THE RISE OF EDUCATIONAL SOCIOLOGY
In recent decades educational leaders have been thinking in
sociological terms. In its experimental phases educational sociology
constitutes a phase of applied sociology. The principles of modern
educational sociology have a thousand sources.
Pestalozzi (1746–1827) may be considered a forerunner of current social
theories of education. He was interested in humanity for humanity’s
sake. Like St. Francis of Assisi, he lived with the poor in order that
he might teach them to be thrifty and worthy citizens. In his _Leonard
and Gertrude_, he described the life of the poor, and formulated an
educational procedure for educating the poor. He was a lover of little
children, of poor people, of anyone in trouble, of all humanity. He
spoke in dignified terms of the function of a good woman, no matter how
humble her station in life. Her first duty is to educate her children
and to meet the needs of her family. She has, also, obligations to her
neighbors and community. Others, seeing her constructive work, will be
inspired and motivated to do likewise.
In opening an industrial school for the poor, Pestalozzi recognized
that the poor have the least opportunities for development and the
largest numbers of problems to solve,--therefore they are in the
greatest need of educational advantages. He held that all the phases
of human personality should be trained, and that there should be “a
harmonious development of all human powers.” Hence, education is the
greatest gift that anyone, rich or poor, can receive. In urging that
the child should be educated in company with other children, that
is, in groups, he took an attitude superior to that of Rousseau, but
presaging that of Froebel.
Froebel (1782–1852), the founder of the kindergarten, considered
little children “as plants in a garden.” He recognized the educative
importance of the early years of life. He perceived the possibilities
of teaching through the use of plays and games. He understood the
“interests” of little children. His most important conception, perhaps,
was his recognition of the gregarious impulses as an effective setting
for the educative processes. While neo-Froebelians have sometimes
turned all work into play and have neglected to train the child in
doing some things in which he is not interested at the particular
time, the utilization of the gregarious and play impulses as vital
backgrounds for education is not unworthy. The evils in this connection
are no greater than when the Montessori method is followed, with its
emphasis upon a maximum of individual choice.
In Horace Mann (1796–1859), American education found a new social
emphasis. Education in a democracy, according to Mann, should be public
and open equally to all classes of people. Moreover, in a democracy,
education is not a mere acquisition of knowledge; it is not concealed
in college degrees as such; it is not aristocratic. It was Mann’s
contention that education should be an actual training for rearing
worthy families, for living an unselfish social life, for being a
public spirited citizen in one’s daily activities.
Mann asserted that the common school is the bulwark of the nation. He
believed that education should encourage true religion. He inaugurated
the normal training school,--in support of his theory of specially
trained teachers. His social philosophy is contained in a statement
from his last public address: “Be ashamed to die until you have won a
victory for humanity.”
During the intervening decades since the days of Horace Mann, the
social conception of education has been assuming new practical
phases. Professor John Dewey has pointed out that all communication
is education; that the terms, common, community, and communication,
possess more than a verbal relationship.[XXV-1] Anything is educative
which produces similar emotional and intellectual dispositions,
that is, like ways of responding to stimuli. Societal life, hence,
is unusually educative. Education consists of processes of
self-development, of self-continuation, of social continuation. These
processes are possible only on bases of common means of communication.
It is these means, as Professor C. H. Cooley has indicated, which make
even the powerful factors of suggestion and imitation so universal.
It is not the environment which directly implants certain desires in
individuals.[XXV-2] The environment sets up conditions which stimulate
certain ways of acting. The child gets a real idea of a hat, not by
seeing a hat, or by being told of its uses, but by actually using a
hat. The social environment, in other words, forms “the mental and
emotional disposition of behavior in individuals by engaging them
in activities” that arouse various impulses, purposes, and produces
certain consequences.[XXV-3]
As society becomes exceedingly complex, it is essential that society
provide a simplified social environment through which the child may
pass, in order that he may adjust himself the more quickly and easily
to the complex societal environment. To this end the school serves a
valuable purpose. However, in order to function best, the school must
be a replica in as many ways as possible of real society.[XXV-4]
The special social environment, namely, the school, must simplify
and arrange in an orderly way the dispositional factors it wishes
to develop in children. It must present the existing social customs
in purified and idealized forms. It must create a wider and better
balanced environment for the young than they would have if they were
not in school.
Imitation, to Dr. Dewey, is a less useful term than many social
psychologists believe. What objectively is a process of imitation is
subjectively a process of like response to like stimuli. The term
imitation does not explain; it simply describes--objectively. The
fundamental fact that the sociological student needs to keep in mind is
that “persons being alike in structure respond in the same way to like
stimuli.”[XXV-5] This conception is similar to ideas that Professors
Giddings and Cooley have elaborated. The societal significance of this
interpretation can be stated best in terms of social control. The
highest type of social control is that which plans for a common mental
disposition, a common way of understanding objects, events, and acts,
common sets of socially constructive stimuli.
Professor Dewey argues for a school life which fully connects theory
and practice. While pragmatic, he emphasizes the necessity for a
correct theory, but more particularly the combining of theory and
practice--in the school life itself. In other words, anything which
sets school life apart from actual life is a disutility; it is
educationally harmful. Hence school life must include the actual
occupations, nature study, and the like. It must relegate formal
education to a secondary position. The moral atmosphere of the
schoolroom must change from one primarily of discipline, even formal
discipline, to one of co-operation.
School life, in other terms, is properly an embryonic community life.
It is the business of the school to train each child into membership
of a little community that is a counterpart of society at large,
“saturating him with the spirit of service, and providing him with the
instruments of effective self-direction.”[XXV-6] Professor Dewey would
make the school a miniature society, fitting its members by their daily
activities in the schools for normal membership in “a larger society
which is worthy, lovely, and harmonious.”
The literature on educational sociology is growing rapidly. Within
recent years several books on educational sociology have appeared.
In the list of the authors of these works are the names of O’Shea,
Snedden, Smith, King, Clow, Betts, Dutton, and others of equal
importance.[XXV-7] Professor Walter R. Smith, for example, in applying
sociological principles to educational work, contends that normal
school graduates have been taught to look to psychology alone for
the key to sound pedagogy, whereas sociology is perhaps an equally
important key to effective teaching. Education is not entirely a
matter of training the mind of the individual; it is also a process of
acquainting the individual with the needs of society and of helping
him to participate in improving the quality of societary life. Dr.
Smith urges training not _for_ citizenship, but training _into_
citizenship.[XXV-8]
Inasmuch as men and women live and develop and work as members of
groups, it is vital, according to Dr. Snedden, that children be taught
as integral units of group life. It is sociology that must determine
the aims of education.[XXV-9] By sociological standards it has been
proved that existing curricula in the United States are excessively
individualistic in aim as well as in method. Their purpose has been to
encourage the individual to win against, rather than with, his fellows.
Our curricula provide self-culture studies and self-development
studies, but few social culture and social development studies. The
former are indispensable, but if not properly balanced by the latter
they are positively dangerous.
The responsibilities of individuals for collective thinking and acting
have never been taught to any degree in the schools, and yet these
responsibilities, not only in time of war, but increasingly so in time
of peace, must be assumed widely, else democracy itself will collapse.
By training pupils in the principles of individual success primarily,
the schools have turned out a generation of persons who are unready to
meet the new world problems that are at hand, and who are unable to
promote “constructive programs making for international co-operation
and friendliness.”[XXV-10]
Custom, not social needs, has too often controlled school curricula.
The _Anabasis_ and Caesar’s _Commentaries_, although splendid bits of
literary composition, “are about as significant to the realities of a
nineteenth or twentieth century as bows and arrows would be in modern
warfare, or Roman galleys in the naval contests of tomorrow.”[XXV-11]
The study of forgotten tongues and antiquated fragments of literature
falls far short of training twentieth century youths for the conscious
co-operative direction of the social forces of the future.
Vocational education is not all-sufficient. Youth must be taught
to be socially and morally efficient--no less than physically and
vocationally.[XXV-12] In addition to the current emphasis upon
vocational education, attention must be given to a moral education
in the schools that can produce in individuals the moral character
required to meet the needs of a highly developed democracy.
Educational sociology has viewed with alarm certain recent tendencies
in vocational guidance. It has supported heartily the plans for giving
every child an occupational training and of enabling him to earn his
own living. On the other hand, it has deplored the idea that a vocation
or earning a living is an end in itself. It has insisted that the main
reason for teaching a boy a trade is that the boy may have a larger
opportunity for developing his personality and for serving society.
Likewise, educational sociology has often looked askance at scientific
management, or the movement for educating all workingmen to the point
of highest productive efficiency. Such a training has frequently
produced a maximum increase in profits for those who have promoted it
and a minimum of increase in wages for the workers, besides tending to
turn the latter into mere machines, instead of into human leaders with
increased capacities for enjoyment and spiritual service.
The studies in all school curricula must be evaluated in terms of
social worth. For example, what is the purpose of teaching history? Is
it to give the pupil a chronology of dates and a catalogue of ignoble
kings and bloody battles, or is it to give the pupil the meaning of
social evolution, social progress, social inheritances, the rise of
social needs?[XXV-13]
Educational sociology holds the theory that training for unselfish
social living is as important as training for individual pecuniary
success. It is engaged at the present time in working out techniques
for introducing every member of the public schools to the sociological
viewpoint. The names under which such techniques appear is immaterial,
whether as community civics, American history studies, elementary
social science, or elementary sociology. The next few decades will
undoubtedly be marked by the rapid spread of educational sociology.