGH SITUATIONS THAT ARE TYPICAL OF
SOCIAL LIFE. (TEACHERS’ COLLEGE, N. Y. CITY) 140
SOLVING PROBLEMS IN SCHOOL AS THEY WOULD HAVE TO BE MET
OUT OF SCHOOL. (FRANCIS PARKER SCHOOL, CHICAGO) 159
THE PUPIL STAYS IN THE SAME BUILDING FROM DAY NURSERY
THROUGH HIGH SCHOOL. (GARY, IND.) 177
SPECIAL TEACHERS FOR SPECIAL SUBJECTS FROM THE VERY
BEGINNING. (GARY, IND.) 193
(1) THE BOYS LIKE COOKING MORE THAN THE GIRLS DO. 218
(2) MENDING THEIR OWN SHOES, TO LEARN COBBLING.
(PUBLIC SCHOOL 26, INDIANAPOLIS) 218
LEARNING MOULDING, AND MANUFACTURING SCHOOL EQUIPMENT.
(GARY, IND.) 255
REAL WORK IN A REAL SHOP BEGINS IN THE FIFTH GRADE.
(GARY, IND.) 269
(1) CHILDREN ARE INTERESTED IN THE THINGS THEY NEED TO
KNOW ABOUT. (GARY, IND.) 284
(2) MAKING THEIR OWN CLOTHES IN SEWING CLASS. (GARY, IND.) 284
TRAINING THE HAND, EYE, AND BRAIN BY DOING USEFUL WORK.
(GARY, IND.) 297
SCHOOLS OF TO-MORROW
CHAPTER I
EDUCATION AS NATURAL DEVELOPMENT
“We know nothing of childhood, and with our mistaken notions of it the
further we go in education the more we go astray. The wisest writers
devote themselves to what a man ought to know without asking what a
child is capable of learning.” These sentences are typical of the
“Émile” of Rousseau. He insists that existing education is bad because
parents and teachers are always thinking of the accomplishments of
adults, and that all reform depends upon centering attention upon the
powers and weaknesses of children. Rousseau said, as well as did, many
foolish things. But his insistence that education be based upon the
native capacities of those to be taught and upon the need of studying
children in order to discover what these native powers are, sounded the
key-note of all modern efforts for educational progress. It meant that
education is not something to be forced upon children and youth from
without, but is the growth of capacities with which human beings are
endowed at birth. From this conception flow the various considerations
which educational reformers since his day have most emphasized.
It calls attention, in the first place, to a fact which professional
educators are always forgetting: What is learned in school is at the
best only a small part of education, a relatively superficial part; and
yet what is learned in school makes artificial distinctions in society
and marks persons off from one another. Consequently we exaggerate
school learning compared with what is gained in the ordinary course
of living. We are, however, to correct this exaggeration, not by
despising school learning, but by looking into that extensive and more
efficient training given by the ordinary course of events for light
upon the best ways of teaching within school walls. The first years of
learning proceed rapidly and securely before children go to school,
because that learning is so closely related with the motives that are
furnished by their own powers and the needs that are dictated by their
own conditions. Rousseau was almost the first to see that learning is
a matter of necessity; it is a part of the process of self-preservation
and of growth. If we want, then, to find out how education takes place
most successfully, let us go to the experiences of children where
learning is a necessity, and not to the practices of the schools
where it is largely an adornment, a superfluity and even an unwelcome
imposition.
But schools are always proceeding in a direction opposed to this
principle. They take the accumulated learning of adults, material that
is quite unrelated to the exigencies of growth, and try to force it
upon children, instead of finding out what these children need as they
go along. “A man must indeed know many things which seem useless to a
child. Must the child learn, can he learn, all that the man must know?
Try to teach a child what is of use to him as a child, and you will
find that it takes all his time. Why urge him to the studies of an age
he may never reach, to the neglect of those studies which meet his
present needs? But, you ask, will it not be too late to learn what he
ought to know when the time comes to use it? I cannot tell. But this I
know; it is impossible to teach it sooner, for our real teachers are
experience and emotion, and adult man will never learn what befits
_him_ except under his own conditions. A child knows he must become
a man; all the ideas he may have as to man’s estate are so many
opportunities for his instruction, but he should remain in complete
ignorance of those ideas that are beyond his grasp. My whole book is
one continued argument in support of this fundamental principle of
education.”
Probably the greatest and commonest mistake that we all make is to
forget that learning is a necessary incident of dealing with real
situations. We even go so far as to assume that the mind is naturally
averse to learning--which is like assuming that the digestive organs
are averse to food and have either to be coaxed or bullied into
having anything to do with it. Existing methods of instruction give
plenty of evidence in support of a belief that minds are opposed to
learning--to their own exercise. We fail to see that such aversion is
in reality a condemnation of our methods; a sign that we are presenting
material for which the mind in its existing state of growth has no
need, or else presenting it in such ways as to cover up the real need.
Let us go further. We say only an adult can really learn the things
needed by the adult. Surely the adult is much more likely to learn
the things befitting him when his hunger for learning has been kept
alive continuously than after a premature diet of adult nutriment has
deadened desire to know. We are of little faith and slow to believe.
We are continually uneasy about the things we adults know, and are
afraid the child will never learn them unless they are drilled into
him by instruction before he has any intellectual or practical use
for them. If we could really believe that attending to the needs
of present growth would keep the child and teacher alike busy, and
would also provide the best possible guarantee of the learning needed
in the future, transformation of educational ideals might soon be
accomplished, and other desirable changes would largely take care of
themselves.
It is no wonder, then, that Rousseau preaches the necessity of being
willing to lose time. “The greatest, the most important, the most
useful rule of education is: Do not save time, but lose it. If the
infant sprang at one bound from its mother’s breast to the age of
reason, the present education would be quite suitable; but its natural
growth calls for quite a different training.” And he says, again, “The
whole of our present method is cruel, for it consists in sacrificing
the present to the remote and uncertain future. I hear from afar the
shouts of the false wisdom that is ever dragging us on, counting the
present as nothing, and breathlessly pursuing a future that flies as we
pursue; a false wisdom that takes us away from the only place we ever
have and never takes us anywhere else.”
In short, if education is the proper growth of tendencies and powers,
attention to the process of growing _in the particular form in which
it goes on from day to day_ is the only way of making secure the
accomplishments of adult life. Maturity is the result of the slow
growth of powers. Ripening takes time; it cannot be hurried without
harm. The very meaning of childhood is that it is the time of growth,
of developing. To despise the powers and needs of childhood, in behalf
of the attainments of adult life, is therefore suicidal. Hence “Hold
childhood in reverence, and do not be in any hurry to judge it for good
or ill. Give nature time to work before you take upon yourself her
business, lest you interfere with her dealings. You assert that you
know the value of time and are afraid to waste it. You fail to perceive
that it is a greater waste of time to use it ill than to do nothing,
and that a child ill taught is further from excellence than a child who
has learned nothing at all. You are afraid to see him spending his
early years doing nothing. What! Is it nothing to be happy, nothing
to jump and run all day? He will never be so busy again all his life
long.... What would you think of a man who refused to sleep lest he
should waste part of his life?” Reverence for childhood is identical
with reverence for the needs and opportunities of growth. Our tragic
error is that we are so anxious for the results of growth that we
neglect the process of growing. “Nature would have children be children
before they are men. If we try to invert this order we shall produce a
forced fruit, immature and flavorless, fruit that rots before it can
ripen.... Childhood has its own ways of thinking, seeing, and feeling.”
Physical growth is not identical with mental growth but the two
coincide in time, and normally the latter is impossible without the
former. If we have reverence for childhood, our first specific rule
is to make sure of a healthy bodily development. Even apart from its
intrinsic value as a source of efficient action and of happiness, the
proper development of the mind directly depends upon the proper use
of the muscles and the senses. The organs of action and of reception
are indispensable for getting into relation with the materials of
knowledge. The child’s first business is self-preservation. This does
not mean barely keeping himself alive, but preservation of himself as
a growing, developing being. Consequently, the activities of a child
are not so aimless as they seem to adults, but are the means by which
he becomes acquainted with his world and by which he also learns the
use and limits of his own powers. The constant restless activities of
children seem senseless to grown-up people, simply because grown-up
people have got used to the world around them and hence do not feel
the need of continual experimentation. But when they are irritated
by the ceaseless movements of a child and try to reduce him to a
state of quiescence, they both interfere with the child’s happiness
and health, and cut him off from his chief means of real knowledge.
Many investigators have seen how a sound bodily state is a _negative_
condition of normal mental development; but Rousseau anticipated
our present psychology as to the extent in which the action of the
organs of sense and movement is a positive cause of the unfolding
of intelligence. “If you follow rules that are the opposite of the
established practice and instead of taking your pupil far afield,
wandering to distant places, far-off lands, remote centuries, the ends
of the world and to heavens themselves, you keep him to himself,
to his own concerns, he will be able to perceive, to remember, and to
reason in nature’s order of development. As the sentient infant grows
into an active being, his discernment keeps pace with his increase
in strength. Not till strength is developed beyond the needs of
self-preservation is the faculty of speculation manifested, for this is
the faculty of employing superfluous strength for other than necessary
purposes. Hence, if you would cultivate your pupil’s intelligence,
_cultivate the strength it is meant to control_. Give his body constant
exercise, make it strong and healthy in order to make him good and
wise; let him work, let him do things; let him run and shout; let him
be on the go.... It is a lamentable mistake to imagine that bodily
activity hinders the working of the mind, as if the two kinds of
activity ought not to advance hand in hand, and as if the one were not
_intended to act as guide to the other_.”
[Illustration: (1) Nature would have children be children before they
are men.]
[Illustration: (2) Teach the child what is of use to him as a child.
(Teachers College, N. Y. City.)]
In the following passage Rousseau is more specific as to the way in
which the physical activities which conduce to health and the growth
of mind reinforce each other. “Physical exercise teaches us to use our
strength, to perceive the relation between our own and neighboring
bodies, to use natural tools which are within our reach and adapted
to our senses.... At eighteen we are taught in our schools the use of
the lever; every village boy of twelve knows how to use a lever better
than the cleverest mechanician in the academy. The lessons the scholars
give one another on the playground are worth a hundredfold more than
what they learn in the classroom. Watch a cat when she first comes into
a room. She goes from place to place; she sniffs about and examines
everything. She is not still for a moment. It is the same with a child
when he begins to walk and enters, as it were, the room of the world
about him. Both use sight, and the child uses his hands as the cat her
nose.”
“As man’s first natural impulse is to measure himself upon his
environment, to find in every object he sees the qualities that may
concern himself, so his first study is a kind of experimental physics
for his own preservation. He is turned away from this, and sent to
speculative studies before he has found his own place in the world.
While his delicate and flexible limbs and keen senses can adjust
themselves to the bodies upon which they intended to act is the time to
exercise senses and limbs in their proper business--the time to learn
the relation between themselves and things. Our first teachers in
natural philosophy are our feet, hands, and eyes. To substitute books
for them does not teach us to reason; it teaches us to use the reason
of others rather than our own; it teaches us to believe much and to
know little.”
“Before you can get an art, you must first get your tools; and if you
are to make good use of your tools, they must be fashioned sufficiently
strong to stand use. To learn to think, we must accordingly exercise
our limbs, our senses, and our bodily organs, for these are the tools
of intellect. To get the best use of these tools, the body that
supplies us with these tools must be kept strong and healthy. Not only
is it a mistake that true reason is developed apart from the body, but
it is a good bodily constitution that makes the workings of the mind
easy and correct.”
The passage shows how far Rousseau was from considering bodily
development as a complete end in itself. It also indicates how far
ahead he was of the psychology of his own day in his conception of the
relation of the senses to knowledge. The current idea (and one that
prevails too much even in our own time) was that the senses were a sort
of gateway and avenue through which impressions traveled and then
built up knowledge pictures of the world. Rousseau saw that they are
a part of the apparatus of action by which we adjust ourselves to our
environment, and that instead of being passive receptacles they are
directly connected with motor activities--with the use of hands and
legs. In this respect he was more advanced than some of his successors
who emphasized the importance of sense contact with objects, for the
latter thought of the senses simply as purveyors of information about
objects instead of instruments of the necessary adjustments of human
beings to the world around them.
Consequently, while he makes much of the senses and suggests many
games for cultivating them, he never makes the mere training of the
senses an object on its own account. “It is not enough,” he says, “to
use the senses in order to train them; we must learn to judge by their
means--we cannot really see, hear, or touch except as we have learned.
A merely mechanical use of the senses may strengthen the body without
improving the judgment. It is all very well to swim, run, jump, whip a
top, throw stones. But we have eyes and ears as well as arms and legs,
and these organs are necessary for learning the use of the rest. Do
not, then, merely exercise strength, but exercise the senses as the
powers by which strength is guided. Make the best use of every one of
them, and check the results of one by another. Measure, count, weigh,
compare. Do not use force till you have estimated the resistance; let
estimation of the effect always precede application of the means. Get
the child interested in avoiding superfluous and insufficient efforts.
If you train him to calculate the consequences of what he does and then
to correct the errors of his prevision by experience, the more he does,
the wiser he will become.”
One more contrast between teaching which guides natural growth and
teaching which imposes adult accomplishments should be noticed. The
latter method puts a premium upon accumulating information in the form
of symbols. Quantity rather than quality of knowledge is emphasized;
results that may be exhibited when asked for rather than personal
attitude and method are demanded. Development emphasizes the need of
intimate and extensive personal acquaintance with a small number of
typical situations with a view to mastering the way of dealing with the
problems of experience, not the piling up of information. As Rousseau
points out, the facility with which children lend themselves to our
false methods is a constant source of deception to us. We know--or
fancy we know--what statements mean, and so when the child uses the
proper form of words, we attribute the same understanding to him. “The
apparent ease with which children learn is their ruin. We fail to see
that this very ease proves that they are not learning. Their shining,
polished brain merely reflects, as in a mirror, the things we show
them.” Rousseau describes in a phrase the defect of teaching _about_
things instead of bringing to pass an acquaintance with the relations
of the things themselves. “You think you are teaching him what the
world is like; he is only learning the map.” Extend the illustration
from geography to the whole wide realm of knowledge, and you have the
gist of much of our teaching from the elementary school through the
college.
[Illustration: To learn to think, we must exercise our limbs. (Francis
Parker School, Chicago.)]
Rousseau has the opposite method in mind when he says, “Among the
many short cuts to science we badly need one to teach us the art of
learning with difficulty.” Of course his idea is not to make things
difficult for the sake of having them difficult, but to avoid the
simulation of learning found in repeating the formulas of learning, and
to substitute for it the slow and sure process of personal discovery.
Textbooks and lectures give the results of other men’s discoveries,
and thus seem to provide a short cut to knowledge; but the outcome is
just a meaningless reflecting back of symbols with no understanding
of the facts themselves. The further result is mental confusion; the
pupil loses his original mental sure-footedness; his sense of reality
is undermined. “The first meaningless phrase, the first thing taken
for granted on the authority of another without the pupil’s seeing
its meaning for himself, is the beginning of the ruin of judgment.”
And again: “What would you have him think about, when you do all the
thinking for him?” (And we must not forget that the organized material
of our texts and set lessons represents the thinking of others.) “You
then complete the task of discrediting reason in his mind by making him
use such reason as he has upon the things which seem of the least use
to him.”
If it was true in Rousseau’s day that information, knowledge, as an
end in itself, is an “unfathomable and shoreless ocean,” it is much
more certain that the increase of science since his day has made
absurd the identification of education with the mere accumulation of
knowledge. The frequent criticism of existing education on the ground
that it gives a smattering and superficial impression of a large and
miscellaneous number of subjects, is just. But the desired remedy will
not be found in a return to mechanical and meager teaching of the three
R’s, but rather in a surrender of our feverish desire to lay out the
whole field of knowledge into various studies, in order to “cover the
ground.” We must substitute for this futile and harmful aim the better
ideal of dealing thoroughly with a small number of typical experiences
in such a way as to master the tools of learning, and present
situations that make pupils hungry to acquire additional knowledge. By
the conventional method of teaching, the pupil learns maps instead of
the world--the symbol instead of the fact. What the pupil really needs
is not exact information about topography, but how to find out for
himself. “See what a difference there is between the knowledge of your
pupils and the ignorance of mine. They learn maps; he makes them.” _To
find out how to make knowledge when it is needed_ is the true end of
the acquisition of information in school, not the information itself.